Awkward Views

I am very nervous for this test tomorrow on the skulls.  I have been thinking about it all weekend and trying to work out how I'm going to draw every view from memory, like what method I want to use to map out the skull and working out where the major points of the structure that I would need to draw out and how to find them from a framework such as the sphere and block technique.  After this I plan to draw a few sketches in my sketchbook to practice.  I think the 3/4 front will be the most difficult for me because of all the separate plane changes with the facial features while the back might be the easiest for because the plane changes are more subtle and may be a lot easier to define.

bottom 3/4 back

On Wednesday this past week we worked on unconventional views of the skull and they were very difficult for me to wrap my head around (no pun intended), but I think the main focus of the exercise was for us to rely not on merely what we saw, but using one of the techniques we have learned to find the structure first and then look at what we saw to find the rest.  I tried my best to look as little as possible at the skulls themselves and tried to draw from memory.  I did not do as bad as I thought I would have, but there were some parts (like the cheek bone and upper/lower jaw) that I had a lot of trouble figuring out and had to look frequently at the skulls and got some help on them as well.  The other thing I had some trouble with was remembering that the cranium is egg shaped.  With awkward views such as these, it was sometimes difficult to see that, so you would have to do your best to draw it that way.  I think I redrew the cranium fifty times on my 3/4 back and tilted view (which I included here)!

3/4 back tilted

Good luck to everyone on their tests tomorrow!

Assignment 2: Cranium

3/4 front cross contour only

For this assignment we were to draw 2-3 hour views of the cranium and focus on defining plane changes with contour and cross-contour as well as practice adding value to emphasize and liven these changes.  I found this assignment to be very difficult because it was the first time I have drawn a cross-contour drawing since Life Drawing I three semesters ago.  It took a while to get comfortable with the technique again, however I feel I accomplished getting a life-like quality with my drawings when I was able to use value.  I rediscovered that my use of value is in a very high key, which the class pointed out in critique as well.  I was for some reason under the impression that this was not the ideal because I lost the lighter lines to my audience when viewed from far away, however the class really liked this technique so I think I will 

profile value

continue with it.  One comment really stuck with me, that my back view looked like an exact photograph.  Now if that is a good thing or bad thing, I am not sure about, in one way it is good, because we are going for life-like structures, but it could be a bad thing because photographs can often hide some of the structure and the quality of the drawing may be increased if it looks more hand drawn and pensive of the cranium's specific quality.

The things that the class said I needed to work on was my ideas of some of the forms, such as where the cranium wraps down and under the cheek bone and is not exactly concave even though I and many of my classmates drew it that way.  Also some of the highlights on the top of the cranium, especially on my back view are not effective in showing form and may be incorrect.  Altogether, the consensus

back view value only

3/4 back cross contour/long axis and value

 was that I could have added or continued the value up onto the rest of cranium to show the plane changes, bone formations and accentuate the highlights.  That is what I really meant by my values being too light because I did not want to add value to too much of the cranium and flatten it involuntarily.  Overall I will try to find the bone structures and plane changes in the future and not be afraid to add value to very light in nature forms to create a more life-like structure.

Assignment 1: Skulls

3/4 front

I apologize ahead of time for not uploading the photos of my skulls for this post.  I have not had a chance to take them yet, but as soon as I do they will be here!  I was gone for critique for the Twins vs. Indians game (bad excuse, I know) so I received some comments and critique from Amy individually.

3/4 back

profile

When I look at my drawings I see that my skulls still look flat so I definitely need to work on showing plane changes with contour line work and more confident values.  My drawings are rather light so I can push the darks and lights even more to emphasize space and dramatize light and form.  I saw that where I put shadows and highlights for overlapping sections, it increased the feeling of roundness and three-dimensional form so I will work on doing that more in my next drawings.  Amy had similar things to point out.  My profile view needed the most work as I struggled to show a roundness to a view that seemed so flat, although the proportions and overall shape were accurate, I did not delve into adding value and contour as much as I did for the 3/4 back and 3/4 front views.  She noticed that my line work in the facial section of my 3/4 back view was good, but all the same line weight.  In my 3/4 front view we discovered that I made the jaw way too long, which is why I had so much trouble getting the teeth and Maxilla to look proportional.  She liked that I showed a definitive edge to the Occipital bone with very dark line and value in my 3/4 back view to show a clear plane change, but she also pointed out that my craniums were uninteresting, as were many student's in the class, because we were so focused on getting the shape and value of the facial features we forgot to show the very interesting plane changes of the cranium.  We are working on that for this next project, hopefully I improve those techniques quickly!