Week11 - Musculature

This drawing was made while looking at about 7-8 reference photos of both live people and statues/sculptures. I used the statues references to get an idea of the volume and the 3D position of the parts of the body and the visible muscles and also for choosing the direction of the light. Life-photos came in handy because the shades of the muscles were ...real, so most of the shading around the belly, the neck and right under the neck were based on them.
I decided to have the arms pointing fairly upwards, bended in the elbows, so that the muscles there are more visible. Plus it slightly enhances the twisting of the muscles coming from under the shoulder and going through the bottom part of the arm, towards the inner side of the elbow.
Muscular torsion should also be apparent in the stomach muscles, coming from the top under the shoulders and going closer to the centre of the body downwards.
The drawing is based upon a female character because after doing a male one, I decided that in a female one, I can focus more on the flow of the muscles, and not their shape, like I tended to do on the male ones.
The initial plan was to make the shoulder line slightly rotated so that the left character shoulder is further away and so that the right arm comes closer. In general, I think I have achieved my desired effect, except for the right arm where more foreshortening may have been needed and the shade under the right shoulder.

Week 10 - Directed study on moving figures

Each of the sketches was done for about 10 seconds, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. I would usually start from the head going down the body. What i focused on was getting the beginning of the arms in the right place (I didn't have time to think about the shoulders), get them in the correct angle and proportion according to the head. The next most important thing in my mind was getting the curve of the back or the curve of the front correct (usually only one of them and the one that shows more curvature). Next would be the legs. In some cases the person would have already moved behind something by this time so half of the legs were mostly based on memory from a single (and last) peak.
I tried getting more diversity between the sketches by aiming at more interesting movements like people running(2nd from right, bottom), bending downwards, walking with their hands in their pockets or by holding something that locks their arms not to swing as usual.
What I don't like is the way the feet turned up. Usually I would spend no more than 2 seconds on them, so they're with a wrong perspective (2nd from right on the top for example). Plus, sometimes, I had to draw the entire legs by a very faint memory and then they didn't turn up to look good also(2nd from left, bottom)

Week 9 - Life drawing (proportion practice, not from life)

These are the drawings I did for proportional practice. Each character took different time, all were done with charcoal.
Most of the drawings were according to the "Idealistic" type of human body so width was slightly more than 2 head units for the males and about 2 units for the females. Shoulders start about 1/3 unit below the chin. Widest part of the body is 1 unit below the chin, that's where the shoulders have just ended and the arms start. The elbows come 1 unit lower, where the navel also is. That's also the thinnest part of the body. 1 head unit lower is where the mid-point of the body is supposed to be, the crotch reaching to about 1/3 lower than that(same with the bottom of the butt). At this point the body is almost as wide as it is on the shoulders level because of the hips, this is also where the wrists start. Top part of the legs continues until about 1 and 2/3 units lower, getting to a slightly thinner position than the waist. Then the knees start, taking around 1/3 of a unit. The legs continue by getting slightly wider around 1/2 unit lower and than getting as thin as the neck where the heels are, which is about 1/3 above the ground.
When drawing from the sides, the parts going furthest front are the chest/breasts, going slightly ahead of the face. The back of the body first bends outwards at the level of the chest, than inwards at the level of the waist, than backwards again for the but. After all, the furthest back-point is where the bottom part of the legs get wider, about 1/2 a unit below the knees. Front of the lower-legs ends up around the middle line of the character or even behind it.
In overal, the female body shows to have more fluid lines when compared to the male body. This is mostly visible in the top part of the arms, the waist and the entire legs.

Week 8 - Reflective and refractive surfaces

This drawing took probably just  over an hour.
The perspective should be apparent in the sheets of paper under the objects. I put those in mostly to ease myself in seeing the refractions, but in the end I realised they are probably the only thing showing perspective in a fare amount.
Not much thought in composition... This setup seemed the best way to get some nice refractions and reflections, which were the things I was aiming for the most.
For a difference from my last drawing, I actually love the way this one turned out to look. I got a great bending of the sheet of paper in the glass to the leftmost side. I also got really interesting shadow rays on the right of the glass pyramid and some decent reflections in both the glass and the bigger candle. There is also some bending of the light in the top of the glass, and some interesting reflections inside the pyramid.
In terms of surfaces(non-reflective) - there are only the sheets of paper, the wooden table and the plastic chair in the back... non of which look shockingly realistic, but at least the paper should look a bit realistic with the little creases (which I am very happy with).

Week 7 - Directed study on various materials

This drawing took about 50 minutes. It was supposed to compare the different materials in the setup, but it turned out i'm very bad at comparing the materials of fries, bread, metal and the material of the burger box(not sure how it actually is, nor how it's called).
In terms of composition, i was trying to get the objects to overlap just enough so they don't cover each other, but also not to "kiss", i wasn't aiming at putting something in particular at one of the-rule-of-thirds points.
Another thing i payed a fare amount of attention was the shading of the objects. I tried to represent the volume and the curvature of the box as best as possible and i'm relatively happy with how it turned out to look. Also, i tried to over-express the stripes on the can's surface. But, as i mentioned, apart from these two things, i'm not very happy with the materials i tried to show.
Another thing i did was i enhanced the perspective just a little bit. This covers both the box and the paper bag for the fries.

Week 6 - Still Life

This drawing took about 2 hours in total to complete. I started with about 30mins of planing, measuring and sketching using a pencil, added shades with charcoal and in the end I redrew all the lines with charcoal just to keep the drawing consistent and to get all the lines visible again.
I did not think much about composition on the piece of paper while setting up my scene, I aimed at getting the objects at a slightly different distance from me so that they don't all start from the same horizontal line. I also  moved the candle around until I got it to be behind the banana, but not to merge or intersect with the bowl.
The scene had 3 light sources, 1 at the top (the lamp on the ceiling; casting very soft shadows on the board), one to the front left corner of the board(my phone; casting hard shadows from the banana onto the bowl and the candle) and the candle flame(casting a soft shadow on the bowl).

Directed Study Week - Landscape

This is what I drew in the directed study week, took about 3 hours in total. I was aiming at ending up with a detailed landscape drawing while taking into account perspective, composition and light.
As my previous drawings, this shows 2 point perspective (I was thinking on intentionally drawing in 3 point perspective, but that would have forced me to look up at a tall church and I didn't see any good composition opportunities there). The perspective should be obvious in the main outline of the building and the fences and the wall on the left, besides these I also tried to use perspective to give a little depth to the tree to the front (not sure if it worked).
As for composition, this time I decided to place the horizon line on one of the rule-of-thirds lines instead of putting special areas in the rule-of-thirds points and after that i just looked for a view that was visually appealing to me only trying not to leave any objects too close to the edges of the drawing. I chose this drawing spot because this way I had a tree really close giving me the opportunity to try myself at doing a fairly detailed tree, plus it fell perfectly into place right next to the building, filling up the otherwise empty sky. Also, the wall and fences to the left happen to break up the otherwise boring line of windows on the long part of the building.
What I don't like about my composition here is the big grass field on the bottom of the drawing, but any other movement would have broken my already fixed idea for the composition. Also, I did get that tree on the left right in front of the detail on the top of the building...
About light... again, it was a cloudy day, so there weren't any strong shadows. Still light seemed to be coming from in front of me and a little to the right and i've tried to show it both in the building and in the tree to the front.

Week 3 - Light and shadow

This drawing took about an hour, it was done with charcoal at around 17:00. The object is some kind of a stone sculpture towards the middle of Horton park.
As the day was really cloudy, there were no obvious highlight areas or dark shadows, so most of the shadows were actually due to the tight gaps and small spaces. Still, it appears that more light was coming from in front of me so there were some shadows on my side of the object. Most of the shadows are between the branches right after they separate and also all along the branches, right before they "sink" into the ground. I decided to redo the outlines so that the object may look more solid and hard.
The drawing does not show much perspective since the object was fairly small and I was a bit further away from it.

Week 2 - Composition

These are my "3 quick sketches" which took about 3 and a half hours all together. I've tried to keep the subject of the drawings the same and only experiment with the composition. Every drawing was drawn from a different position, the top-left one is actually from a higher one and on the bottom-left one i am looking a slightly upwards.
Although while drawing I found out that I had several edges merging and some shapes are being cut out i still like the overall composition of all the drawings. I didn't aim at puting the focal point in one of the rule-of-thirds points, instead I decided to place the more detailed areas in these places.
Although I didn't aim at getting a position that would give me opportunities to use/show perspective, it turned out that the building on the left would show a fairly good bit of it.
I have to confess I did cheat a little bit on these ones by holding the pencil the wrong way, but it was only on the small details. :)

Week 1 - Perspective

This drawing took me 3.5 - 4 hours. It was done from sitting on a chair at one of the corners of the room looking almost towards the opposite one so i could get more diagonal lines and thus stronger perspective effect without putting the corner of the room in the middle of the drawing. I've been aiming to use only 2-point perspective as the scene is small. I've used perspective in the desk, the bed and the drawer, going outside and towards the right end of the window. The other axis is going to the far left, it should be visible by the desk and the wall beneath the window.