Riley Pratt

Thoughts on Drawing:

I've loved to draw for as long as I can remember.  When I was little, I'd flip through Sports Illustrated for Kids and find pictures of Vince Carter, Allen Iverson, Jerry Rice, Ricky Williams and other athletes and lose myself in a drawing.  I used to submit pictures I drew to the weekly contests that would end up in the magazine (my drawings never got chosen, though, and I was pretty jealous when I flipped through and found my friend's drawing of Randy Moss with a third arm coming out of his back stiff-arming a defender).  I still have a bunch of drawings from middle school art classes and even older drawings that remind me of when I discovered art.  I was always amazed at how much time passed when I really got into it, and the same is definitely true for the drawings we've done in this class.

I started drawing cartoons during classes when I was little and I have a dry-erase board in my room that I draw characters on, and a lot of them are different versions of the same characters I started drawing back in elementary school.  I was disappointed at first that this class didn't have a cartoon or fantasy component (except for the last drawing), but having taken the class now I'm glad it didn't.  I had never drawn still life before--I had only drawn from pictures and my imagination--and I discovered a whole new world of drawing.  I often find myself looking at scenery in a different way now; I see negative space, shading, and details that I wouldn't have considered before I tried this class.  On campus this is especially true - I have a newfound appreciation for the architecture I already loved.  It's funny to look up at the intricacies of the gothic buildings and thinking about how it would look in a drawing (or how hard it would be to draw).  I learned a lot about shading, and the subtractive and negative space drawings taught me new techniques and ways of thinking about how to approach a drawing.  In addition, I had never done drawings as big as the ones we did and it helped me visualize space and depth in a new way.  I've never been one to try a rough draft (even in writing) and I tend to just jump right into a new project, but the study drawings we've done have been really helpful in planning out the spacing and visualizing the whole piece.

I always enjoy sitting down to work on our projects and it's a nice way to relax and free myself of the structure of other classes.  It's nice to throw on some music or just sit around with my friends and get into a drawing - distractions might slow me down some, but they never affect the quality of the drawing and I feel like I'm just having fun, not working for a class.  I didn't appreciate at first how long it takes to make an 18x24 drawing, though, and I think I've spent more time working on this class than any of my others.  It can be stressful knowing that I have to work on a paper for a few hours, study for a quiz, then spend hours finishing up our projects.  I can't make myself work quickly because I get really into it when I start - moving forward, I'll know to budget more time for art projects if I decide to take any other classes.  I loved this class, though, and it's definitely made me consider either an VMS minor or at least taking other classes for fun/to learn new techniques, and I'll definitely apply some of the things we've learned to drawings I do for fun the rest of my life.