Monday School Stuffs

Warning! This post contains images of nude figure drawings. If this is NSFW for you, you've been warned!

So Monday is the day I have to hand in my weekly assignments for my classes, so I thought I'd share them here, too. I'm taking figure drawing and figure modeling this semester at AAU, and most people ask me "How do you do figure drawing online?" or "are you making pottery with all that clay?"

To answer the first question, we draw from photos of the same models presumably used for the onsite classes (since the instructor seems to recognize a few). I usually print the photos up as 8x10's and tape them next to my drawing board on my easel. I know, it's not as awesome as drawing from a live model. But it is better than what a previous online drawing class had us do, which was a full-size self-portrait, yes, in the nude. I can't quite express how uncomfortable drawing oneself in front of a mirror *naked* is. For eight hours. Yeah.

I'm quite happy drawing from the photos. I also have one of the Virtual Pose books/DVD's that have lots of Quicktime models that can be rotated 360-degrees, so that's nice. At any rate, I've been drawing lots of figures from pictures.

The figure modeling class is much the same except it's sculpting of course, with 50-lbs of clay. I've never worked with clay before and I probably wouldn't choose to. It's very educational though, and kind of fun and pleasant at times.

Anyway, this week is the week before midterm assignments are due. The drawn figures are the most "complete" we've done so far.

This is the exercise for the week, charcoal on layout bond paper. I love how layout bond is toothy enough to hold a lot of charcoal, but will also clean off very easily too. It took some getting used to after working on the "soft" texture of charcoal paper, but now I like it very much.

Following here is a value study for the main assignment, also on layout bond:


Really lovely pose. One thing I'm working with a lot is line quality around the edges. I generally render everything to death so there's no outlines, so working with line is new to me.

Here is the final assignment, chalk and charcoal on toned charcoal paper. I have always wanted to draw on this stuff, mostly because I adore Pierre-Paul Prud'hon's drawings. What I had available here was incredibly expensive though ($2) a sheet, and the texture wasn't as workable or soft/toothy as I'd like. Anyway.


Lastly, I'll dare to share Pasta Lady, a.k.a my contrapasto-posed female sculpture. I have some BIG adjustments to make with her, but here is where she stands as it is tonight:


Yeeaaah... I dunno.

Next week for drawing I'll be copying a statue by Bellini and for sculpting finishing Pasta Lady there. I might not be updating here as much as I'll be putting a lot of hours in on those. Midterms!!!

And I have an Art History exam Wednesday but I'm not too worried about that. Hard to believe the semester is half-over! Spring is coming soon. =)