misc drawings from the fall semester

18" x 24", graphite and conte crayon on paper

our first assignment was to make an "impressive" or "interesting" drawing. inorite, so vague and so easily interpreted pretentiously. D: i mean essentially she was just trying to gauge our skill levels and maybe a gist of what direction we were headed in terms of artistic interests, but nonetheless there was pressure to make a good impression. i want to hit the ground running, after all. i wanted to explore how to convey motion and action since one of the things i've observed in my pre-college work is that my figures are really still ... no matter the gesture, they're kind of just sit in a space. part of the issue is i think my style is very labored-over, technical, and that makes forms very still. when i do quick figure drawings that are more loose, i really like the results. so i wanted to convey a sense of a frenetic hand, an energy that comes not from not just what is being drawn but how it is being drawn.

the photo i chose to work from is from the summer of me and two of my friends racing one another up a stairwell in an LA metro station. over the summer we decided to explore LA more, through getting off at random metro stations and simply spending the day wandering. my friends drive and have cars, but there is something compelling about being with strangers, not really having a plan, not really thinking about where you're going, and the slowness of travel by metro and foot. it occurred to me quickly that the vast majority of the people who rode the metro use it to commute to jobs or get about their daily lives, there is a sense of destination and an importance on following a time schedule. i guess it made me kind of sad to think about that this could one day be all of us (the prospect of working a 9-5 job, the kind you punch in and punch out as a cog in someone else's system, terrifies me), and it made me reflect on that this may be the last summer where we're all together. the last summer where we can be as carefree as to use the metro for kicks and giggles, to not have a plan, to race each up the stairs when the escalator is open.

 24" x 36", charcoal on newsprint

our second assignment was to do a drawing with cross contour lines. i decided to head to the carnegie natural history museum to draw some dinosaurs since i've never really been good at skeletal forms. in the same vein as my issue with drawing still forms, i tend to oversimplify forms. i am very drawn to work that acknowledges the little bumps and dips in forms, the stuff that skeletons are full of! so yeah, that was really fun. i was initially going to apply cross contour to both dinosaur skeletons, but i ran out of time. i had spent over 14 hours already over the span of a weekend and almost pulled an all-nighter (i think i slept maybe two and a half hours that night?). this assignment was when i realized that i work really, really slowly, which is problematic for me because i also like undertaking really ambitious projects.

gouache on watercolor paper

just a quick study done during class. we were embarking on exploring gouache as a drawing medium and she wanted us to just practice line weights and getting a feel for the paint. hells yeah another skeleton! we weren't supposed to use color, but i pleaded and prodded. i was CRAVING to paint at that point in the semester. the plus-side about undertaking ambitious art projects is that your profs are much more lenient to you personally about what you want to do and how you want to do it (and even when you get things done). i even got to use yellow in my homework that week!! 

 22" x 30", charcoal on arches watercolor paper

the assignment was to draw a bed with more than two objects of differing tones. the objective was to i guess draw fabric and practice shading. i got my friend nicole to pretend to be sleeping in her bed, styled the fabric and hair around her, and put some syringes and empty prescription pill bottles around her, and then stood over her on her bed to take a bunch of photos. i repeat, i love having art major friends.
arches paper isn't meant to take charcoal, but i didn't have any better quality paper and i didn't want to make the trek down to utrecht when i had an extra sheet leftover from the gouache assignment. the plus side is that the grain on the paper made for an interesting texture. considering working back into this with watercolor once i spray it with some fixative.

32" x 20", charcoal and purple gesso on illustration board

working from a live model, the pose was for about an hour and a half? so it was like 1 AM heading back from the library and i remembered that i had to go gesso a board before my 8:30 am drawing studio tomorrow (well technically on the same day), so i stopped by the cfa all tired and shit, mixed the red and blue gesso we have to make purple ... and realized there wasn't any painter's tape in the studio to tape the edges of my board. and my roll was in my dorm room. so i figured since i can't get a nice clean edge with the gesso anyway, i might as well play with the fact that i have no tape and make an interesting shape with the gesso itself. the next day my prof comes up to me with a smile and a chuckle and says to me, "that is probably the worst gesso-ing i have ever seen."

18" x 24", charcoal on newsprint

so at the end of the semester we got to working on portraiture. the class split into groups of 4 or so and took turns posing for 20 minutes at a time. this is probably my favorite of the ones i've done. i like the mix of soft lines for the body and the hard, contour-like lines for the sweater.