Figure Drawing (Again!)

I think this is my favorite of the figure drawings so far. I prefer this one both because of the composition and for the figure's sculptural quality that I think is captured better than in some of my other drawings. I am still, however, finding hands, face, and feet frustrating. Only two more in-class drawing periods for this unit..hopefully I can improve in that time!

Figure Drawing

Belle Isle

I got some great photography in this weekend (finally!). Today I went just across the James River to Belle Isle with my friends Grace, Alex, and Rellie. We spent a beautiful day walking in the woods on some trails we found, finding remnants of abandoned buildings, and best of all--taking lots of pictures! Here are a few from the day :)

It feels so good to take some pictures again! I haven't been shooting nearly enough since I got to school. Hooray for this weekend!

Madeline

Meet my beautiful suite mate Maddy! Over the weekend she let me do a little photo shoot with her..here are a few shots from it. I love doing shoots like this with people (my friends can attest). If you ever want some pictures, let me know!

Pinpression

Do you remember this toy from the late 80s/ early 90s? In my space research class a few weeks ago we looked at the work of some sculptors: Claes Oldenburg, Michael Rakowitz, Louise Bourgeios, Annette Messeger. Using the inspiration of Claes Oldenburg's soft sculptures in particular, we were assigned to find a relatively small, hard object, and recreate it as a large-scale soft sculpture. Originally I bought a bunch of silver sateen fabric intending to scale-up a screw. When I brought my fabric into class to begin working, another student in my class brought it to my attention that he was planning on making a screw as well. I'm so glad he was too, because otherwise I may have not been inspired to think of a new, more exciting object to make. I had been feeling underwhelmed by the idea of making a giant screw but hadn't found a more suitable object to recreate. After brainstorming though I decided I wanted to challenge myself and make a giant Pin Art board!

For those of you that haven't gotten to play with one before, a Pin Art or Pinpression board (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_Art) is a toy made of many nails or pins that can slide back and forth through small holes in a rectangle of plastic to create a relief sculpture of your hand, face, or whatever else you may press into the pins.

The finished piece is 3' x 4' and there are 432 2" inch "pins." 212 of those are 3D soft pin sculptures and the remaining 220 are circles of fabric, meant to represent the pins that were not moved with the hand pressed the toy. Each flat pin head circle was hand cut. Each pin was created by machine sewing a tube of fabric, hand sewing a pin head circle to a circular cotton make-up remover pad (so the heads would retain the shape of a flat pin head), and hand sewing the two pieces together. Then, each pin was stuffed with batting.

For the backing I stretched a piece of black cotton over a scrap piece of plywood. The flat head circles were then hot glued onto the black cloth. To attach the 3D screws I had to hand-saw 212 stumps from thick wood dowels, stick the stumps in the tubes, hot glue the stumps in place, and then finally hot glue the bottoms of the stumps to the board. I made a grid and planned out which of the 432 2" spots would be flat and which would be 3D to make up the hand. After everything was secured on the board I hand cut 6 pieces of scrap PVC pipe and glued them down. Then I found and sized a scrap piece of plexiglass to place on top of the pipe pieces.

The most challenging part of this project was handling the mass number of pieces that went into its production. The final assembly could not happen until every piece was ready to go so, with over a thousand pieces to prepare by hand, there was a lot of work to put together at the very end. I am so happy this piece is finished!! SO MUCH time but it was worth it in the end. Plus, my professor chose my piece to be on display in the Art Foundation building hallway, along with 3 other pieces from my class!

Figure drawing encore

I am more satisfied with today's drawing than the previous one. I hadn't yet focused on a face in my drawings so instead of depicting her from the front or in full view I decided to crop it as a profile bust yet keeping the hand in there because I needed practice drawing hands as well. I'm pleased with how the face turned out. I tried to include all of the nuances I could capture. The hand was worked for a good while as well; it was difficult to proportion the different sections correctly. I think it is not 100% accurate yet but it's surely closer than the hand in the previous drawing.

I'm considering going back and filling in the chair with more detail..thoughts?

Figure drawing

What a strange angle from which to draw someone. The ankles were terribly frustrating in this drawing. If I get up the courage I may revisit this one soon to fix the sketches that stand as ankles currently. ANKLES ANKLES ANKLES! Try drawing an ankle sometime so you understand.

Unit three: figure drawing

We began the third unit of my drawing class when a live model came in last Monday. We started with 10 2-minute poses to get warmed up. The teacher said not to worry about details with those sketches; that hands and feet could be mitts, etc. but to focus more on how the two main lines of the body line up: the shoulders and hips. So here are those 10 sketches:

Then we moved onto 2 20-minute poses:

His head looks way too small (though to be fair he did have a small head), the legs are too short, and he's floating. Grr.

Slightly more accurate. But turn your head upside down and look at his face..something's not right there. The perspective was a little tough on this one, especially dealing with the arms. Onto 2 30-minute poses:

I think I'm happiest with the weight of this one of all four. I think he looks like he's really sitting in a chair and his body is relatively proportionally accurate.

The legs were very tough on this one. I drew his legs way too many times, each time they were too short.

Drawing faces, hands, and feet proved to be the most challenging part of figure drawing. Maybe those details will come in time but for now I'll focus more on the weight and sculpture of the body. More figures to come!

Re-worked abstracts

After an in-progress critique in my drawing class, I re-worked most of my abstract pieces (from two posts ago). I'm re-posting them in the same order I did before so you can see how each has changed.

do you see the elephant? or should i say OLIPHAUNT???

inspired by: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMjkfZ3q8tE

geez self, what a nerd.

(not altered)

(This is a scan of a 3D flower-esque paper sculpture but the scan looked so cool I didn't photograph it to see the volume)

(not altered)

Take off your mask

Sadly, today is the last day of my photography project class. The last assignment was by far the trickiest. In class we looked at the work of Gilbert and George, a British artist duo. I can't seem to find a website for them but if you're interested in checking out their work you can google them. Their pieces are large-scale and graphic (both in nature and style). They use symbols, text, and heavily bordered images to compose their unique style. They also include portraits of each of them in each work. Although it doesn't appear so, their work is entirely photographic. 

My assignment was to, being influenced by their work, "Make up some statements that are expressions of your personal beliefs and ideas that are important to you. Design a layout into which the statement will fit. Make up some statements that are an expression of what you think society believes about young people. Use a clear visual language and a pared-down graphic style to communicate for maximum effect. It may help to reduce your statements to one or two words. Compose at least three separate 8"x10" panels/images/photographs that form a self-portrait or clear depiction of your individual presence in society.  Make sure to use visual information that can be understood by people outside of your community and/or society." 

Did you get that? If you did, I applaud you. It's a relatively simple assignment, but thinking of an idea that would work proved to be difficult for me. With some help from friends brainstorming, I decided that the "personal belief" I would base my assignment on would be my generation's standardized notions of women's beauty. Almost every girl I know wears makeup daily either to cover up blemishes or to excentuate certain features. Undoubtedly, makeup can make a woman glow. However, I personally feel uncomfortable wearing it as it feels like a mask to me, like I'm just playing a part. Concurrently, I choose not to wear clothes that are not a reflection of my personality, less I feel like again I'm just playing a part and not representing who I am.

In my series of photos I tried to express this personal belief in a way that is universally understood. Hopefully I got the point across. I am disappointed that the three photos don't visually sit well together. In putting them together though I forced myself to learn some valuable skills in Photoshop (a new program to me). Some simple things like cutting out an image, changing the opacity, etc. took me several hours to teach myself but now I'll understand for next time!

-Longest Blog Entry Yet OUT.