Face Drawing & Life Drawing [Foundation Drawing]

Face Drawing

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Prof taught us on how to draw faces. Lips can be drawn in semicircle-like discs. Depending on which lip is protruding out more, the position of the disc varies. Also, for the eyes, we don’t draw the entire eyeball. We can’t see the entire eyeball. So I learnt that it may help to draw a circle first to represent the eyeball, after which drawing the eyelids within the confines of the top and bottom of the eyeball.

 


Life Drawing Anatomy Exercise

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Life drawing exercise with model Kim. His muscles are very fun to draw haha. I chose to use the box method as I thought that was quite useful in helping me to visualize and draw the body angles and proportions better. It was quite sian to not be able to complete this drawing after 50 mins.

Zoo Trip [Foundation Drawing]

13 October 2016
Zoo Trip!

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For this trip, we were to observe animals and do quick sketches of them. I learnt how to apply the things I learnt from drawing human anatomy to this. For instance, we are to draw the big forms first such as the body/torso, then move on to the head and legs, then the further details(if wanted).

photo-8Giraffe (full body and head from bottom-up view)
photo-9Lion, Penguins
photo-10Penguins
photo-1Flamingo, Orang Utans
photo-2Orang Utans, Polar Bear
photo-3Rhinoceros
photo-4Cheetah
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Zebra, Ox(?? Very skinny and bony)

Hand, Head Drawings and Basic Watercolour [Foundation Drawing]

Hand Drawing

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We recapped what we learnt the week before about how to draw hands. This time we were given time in class to do it too.

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I received feedback that the hand I drew above was wrong. The palm was too small. The palm and fingers should be of roughly the same size.

 


Head Drawing

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We were then taught how to draw the head. The head can be perceived a L-shaped block. The highest point of the head is at the back, and not the center. The neck is connected to the head at an angle. The next is almost always titling forward, unless the subject is purposely pushing their neck back or looking up/back.

 


Basic Watercolour

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Prof Woonlam thought us how to do basic watercolour through painting fruits and veggies. As above!

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(The above are my tryouts) I loved this exercise the most! It was really fun haha. I didn’t find it easy, it was a lot of looking at work prof painting and trying to copy it. I feel that I still need to improve in knowing how much amount of each colour to mix to get what I want. As I was looking at Prof’s use of colour, I couldn’t really get back the same hues. I still don’t know how to paint, in the sense that where do I not paint? I love how not painting it gives a sort of emptiness yet it feels so full somehow. I feel that I’m learning in how to control the wetness of paint. I learnt that you should paint it wet first, then let it dry a bit before painting again. Also, wet paint glides faster and more easily, whereas drier paint doesn’t smudge as much.

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Prof also showed us a bit on how to paint Chinese ink paintings.

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Prof also showed us a painting/drawing by using a charcoal stick and dipping its end into Chinese ink to draw.

Legs, Feet, Hand Drawings, Smart Stickman Sketches and Tonal Studies [Foundation Drawing]

Legs, Feet and Hand Drawings

photo-1During the lesson, we were taught how to draw legs. Legs are attached to the pelvis at an angle, pointing slightly diagonally downwards. The thigh bone slants inwards towards the center. The knee joint is like the rounded cylindrical side of a mallet. This gives us our bendy knee movement. Slightly below that is a flat plate. A slightly curved bone(which gives our knees the frontal curve shape) sort of connects this two pieces together (although in actual fact it doesn’t touch the bone but is rather held up by tendons). The shin bone is relatively perpendicular to the ground, with a slight degree of bent to the center. The muscles are that the muscles on the inner thigh are lesser than that on the outer thigh, although they are almost the same volume. The muscles at the calf area are such that there is barely any muscle on top of the bone, most of the muscles are found at the back. From the front view, the back muscle closer to the center of the body is positioned lower while the back muscle closer to the side of the body is positioned higher.

 

We were taught how to use draw feet. The important thing about drawing toes is that for the big toe, after the big joint for the toe, we are to draw 2 lines in a L shape, whereas for the rest of the toes, we draw three connected short lines.

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I feel that my drawing of feet is still very ugly, I didn’t quite manage to understand what was taught and apply it. I think I better understand the concept after Jebra re-explained step by step. I’ll try again some other time. Also, it is observed that the inner ankles are smaller and higher than the outer ankles.

 

photo-2-hands-editedFor the hands, Prof showed us that the palm area is actually not in line with the arm bone, it is slightly lower.  The thumb starts at the bottom for the palm and ends at the mid area of the first section of the index finger. The thumb is made of 3 sections with the mid section circumference smaller than the other two sections, while the other fingers sections are in descending order.

 


Quick Stickman Sketches

photo-2-stickman-editedTo do this, we first pinpoint and the draw the lines for the shoulders and trocanther. Use a vertical line, this need not be straight, it can curve to show movement(twist or bending of the body), to depict the torso. From the ends of the trocanther, draw the thigh bone, dot the knee and draw the shin bone. From the shoulder, draw the arm bones, similar to the way the legs are drawn. From here, add volume/muscles to finish off the stick man.

photo-5I thought that this method was quite fun. It’s a more consolidated method than the box method(which I find myself to quite like because it is easy to use and it helps me a lot). Will probably try this more often since there’s less planning of boxes(which I take veryyyy long to do).

 


Tonal Studies

Last part of class was learning about tonal studies with reference to Adolph Menzel’s concept of 9 tones. We were taught how to proportionate the tones in our work, especially to evoke moods. We used photocopied pictures of building sceneries, and used black and white chalk to colour over to create moods.

photo-1This is my sunlight-mood piece.

photo-2-editedThis is my rainy day mood piece. The tones are all way too similar. I was having difficulty with the white chalk, it kept giving me muddy grey tones instead of pure white. :/ I wasn’t sure how to depict light from circular bulbs along the streets so I coloured halo like circles around it too.

2 Perspectives Drawing – Church [Foundation Drawing]

I decided to draw the church near my place called Covenant Evangelical Free Church in Woodlands. It has a modern facade instead of the usual style older churches are built in.

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This took me 5 hours to draw, which I feel is a really long time for something quite empty. I guess I was quite OCD in getting the lines as straight as I possibly could. That being said, I’m quite proud of myself, if I may say so, for forcing myself to draw lines without using a ruler.

 

Edit: I didn’t realize that we were to draw “traditional” churches(well the rest of class I saw handing up their drawing who drew churches all drew traditional ones) and I’m not sure if a modern facade church is okay. :/

Round Curvature Method Drawings + Composition [Foundation Drawing] TO ADD FINAL PIC

Today we were taught another method instead of using the rectilinear blocks method – drawing with curve lines. This was harder for me than the rectilinear blocks somehow. So we tried this with the same female model as last week to pose 2 simple poses.

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I prefer my second try. I think it was easier for me as the model had a more dynamic pose. Which I felt was more befitting of using curves to illustrate as the curve line enhances the movements. Another reason could be that the tension and relaxed lines of the body is more apparent in a dynamic than straight pose hence it was easier to draw for me.


We were taught about how our eyes moved from one subject matter to another. Our compositions are such that our eyes would move in a certain manner as dictated by the artist.

 

Chinese painting techniques “squash” everything into a stacking layer. The higher the layer, the more background it is. The lower it is on the paper, the more foreground it is. This greatly distorts perspectives.

Even Degas, uses that in his famous ballerina composition. Notice how your eyes move from the bottom left, to the full ballerina dancing in the center, up her overly long left arm to the background dancers standing around.

 

So we were task to first draw the model anywhere on a A2 size paper. After which we were to join another A2 paper either side by side or one top of the first one. From there we were to selectively draw the surroundings as we deem fit in our composition. The goal is to ensure a fluidity of movements from one subject matter to another. After that, we were to add a 3rd A2 paper. Prof said this was an easier assignment than last week. However I beg to differ as this was much harder for me and I didn’t enjoy this week as much as the last. Prof also taught us a trick to dictate eye movements by erasing certain areas of the subject matter. This allows a path for the viewer to move around the painting. Empty spaces are equally important in guiding the eye and creating space in compositions.

I forgot to take photo of my final work that I handed in, I’ll upload it when I receive it.

 

Hence at the end of the lesson, I learn that as much as perspectives are helpful in making the subjects look real. It is not the be all and end all. Our eyes don’t strictly see in perspectives, and our brains mess around with our viewing in that it compensates the “shock”. And these are all perfectly fine. It’s not a hard and fast route, artists like Degas, Michelangelo also distorts perspectives to achieve their intended goals.

1 Perspective Drawing – Bedroom [Foundation Drawing]

For homework, we were tasked to draw our bedrooms in the first perspective in our sketchbooks.

Wrong Perspective

I was quite happy with the way everything turned out. Except something felt wrong and it kept bugging me that I could not identify it. After roughly 5 hours, I finally realized why I felt so unhappy about it. I got the bottom half of the wardrobe’s perspective wrong! It is impossible for the bottom of the wardrobe to “dig” into the floor.

 

Final

This is the improved version. It looks more correct now.

 

Final

Okay no, I realized when I was uploading the photos onto my OSS post that the chair leg furthest from the viewer was at a very weird angle. So I erased and redrew that. It looks better now.

 

My dad commented that my freehand lines are really crooked. Also I’m not sure if it is a good or bad thing, but I find my lines very child-like probably due to the thickness of it which gives my drawing a comic-feel? I realized that I’m not a confident drawer, I tend to do many hairy light lines before drawing over with a thick line. Which is probably the reason for the childish lines.