Half page paragraph critique: For me, drawing is a new experience, and I preferred the short under 5-minute sketches. Looking back, I feel my inattentiveness had to do with my still-life choice. Honestly, the apple just did not hold my attention when it came to the more extended drawings. After reading the chapter, I tried to use mass, line, and sustained gesture techniques to create the apple. I struggled with the concept of scribble line gesture and could not remotely reproduce the apple using it. The apple ended up looking like an inkblot, not at all the look I was going for. Comparing the 1-minute gesture drawing to the 10-minute gesture drawing, I would say that there are some similarities and some differences. One similarity is the apple's shape; in both the 1 minute and 10 minutes, the figure does not change that much. One significant difference between the two is that the 1-minute drawing uses more line gesture, where the 10-minute sketch has more depth and uses more mass and line gesture. I feel like the ten-minute drawing is stronger than the one minute because I had more time to try and use different techniques and was able to give more attention to detail. The biggest lesson I learned this week is to spend time putting together the still life object/s, so I feel inspired and speaks to my creativity. Baby StepsAssignment 1 - Part 2 ORGANIZATIONAL LINE DRAWINGNectar of the Gods Assignment 2 Exploring the element of shape and value through observational drawing. Assignment 3 Part 1 - REFLECTION: I started my investigation into the world of a self-portrait with week six readings. I loved Alex Katz's homage to Frank on pg. 231 and the artist's use of simplistic representation. As I began to do more research, I was also drawn to the following self-portraits: The Desperate Man (Gustave Courbet), Big Self-portrait (Chuck Close), Surprise (Leopold Boilly). I feel that each of them depict the human spirit in different ways. I love the realness and emotion I feel when viewing each of these, and I wanted to recreate the same reaction in my drawing. I used my computer screen during an online lecture to help capture my facial expression. I am going for disengaged and disconnected due to COVID. Next, I spent some time evaluating what medium I wanted to use. While I thought that using graphite would let me be more detailed oriented, I love the richness of vine charcoal and feel it's easier to create shadows and history. I wanted my portrait to speak to the viewers, and I felt that using vine charcoal would give me better results. As a novice, I faced challenges. Honestly, I was sick of using the grid method after spending so much time on sketchbook D, so I tried to map my proportions freehand, and well, that didn't work! So I started over, using the grid method. I worked on getting my head, eyes, nose, and lips proportional. Using this technique, I felt that most of my proportions came out better. One issue that I could not solve was my lips and nose. They are off, and even though I reworked them several times, I could not get them to look like me. My nose is too broad, and my lips are not long enough. As I view my portrait as a whole, the one thing that does not work is my wrist/hand. I feel that it is too large, and I wasn't able to capture its realness. All in all, it did come out better using the grid method. I also will note that using vine charcoal had its downside. I kept smudging my lines, and I had to erase, redraw, erase, redraw, which was highly frustrating. One technique that I loved using was the blending/smudging sticks. I feel that I got the hang of using them and was able to create depth. They were really helpful developing my eyes and hair. I think I was able to create texture and smoothness that was not present in my drawing before. I also pushed and pulled with my eraser to add highlights to my hair and then went back in with the vine charcoal to add movement. This assignment pushed me to practice additive and subtractive techniques in creating value. I was also forced to think about size, proportion, texture, and movement. It made me think about facial expressions and how much humans convey without saying a single word. I tried to create a self-portrait that captured my feelings about online lectures. Lately, I am really struggling with motivation. I am disinterested, bored, and disconnected to the world around me. Self Portrait Groundhog Day Assignment 4 Organizing Picture Plane - In progress work Ticking away "How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flown. How did it get so late so soon?" - Dr. Seuss |