I know I talked about my shell a little bit already in my post talking about last week, but since the shell is the main thing due for this week I will talk a  little more in depth about it.  When I look at this one compared to the one's I have done previous, the main thing I notice it my use of line.  I notice I vary my line weights a lot more from dark to light in making certain parts of my shell stick out more to seem more 3D.  Another thing I tried doing with this shell drawing is trying not to make my lines so evenly spaced between each other.  I succeeded in some places but it is something I could still work on so it doesn't look so grid-like.  I thought this point of view would be a little harder than the other ones I have done because it showed the open part of the shell, but I actually really enjoyed drawing that part and it wasn't as hard as I have expected.  I feel like that part of the shell really looks like it goes in depth.  I talked about the scale a little already but like I said, it definitely got me out of my comfort zone.  Because it was so large, I drew it on my floor, so even that was different for me because I am used to looking at my drawings straight on rather that perpendicular to me so that was a challenge.  I often would have to stand up to look at what I was doing to make sure I was on the right track.  For this drawing I also used a different tool that usual, that being a charcoal pencil.  I liked that a lot because it stayed sharp and it didn't make my hands such a mess.  I also felt like I had more control working with it.  One thing I noticed with this paper is that it doesn't erase well so it is easier to see your mistakes.  When I photographed this for my blog I actually liked the photo of it better than in real life which I do not find happening very often.  I think it might be the difference in lighting or making it seem more crisp, but I am not really sure why. Something I still would like to work on is varying my lines. 

     What we talked about during critique was a lot of what I have already mentioned.  Overall it went pretty well.  One thing that was said about being improved on is darkening the front lines more or lightening the back lines to show more depth.  Another thing stated was that I changed the way I draw, which isn't a good or bad thing, just something different.  I think it is nice to experiment every now and then to see what works and what doesn't.

Last week was kind of a fun week for life drawing.  We got to go on a field trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Bodies exhibit in the Mall of America.  I have been to MIA before so that wasn't really new to me but the Bodies exhibit was incredible.  It was displays of real human figures showing the different systems of the body.  Not only have I never seen anything like that before, but it really makes you think about your own body and how everything functions together.  It is also nice to see the real thing versus models or charts that are much more stylized.  My favorite part of the exhibit was the blood vessels and realizing the mass of them!  It looked kind of like a big knotted mess, but very delicate.  

When we had class again on Thursday we started working on the skull which is what my drawings are that I posted.  This is the first time I have ever really worked on drawing the "head" of a person before so it was really interesting.  I am still nervous to draw an actual face but this was a good start for me to understand the features of the face.  We also had a homework drawing of our shell again.  We had to use the same shell with a different pose on a huge piece of paper.  I tried working on my line weights for this drawing and I think it turned out a lot better than my earlier drawings.  I am actually pretty happy with what it ended up to be.  Drawing on larger paper got me out of my comfort zone a little and I still don't really like drawing that big but it was a nice experiment.

Last week was all about the feet!  This is actually something I was kind of excited to get started on because most of the time I just make random lines or scribbles in that area to somewhat represent a foot.  I never really thought of a foot being that complicated to work with, but there is definitely more to it than I thought.  There really isn't a solid plane to go off, but rather multiple dimensions and curves to find and follow.  Because I was really excited to do the feet, I had a good week of drawing which is something that hasn't happened for a while.  I especially like my contour drawing this week.  The foot really started to come alive and I feel like you can really see the texture of the surface.  My long body pose for this week also made me proud on how my legs are really starting to get well defined.  What a good week for me!

I have been having a rough time with this class lately, with the drawing that is, not so much the mannequin.  We did some long poses and more contour drawings, which are my favorite things to do, but for some reason I really wasn't getting into it this week.  It could be that my stress level is through the roof with graduating and my other classes as well.  I went home to my parents house this weekend to hopefully get some things done and I worked on my shell there.  As much as I like contour drawing, I don't think this one turned out quite like I wanted it to be.  I think I need to do a little more overlapping and improve my line quality a bit.  One thing that I did differently for this drawing is I used a pencil and it was something I really enjoyed.  It allowed my to be more delicate with my work and I felt like I had more control with it.  So far I have only had one really good week where I felt like I understood everything really well and since then I haven't gotten back to that so I want to make that my goal this week.  I am going to try to go into it with a positive attitude.