College Update #2: Figure Drawing

Figure Drawing is the other studio drawing class I'm taking this semester. It's definitely one of my harder classes; drawing the human body is not easy. None of these drawings are particularly good, and the first 2, which are from my first day of class, are pretty laughable. But in retrospect, it's pretty encouraging to see the improvement I've made in only 6 weeks. All of these drawings are rough sketches because we only get 1-20 minutes for each pose. Our professor just wants us to focus on proportions and capturing the gesture of the model.

College Update #1: Analysis of Form

Analysis of form is one of two studio drawing classes I'm taking this semester. We only use charcoal in this class which was pretty challenging for me at first because it's not a medium I've used before.

For the first few weeks of class, we learned how to draw man-made objects, like bottles. To make drawings of man-made objects look realistic, it's important to have really straight lines. These drawings may not look like much but they take a pretty long time to do, because it takes a while to figure out the proportions of everything.

For extra credit, my professor told us we could start a perspective drawing. This is unfinished but it was interesting to practice using vanishing points.

One of our first bigger homework assignments was to draw and render a sphere. The first picture is the first sphere I did. When everyone brought their spheres to class again, our professor told us they were all horrible and to redo them. The second sphere is the one I redid and as you can probably see, there's a huge difference. I didn't really want to post the first sphere but I think it's cool to see the improvement.

This is a cube I drew in class. Our professor said we could render it at home if we wanted so that we could get extra practice.

This was our first project. We had set ups in class of a still life and we had to draw and render the shapes. 

Bird Collage Sketchbook

For this collage sketchbook, I painted my canvas with a variety of colors, and then glued tissue paper to it for texture. After that, I spraypainted leaf stencils onto the canvas and used a sponge dipped in acrylic paint to give the leaves some dimension. I then glued a picture that I drew of a bird in pencil onto the canvas, and painted a quote onto the canvas using acrylic paint.

Michael Cera Stencil Project

 For my first sketchbook of collage techniques, I made a stencil portrait of Michael Cera featuring a quote from the movie "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World." For the background of this sketchbook, I put torn pieces of newspaper on a canvas using glue, and then painted the canvas with a light blue wash. I next cut out my Michael Cera stencil and spraypainted it on my canvas with a red and yellow gradient. After that, I drew on my quote and went over the pencil markings with acrylic paint. I drybrushed black acrylic paint onto the background of the canvas, and in the stencil to make it look more three dimensional.

Multimedia Project

This is my multimedia project. The background is an abstract painting of shapes done in acrylic. I painted a spraypaint can and a wasp on watercolor paper using acrylic paint also. After I had finished painting the spraypaint can and the wasp, I cut them out and glued them onto my canvas. Finally, I made a stencil that says "XLIN" and spraypainted it on the top of my canvas. This was my first multimedia project and I enjoyed it because it was fun to use a variety of techniques in one painting.

Stencil Project #1

This is my first stencil project. First, I painted my background a yellow gradient with acrylic paint. Then, I cut out stencils of a bass guitar, a sparrow and paintbrushes with an X-acto knife. After I cut out all the pieces for my stencils, I glued them down to my canvas with a gluestick and spraypainted the stencils. Afterwards, I removed the stencil pieces with the X-acto knife. This was a challenging project for me because I found that it was hard to get all the stencil pieces to stay firmly attached to the canvas so that the spraypaint wouldn't leak out the sides of the stencil and create a messy edge.

3rd Quarter Sketchbook Set #1

This is my first sketchbook set of the third quarter. Three of these are done in ink and one is in pencil. For the ink drawings, I first sketched the picture in pencil, then went back in with microns and added shading and different line weights.