In Between Pages: September 2008

In this lesson, we went through the contents of space and the reason behind it.

-Conveying Space: To arrange the elements in order to create illusion of space.
-Diminution of size: When we see 2 identical or like images of differing sizes, the larger one will appear to be closer and the smaller one will be further away.
-Overlapping: 2 overlapping shapes create an illusion of dept since we tend to see one shape as being in front of, and concealing from our view, a part of another to behind it.
-Convergence lines: As lines recede into distance, the space between them will diminish and they will appear to converge
-Vertical Location: The higher something is in the picture plane, the further away it will be.
-Receding tones/ values: As things get further away, their colors become less intense and more mute.
-Changing strokes and details
-Compress/ graphical space

Yet however, theories only give as much as providing tools. Truth is the larger part of conveying space through life-drawing is too much to mention and it left us only to fill in the blanks, to experiment, practice and learn. One of the basic ways was taught in class, which is using the divination of grid box to capture the proportion. And this is the value in the struggle to observe, to coordinate hand and eye in placing marks upon the support for the drawing by use of the eye alone (without thumb or ruler). Working directly gives the students a more forgiving start in their explorations and helps them build their confidence. If masters could make mistakes, then their own could not be so dire. That is why we were required free strength non-stop all up to the pencils and let them doing wonders on paper. This week theme was fat figures which mean learning to place excessive stored fats at the right location, and through the life drawing session, to present the touch up of a rounder softer look on the body.

Musculature and fat
Women have less muscle mass, and (I'm probably risking my life by saying this) more fat. Everybody stores fat almost all around their body, with a few exceptions such as the scalp and the elbows. But men tend to store it as visceral fat, deep in the abdomen, and develop a beer gut. A woman's body prefers to store it as subcutaneous fat, just below the skin. This layer covers the muscles, and gives the body a softer, more rounded look. It tends to get stored more around the hips, the butt, the lower abdomen, the breasts, shoulders, and triceps.

Figure 2.32. Fat distribution in women and men
On the left is a study sketch of a drawing by Prud'hon, on the right a study of the painting of Silenius by Rubens. While Silenius does not have much of a six pack, his arms and legs are still angular and muscular. The woman's fat is more distributed all over her body, so her bones and muscles aren't as visible. (Extracted from here)

On the other hand, I found an interesting evidence and saying on the iconography style of drawing shown by SY during our 1st class and tad bit related to the perception of space. Do take a feast on eye on this Divine Proportion post. It a good read. -Zheng Joo

p/s I left Kenny's facial expression empty because everytime i attempt to start off eith the eyes and nose, he would immediately looked like a Kenny poking needles into a Voodoo doll cursing sigh :(

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-Raymond Chai
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-Vin Sern
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-koyuki

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-zumra
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--YeeWern--
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-Keith
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By Heng Kee Poon

- Zumra

- Swea Phin (replacement homework for not attending class)

Note: This post has already been delayed for a week

(Reminder: All in one post, this is for L2 )

To start off the lesson, we were exposed to the theme of the week (old folks). We were all once again exposed to a familiar theory, the foreshortening by SY. SY explained to us how people began to slouch and later hunch due to the inability for our muscle to support our body. The fact that when we are old, muscles begin to deteriorate away we lose the strength in our body and so result in a saggy faced hunched old body. After a short introduction, we started the routine we were scheduled to follow for the next few weeks. We were all required to draw sketches of pictures in which SY would show us and life drawing. We were constantly reminded to keep in mind the posture of an old person like how their back four normally cover their neck if viewed from the back view. The law of foreshortening also took its place within the pictures and so we were to keep a close eye on the distance, size and angle of our drawing. While drawing life drawing we were again required to show 'space and dimension in our drawing. -Keith

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-Queenie's figure
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Keith being keen on publishing the lesson 2’s summary and I owed him huge thanks. Just to keep option wide, I shall write a tad bit. The second lesson confirmed my thoughts when this short semester would be prior within life drawing and I feel that as a seeding towards a new page again. Life-drawing, as SY defined it, could be a moving piece based on your rhythm of pencils scribbling through focused observation. Because like the iconography human figures from the early periods of Renaissance, we would agree on the fact that those human figures does look odd in terms of the whole and that’s when we thought its either the artist aren’t the best with their skills or they just simply look like that. But neither case is actually true.

When drawing, it all comes down to perception and custom, the way of how one draws. For example, according to research, most of the men painters in the past were not allowed to paint nude woman figures from life, and that’s when they had to make do with painted male figures, and then simply just superimpose it into female features. Perhaps this could explain the odd views of their drawing.

However, as art survives through time, we see life drawing, especially the topic of this second lesson, had become a base for us to draw and differentiate the different quality and how do one strokes out those characteristics on bodies to indicates the identity of the subject one are drawing. I thought the routine of switching life drawing session from real life to screen picture was rewarding. It truly shows that only a living model could brings a certain quality into a drawing that you can’t get in any way. Because the live model moves from time to time, all as well as mashing the 3D form, shadows that makes it impossible to catch the outline of the body. –Zheng Joo

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Lesson 2, of Figures required more live drawing, and also drawing slides. The slides basically focused on old people, and we were required to draw them within a given time limit. It was quite challenging to draw old people, as I have not really attempted that before, but nevertheless it was fun. After a few tries you get the basics. Its easy when you capture the whole movement of the person first and then proceed with that.The live drawings required us to draw our classmates, one piece of just turning around and drawing your friends, and the other piece focused more on space.I'm not entirely happy with Lesson 2's live drawings, felt like I could have done better, but I found out that you will always learn as you go along. Surprisingly, drawing the slides on old people went well. -- Shaneez

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Unlike the first lesson which concerned mostly about the composition of a drawing, lesson 2 focused more on drawing people under certain conditions - old men, people in interaction with children and people in different dynamic perspectives. For the last one we had to take extra care of foreshortening. We drew the people from the slides SY projected, on which were photos sharing the same subject, and we were to capture the rough characteristics and gestures. It was a lot more practical and challenging compared to the previous semesters which were more on analyzing figures. I had interesting time with rich content.The followings are the outcomes of the life drawing sessions we had in the class. -koyuki