OMG Sketches!

These are a couple of fairly quick sketches I did earlier this semester for an ID project. I like to show a variety of work relative to drawing and Life Drawing as I find our style of drawing in class much different from my ID work. I have been thinking all of this semester that it has been strange bouncing back and forth between design sketching and gesture/ contour drawing. This is not to say that I am enjoying either style of drawing any less than the other. In fact, I feel it really beneficial to be working on line and essential drawing skills again! I am beginning to understand that my enjoyment of drawing brought me into the Industrial Design program here at Stout, but then within ID I somewhat lost interest in basic drawing... HOWEVER, I am very happy to be in Life Drawing because I am beginning to once again ENJOY drawing! I hate to say it but, ID kind of killed my enthusiasm for drawing for a little bit... OH NO! Either way, I'm back on track, love drawing, and love ID!

Drawing Shells and Such

Life drawing has been going pretty well I would say. We've been working on drawing shells, which are a pretty decent subject for drawing. It is interesting attempting to understand the structure of the shell and then draw it accordingly. It does prove to be a fairly effective way of drawing. I suppose with any sort of drawing, structural knowledge will always prove valuable. It is neat to see the different drawings the class is producing. Each student seems to have their own style and I think that is a really cool thing to see in a class. In my mind, style in any kind of drawing is key. I also feel that I am beginning to develop a style within the drawings I've been doing and I enjoy developing it. That's it for now!

This is one a long gesture drawing from class. It was one of the first long poses we worked on and I feel it turned out fairly well. I found it somewhat difficult to focus so much on the direction of line, but it was interesting to draw via visual mapping. Either way, I do feel that there are perhaps too many lines throughout the horizontal axis. The drawing looks somewhat like a mummy even, but oh well, lesson learned. I hope to progress as we draw more.

Renders with a hint of Life Drawing

So I am taking another advanced drawing course along with Life Drawing this semester. It has been kind of tricky to balance Advanced Presentation Techniques alongside Life Drawing as both are utilizing an entirely different style of drawing/ sketching. I do, however, feel it is really interesting to compare the work being done in both classes. So you've seen some of my Life Drawing work and some of my Industrial Design work here, but for this post I would like to show you a piece from Adv. Pres. Tech! I am pretty happy with the rendering of this Wall-E inspired robot. The idea here is that Wall-E and Eve made a robotic baby somehow! There is much more control in digital rendering than hand drawn line although in the digital sense, your images may lose some of their humanistic expressive qualities. Either way, I am enjoying being enrolled in BOTH advanced drawing classes and am finding that they balance one another quite nicely.

Walker Art Center Trip

This is the best image I could find online from artnews.org. Quasi MB- In the Middle of its Story was formatted differently in the Walker.


Haegue Yang: Integrity of the Insider

I really enjoyed this space in the Walker. The artist has a very creative way of using a wide variety of materials in her investigations. I felt that the Yearning Melancholy Red installation was intensely affective. I, however, chose to write about a more subtle, yet equally intriguing piece spanning the corner of a wall titled, Quasi MB- In the Middle of its Story (2006/2007). This installation of eighteen framed black and white printed pieces of paper translating the washed out ink on what seemed to be scraps of paper. The same handwriting appears on each scrap of paper, although it is not the artist's handwriting. The first frame in the series is numbered 11 and houses a piece of paper with Korean characters neatly written in ink. This is the only frame with Korean text. The series continues with a frame numbered 12 below 11. The order continues in this way as a vertical series of rows; 14,14,14;15,16,17 until it reaches the corner of the wall. On the adjacent face of the wall the series continues 19,20,20. At the bottom of this series, the pattern changes and becomes horizontal. The next frames spanning across the wall; 21,22,24,23,27. Below 23 is 25. Below 27 is 26. Written, this pattern is very confusing. Visually, this formatting seems very composed. Here are some excerpts from the frames.

Frame 14:
The writing is not to be read
It is, rather to be seen,
In other words,
To be witnessed as writing
Still, I have to write
In order to hide writing
Is is crucial to write
Yet my writing can't be read
The reason why writing disappears is
Not because the rain washes away my letters
But because it is being filmed.

Frame 20:
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame
A sense of shame

I read each frame as I proceeded from 11 to 27 (left to right within a 90 degree corner; 18 frames). It was interesting to think about where these scraps of paper had been found, all having been signed "MB". I began creating scenarios in my mind and visualizing the artist finding these letters or following someone who recorded and then discarded all their thoughts. Around the corner of the gallery space was another installation. This was a vintage projector playing a 16mm film. This silent video installation depicted a man sitting outside with a pen and an ink reservoir writing as best he could on a sheet of paper, all the while it is raining on him. The rain seems artificial and localized over this one writing individual. He, however, does not seem to mind the rain and continues attempting to write. This continues for three minutes and replays. After watching the piece I found out that it was Marcel Broodthaers' La Pluie (Project pour un texte) 1969. This piece being by a different artist didn't seem to fit into the gallery, but also seemed to explain Yang's Quasi MB piece. The dichotomies continued when I entered the Yearning Melancholy Red installation and passed between a fan and an industrial heat lamp juxtaposed on either side of me.

I'm not entirely certain that I've made the connection between the Quasi MB piece and the 16mm film. I definitely find it interesting. The rest of the gallery was exclusively Haegue Yang's work so I felt that the inclusion of another artist's work must have been a very intentional decision. I understand that the "writer" of the pieces for Yang's Quasi MB-In the Middle of its Story, was Marcel Broodthaers. I know that this could not have happened as Marcel Broodthaers 1) made his film La Pluie, in 1969 and 2) he passed away in the mid 1970's. So perhaps Quasi MB-In the Middle of its Story is Yang's homage to Marcel Broodthaers. It seems to depict the words that were written in MB's 16mm film. So I guess it kind of creates a relationship in the sense that there is a very curious connection.

This gallery was definitely the highlight of my trip to the Walker, although I really enjoyed the Event Horizon gallery too. Overall, the Walker is always a great trip and I was happy to have gone.

Last week in life drawing we began working on visualizing the rib cage which is much like an egg shape in space. It is interesting how we are learning about the the main skeletal structures along with the muscles that work with them. I added a couple of images of my manikan. I worked on the back muscles a bit more to make them a bit more accurate (I think) before I started on the abs. I feel that working on the muscles really does help to understand how to draw figures. I also begin thinking a lot about how this all works together. Cool stuff.

On another note, I'm excited for the museum trip on Wednesday!

My Life Drawing shell is called a Conch Shell. Gastropod mollusks use these shells as their homes! The shells are a built-up exoskeleton of calcium carbonate. The folded lip of the shell is where the mollusk is able to peak its foot out and jump itself forward. Conches grow this flared lip on their shells only upon reaching sexual maturity. The fold of the shell is usually developed after about three years of “growing”. Some species of mollusks can live up to forty years and their shells can grow to lengths of twelve inches.

From what I’ve gathered, my shell is specifically a Queen Conch shell. The Queen Conch, Strombus gigas, first appeared over sixty-five million years ago. The shell itself was used for many things such as pots, chisels, and scrapers! Conch shells have also been known to be used as weapons over a fighter’s hand. These weapons, however, would only be right-handed due to the growing direction of all Conch shells. Today, Conch shells are used for jewelry, art and decoration, occasionally as building materials, and are sold as souvenirs. Conches consume a diet of mostly plant life including sea grass which they feed upon at night when predators are less active. Most of the day a Conch spends its time buried in the sandy ocean floor. This careful behavior seems to aid the Conch shells’ growth and longevity.