Everyone left early today.

So I was just starting to get overwhelmed by the amount of work that is building up near the end of the semester, and today we just get slammed! It was a cold walk to class today but I decided that because it has been so long since we have had a normal class, I would only bring only my drawing stuff, and leave my clay stuff at home. This was the wrong choice. When I got to class it was immediately announced that we would be working on our mannequins, after some lecture on the shoulder. Then it took about an hour for Amy to dish out the latest muscles that we had to sculpt.

This was daunting because there are about a billion muscles that we have yet to apply. On the other hand, we get more time for our inked shell drawing, and we have 2 weeks to do this sculpting.

Well after all of this we had the rest of the time to work on the muscles. Because no one knew that we were going to be working on them, pretty much everyone left.

I left to get my mannequin, and drop off my drawing business. When I got back only a few people were still there, and we had only about an hour to work now. Amy was kind enough to critique our sculpt jobs thus far, which was helpful. A few of my muscles were to small, and a few of them were not going in the right place. Then I went back to my small work station, and got through two whole muscles before class time was up and I had to move on, how frustrating.

I think that it would have been nice if we could get a quick email before class telling us what to expect, and what to bring.

The Walker

Today we went to the Walker museum of art, and the Bell museum of natural history in Minneapolis MN. We went to the Walker to look at some contemporary art, and we went to the Bell to look at stuffed animals, most of which are indigenous to Minnesota, and we each drew at least one or possibly more of the animals. I'll talk more about that in my next post, but for this one I'm going to focus mainly on the Walker.

There were a couple of interesting things at the Walker including photos, sculptures, kinetic pieces, videos, and even a live performance installation piece.

The live performance was interesting. It challenged the viewer to concentrate and contemplate the body as a system of small pieces, but recognize it as one large powerful whole. That moves ever so gracefully. As I was observing, I thought about how many muscles there are in the body. This has really been on my mind since we have started putting more and more clay on the mannequins. Working with the mannequins has affected my understanding of the muscle system greatly. Realizing that there are so many different muscles that are similar in size shape and placement but they are all responsible for their own movements. It is very obvious that it is a combination of all these muscles that make each movement, flex, extension, and restrictions possible.

The piece that I liked the most was a kinetic sculpture that used a mirror to reflect light through a plastic cup, and on to a wall. What made this piece interesting was that the cup was on its side on a small rotating platter that was slanted at an angle. The result was a large moving shadow/light. Some of the plastic created shadow, and some of the plastic focused the light into odd and interesting patterns. I liked this because the cup would never roll in exactly the same way. It would always bounce around, or slow differently with each rotation, and this made the piece eternal. Also the fact that it was not only a shadow being cast but also light being focused added a huge amount of interest letting the viewer discover both sides of light at the same time, and even survey how they intereact.

Class went well today. Even though i had a raging headache through most of it, I was able to take advantage of the in class time and get a head start on my third shell drawing. This happened because we were supposed to be practicing ink wash on our hot pressed water color paper, and before we did that we had to start by drawing our shell. I decided to go full scale with my drawing because I was not going to cut up or make small scale practice drawings on a piece of paper that cost me $7.60.  As the class progressed my shell began to take shape, and it turned out pretty good. I spent so much time working on getting my large scale drawing nice, that i ran out of time, and couldn't spend any time working with the ink. This concerns me a little because I am not very confident in myself when it comes to my skills in ink wash or water color for that matter. I have tried it in the past on a small scale however the results were less than satisfactory. Although it is important for me to note, that I did take time out of my drawing fever to pay attention to the things that Amy was telling some of the other students mostly with regards to how to improve their ink wash abilities. I am committing to memory the advice she gave so not to fall on my face during this experiment. (I hope the quality of my paper helps) She said: make sure your brush strokes follow the lines that you draw, let the darkness of your lines reflect how dark you want your ink to be as to not get lost, start very light and work your way to dark, determine a light source.

Class was Canceled

Class was canceled today, which is kind of frustrating for me.

Last week I went to Penco to pick up some of the materials that I would need for the ink wash day. This went well and the Penco staff were very helpful, however, they were all out of 90lb. hot pressed water color paper. This is a problem because the next step up in quality of paper was available, however, it was about $4.00 more expensive. I waited all weekend in hopes that they would receive a new shipment of cheaper paper, alas, they did not and I was forced to purchase the expensive paper. The problem is, if I had known earlier that class was going to be canceled, I could have waited until the cheaper paper was in stock. I just spent an hours worth of work on one piece of paper that I'm not even going to use today.

Looking forward, I am very excited to try the ink wash. I have always been mystified by the images and dreamlike quality some talented artists are able to produce. I have always had trouble handling ink, and watercolor. With some instruction I hope to discover the techniques and possibilities that ink has to offer.

I did purchase the sepia toned ink because I hold hope that during the application process the colors of the ink will separate, and I will be able to access more than just one tone with the ink.

I am also anxious to use the bamboo brush that I bought. I can tell right away that it will be tricky to command such a tool, however, I have been practicing holding my drawing tool (primarily charcoal pencil) near the back end. This is how I expect to handle the bamboo brush.

3D

I was cruising the net the other day and came across this gem:

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/unbelievable-3d-drawings-16

 As an artist who considers himself one who thinks outside the box, I came to really like these. Although the technique is not quite yet mastered, the artist has obviously developed his own style. I would really like to see what he has to offer in other mediums. It is also interesting that the artist uses props and other objects in his work. Notice the watch in the 6th drawing, and the wine glass in the 3rd.

It is also great to see such passion and talent in someone so young. It will be really interesting to see what he can do after some formal training. I am also curious to see in what direction he would take his talent. Would he go with a studio major? or perhaps a multimedia design major.

I think it is fair to note that this technique is very similar to the chalk drawings done in perspective that have gotten quite popular over the past year or more.

Even though his drawings are very good, I get the feeling that the works are not really planned out. It looks like some of them are just thrown together in order to achieve the three dimensionality. For instance the first drawing is composed of three pieces of paper that have been haphazardly positioned and looks as if the artist ran out of space.

I am also thinking about how this artist would handle a wall, or even a room.

I should probably have a picture of myself...

As I'm trying to catch up on the "easy stuff" in this class I noticed that everyone else has a nice picture of their face to represent their blog. I'll get one up after this post so everyone knows who I am.

As life goes on, I am constantly reminded that humans are at the very center of the future. What I mean by that is as time moves on, things are getting more and more easy for humans to use. Technology is becoming obsessed with making their products perfect for human use, whether its a car with heated hand grips and voice activated GPS, ore just a simple hiking backpack that fits comfortably to the shape of someones back.

With this in mind, I am reminded of how we all drew pictures as children. When we were very young and we drew a person, it usually came out as a large face that filled up the whole page with large eyes, and often small legs and arms coming right from the head. This is because as a child, the most important thing to us was the face. It is how we recognized people.

As social networks get more and more advanced, they often include images of faces next to names, posts, etc..... I should really get a profile pic up.

falling behind

So I have been falling behind on these posts, and I have also been falling behind in my works. Today we were supposed to have the thigh muscles done on our mannequins and I have yet to even crack open the book. This is because of a job interview that I had last Tuesday that forced me to cut class, and then again missing class on Thursday because of poor time management. I am struggling to catch up and this is the first step:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/imhumble/