Sunday, September 28, 2008

L3: Underneath The Muscles

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 :(


_________________


-Raymond Chai
_________




-Vin Sern
______________________


-koyuki

______________________


-zumra

_________




--YeeWern--
__________


-Keith
___________



By Heng Kee Poon

- Zumra

2 comments:

Unknown said...

well summarised.

Anonymous said...

I looked through all the posts and was impressed by the work being done by the students. They are learning not only observation but composition too and the work is very successful for student work.
I'm also impressed by the lesson plans. Good work!