My Experience

Becoming part of this Figurative Drawing course was an idea I had to get me back into drawing more than anything else. However, once our classes started I realized that I should take it as an opportunity to learn different techniques, the history of several painters, and use my time wisely to try to draw the best I could in each assignment we were given during class. I tried to follow the advice the professor would suggest during my drawings and I looked for way to improve each week to make my images look more real and full of texture. In addition, the class got me interested in learning about non-traditional artists as well as learn more about the paintings and painters I already liked such as Jean-Pierre Cot and Andy Warhol. In fact, I wanted to learn more about artists that reflected my culture and as a result, I dedicated my last research assignment to Oswaldo Guayasamin, an Ecuadorian painter, sculptor, and human rights fighter. Overall, this class helped me relearn a lot of drawings techniques that I now will dedicate myself to practice more often in my drawings and helped me appreciate art as a whole and realize the impact it had and has in our culture and social.

Visit to the MET

Visiting the MET is always a learning experience. This time my classmates and I were there especially to wisdom the William Kentridge exhibit "The Refusal of Time". As decribed by the artist himself, The Refusal of Time was a 30min meditation on time and space, the complex legacies of colonialism and industry, and the artist's own intellectual life. It was a combination of different images and sounds put together on various screens at the same time, giving us (the audience) a very 3-D experience as well as surprising us with random and unexpected situations throughout the show. After Kentridge, we went to see some of his actual drawing and painting pieces, followed by visitng the renaissance gallery and greek gallery. Although our visit was limited to a certain section of the museum, I got to focus my attention to few things which allowed me to discover tiny details I did not know about before. For example, during the Kentridge exhibit I used multiple senses like sight, hear, and touch to unedrstand the story Kentridge was trying to portray.

Types of Perspective

• Compositional focus refers to the organization, arrangement, and combination of objects within the borders of a drawing space. The idea is to bring the eyes of the viewer toward your center of interest within an aesthetically pleasing composition.

There are a few steps needed to include into the drawing to achieve this:
      1. Stay away from the bull's eye. A focal point placed in the very center of your drawing space is a big NO unless you have a specific expressive or artistic reason to do so. Any object that you place dead center commands the viewer's full attention.
      2. Drawing less interesting objects close to the primary focal point helps direct the viewer's eye toward your center of interest. 
     3. Overlapping objects, or placing some objects over (or in front of) others, unifies a drawing, enhances depth of field, and creates an aesthetically pleasing composition.
     

• Linear perspective creates the illusion of space and distance on a flat surface. It originated in Florence, Italy in the early 1400s. The artist and architect Brunelleschi demonstrated its principles, but another architect and writer, Leon Battista Alberti was first to write down rules of linear perspective for artists to follow. Leonardo da Vinci probably learned Alberti's system while serving as an apprentice to the artist Verrocchio in Florence. You can create this image by using one point, two points, and even three points of focus. 

  

•  Atmospheric perspective refers to the effect the atmosphere has on the appearance of an object as it is viewed from a distance. While the distance between an object and a viewer increases, the contrast between the object and its background decreases, and the contrast of any markings or details within the object also decreases. The colors of the object also become less saturated and shift towards the background color, which is usually blue, but under some conditions may be some other color (for example, at sunrise or sunset distant colors may shift towards red).

My Hand

My Hand

           Our latest class focused on one body part instead of the body as a whole. I decided to draw my hand, I thought it would be interesting to develop my skills to make my hand.....well look like my hand instead of the typical plastic looking hand many people draw, including me. I added soft, strong, light, and darker lines to define the wrinkles and curves my hand and fingers have due to the movements and my skin. Even though, I really do not like my hand I focused this drawing on it because I have heard that hands can say a lot about  a person; overall, hands and fingers are very interesting up close. My challenge was to draw the veins along my hand, but softening of the lines took some time.

Body Movements

 Body Movements 

     The body movement sections of 3, 5 ,10 minutes was something new for me. It did not allow me to take long to focus on details so "blocking" was the method to use, just to get the overall shape or silhouette. it was strange to think of the human body as many blocks compiled together, Once those blocks were created I was able to define them into the actual curves and lines that created the model's body. This assignment was alittle easier in terms in not focusing on details and just getting the basic shapes correct first, before anything else.

Enhance Your Surroundings

Enhance Your Surroundings

           During this class, I learned to focus on the surroundings around the model to shape the model's form according to the things touching her or helping/making the shadows, highlights, and alignment of the body. Setting the body part in relation to the objects such as the chair had to be carefully studied and drawn slowly to get the different lines to meet. Once again, the face was the hardest part to capture but I believe that was practice and time I will get it right someday. 

"Titanic"

"Titanic" 

             This picture or post I should say reminded me of the movie Titanic.....I am not sure if the model posing did it on purpose. Anyways....this was my second section of drawing a life model, the first time was...well alittle weird for me. Just having a naked woman in the room is not the usual thing in my life....besides that point...drawing a human body was very interesting. It really made me focus on all the parts we have and how they flow into each other. My most difficult area was her face, I just could not get the nose and mouth to look real or even simply proportioned. However, I did see an improvement from my first human drawing, this time I was able to get the proportions right and tried to add more details such as hair, shadowing, and curves to the body.