January 26, 2011
My name is A-Croz and my major is Graphic Design. This blog is a requirement for the Life Drawing course I’m taking in this semester; otherwise I wouldn’t be blogging. Art is a personal thing for me and so I guess this is a good way to become more confident, willing to share it, and get inspiration from my peers.
I’m not one of those people who have been drawing in their spare time ever since they were little. Taking Drawing 1 freshmen year here at Stout was basically the first time I’d touched a pencil to legit drawing paper. Then I took Drawing II last semester and now Life Drawing is a course that I not only need to take, but want to take. I’m not that good of a drawer and want to transform my stick people into realistic figures. There are not very many pieces of work that I have created and really loved so hopefully after this semester of more art classes I will improve and have more to add to my portfolio.
After going over the syllabus the first day of class, the second class period was pretty crazy. We got right into drawing. The model seamlessly switched poses every 30 seconds and really seemed to know what she was doing. I think she may be into yoga or dance. Although we just kind of jumped in to the drawing, I feel like I learned a lot! I had to draw so fast that if I had been recorded my hand may have looked like it had been hijacked by a ninja or like it was on fast forward!
Last semester I took ceramics and loved it! Even though it was extremely time consuming, made my hands super dry, forced me wear older jeans to class because they would get full of terracotta/ stone ware and a bit of oil from the wheel… it was worth it. Working with clay like that really helps you learn how to think three dimensional. Plus at my end critique my professor, Geoff, said I one of the mugs I made was a “dandy mug.” :) I do love that mug. Almost all my bowls were bottom heavy, but I was a hesitant about getting too close during trimming & making a hole in the bottom. There wasn’t enough time in the semester for mistakes like that. Saw buff Matthew the other day & realized how much I’m starting to miss that class now. There were a lot of reallyyy good guy potters in my class. Those boys helped me so much! It’s amazing the amount you learn from your friends in class especially and not just the teacher.
January 28, 2011
Life Drawing is so intense! We start off every class doing the 30 second poses, then 1 minute, then 2 minute. It is such good practice!! I think I have already improved a great deal. Today in class we learned about contour lines. We chose one part of the body like her hand, feet, thigh, lower arm; something like that and really concentrated on the shape of it. Not the outside shape, but the lines that define each piece. Amy made a good point today saying that in everyday life we tend to speed through things and they’re just glossed over. Rarely do we “stop to smell the roses” and really look at things.
I don’t like to compare professors in public spaces such as online, but my professor, Amy has a great teaching technique. Plus, she actually teaches along the way instead of expecting us to all be pros and know what we’re doing. I can already tell there is a lot of talent in our classroom.
