Leda and the Swan

For Drawing Class today, we brought in references to make our own version of Leda and the Swan (story from Greek mythology). Artists have been depicting their own version of this story since the Renaissance when it and other Greek myths became more popular.

This drawing was meant to be a preliminary drawing, but David Noyes told me not to add anything to it. He said it has a very elegant quality that would be lost if I went back into it later. I might make a second version with paint if I have time.

Field Trip to the Rodin Museum

In Drawing Class on Thursday, we went on a field trip to the Rodin Museum to draw the sculpture. We worked in pencil and focused specifically on The Burghers of Calais (One of Auguste Rodin's most well know sculptures). I had been to the Rodin Museum once before on College Day.

David Noyes suggested I block in large areas of value and then go back into those with smaller areas of value. The images above show this technique. He wanted us to focus on using value (not line) to describe the form. The one on the left is more finished. We had to leave before I could complete the one on the right. David encouraged me to go back to the Rodin museum often to draw the sculpture. He said I would learn a lot about drawing that way.

David Noyes also warned me to be careful not to get too concerned with getting things accurate, because I could lose the element of my own personal voice in the art. He says this is a problem he often encounters with students who had a lot of academic training (academic in the art sense; drawing lots of still lives for accuracy and taking many art classes). They are trained to become render-ers but they don't have their own voice. He says it can be more stimulating to the artist and viewer if the artist puts their own interpretation on what they are seeing.

Science

This project was an ongoing 2-D project. We would work on the little 5 in X 5 in squares a little at a time.

First, we picked a theme and did images on the squares of people and things based on that theme. I picked "science" and so I got lots of images associated with space exploration and quantum physics. We then chose words that helped to define or expand on our theme, and made squares of those. We used many different methods to get variety of techniques, values, and shapes. Finally, we picked a way to arrange the squares that reflected the idea we wanted the viewer to come away with.

When I was working on this project, I was thinking about science as exploration. I was also thinking about how all human beings from different times and places have been exploring the world and universe. I used a circular shape to reflect the circular shapes of orbits, planets, stars, molecules, and other forms associated with science, order, and systems. The circle is a 'universal' shape, that works well with my science squares.

Figure Drawing: Day 2

Today we didn't have a model. The model couldn't get to Tyler becuase of the SEPTA strike. The subway, trolley, and bus systems are completely down.

Instead, the some students from our class took turns posing (clothed). David Noyes gave us all images of paintings by Francis Bacon and told us to have the same sort of exageration in our drawings. Certain parts of the figure are exagerated to better show the feeling of the body and how its positioned.

These are two drawings from the end of class. Once again, I was having trouble in the beginning. By the end though, I had a better understanding of how to exagerate the body the way David was talking about. He said I should look at drawings by Henry Moore because they have similarities to my drawings. The drawing on the right definately reminds me of a Henry Moore sculpture.

Figure Drawing: Day 1

Last week in Drawing, we had a model for the first time this semester. Drawing the model was actually extremely challenging for me this day. My teacher, David Noyes, did not like my approach in the beginning. I was drawing too "formulaic". David said that the best way to draw a model is not to see the model as an object to draw (that is how people start out learning to draw the model usually). He says the best way is to draw the model as a specific individual, with a specific body and personality. He had us all imagine how the model must be feeling at that moment and try to capture that in the line quality. David Noyes demonstrated the importance of sensitive contour lines that describe the form.

This was very different from any approach to figure drawing I had used before. My past figure drawing teachers focused more on internal structures. While the new way of drawing took some time to get down, I had a much easier time with it at the end of class.

The drawing on the far left shows my drawing with David's demonstration to me on the page. He was helping me understand how to better draw the arm. I copied his line once so I could understand it better. The two drawings to the right are ones I did later in class. My drawings were much improved from how I first started out.

Grit and Beauty Entry

Temple University's GenEd department held a contest in October that was open to all the students. I entered this contest, and then later in computer class I found out that we were going to be given an assignment specifically so we could work on a piece that could fit this contest. This was great because it gave me more time to work on my entry.

The contest was to create a post on the contest's online discussion board that reflected both the "grit and beauty" of Philadelphia. We could use written words, images, videos, or anything else submitted in digital form.

I chose to make a post about all the dead birds I find on Temple's campus. Most of them die from hitting the glass windows of large new buildings such as the Tech Center, Alter Hall, and the Tyler building. These new buildings have huge panes of glass and mirror type surfaces. It makes the buildings very beautiful, but also deadly to birds who don't know that its a sheet of glass. I've been counting the birds I find as well. So far I've found over fifty. Most are small green and yellow warblers like the one I used in my entry image. They are migrating through the area in the fall.

This interaction between the birds and the glass is gritty because there is death and the urban environment directly involved. At the same time, both the buildings and the birds are visually beautiful. The birds are so pristine when they just fall to the sidewalk, that they look like they could be alive. I wanted to capture this quality in my image. I used bright colors and one of the birds I found outside the Tyler building. Hopefully with closer inspection, the viewer can see the "gritty" side of both the image and the new city buildings.

This is a digital image I made in photoshop. In my contest entry, I also wrote a little to explain why I made this image.