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.