Monday, April 24, 2017

Thoughts on Drawing

I have enjoyed drawing since I was a young child and this hobby has stayed with me throughout my entire life. I have continued to doodle objects, body parts (mainly eyes and hands) and designs that catch my eye and I am happy I had the opportunity to do so in an academic setting. Yet, this class pushed me out of my comfort zone with drawing and challenged me to draw topics that I was not as familiar with.

I typically enjoy drawing small things, whether that be one animal, one object, one part of the body or one small setting. Most of my sketch book is actually just that. I started with drawing other art, such as a bike canvas in my friend's apartment, and moved to smaller objects in my room, like trail mix or a ukulele. My preferred sketches stayed in that realm for the most part. I drew hands, eyes, shoes, the collarbone area, cartoons, etc, which I really enjoyed. I prefer to draw smaller objects or more focused areas like that because I like the amount of detail I am able to include if the drawing itself is smaller. I had never really employed a wide range of values to my sketches, since my focus was primarily on getting the details of the object down i.e. the veins, nails, shape, and angle of my hand drawings, but this class has challenged me to experiment with that more. 

 
My usual sketches

Me experimenting with values in my sketchbook

Rather than drawing one or two objects, the larger projects in this class entailed creating an entire scene. I struggled with this a lot, as my previous experience in drawing only included one or two objects within a scene. Drawing on a larger scale and considering perspective, sizing, values of the foreground vs. mid ground vs. background, and telling a "story" at the same time was a lot more than I was used to with my drawing. I typically do not choose a location as the subject of my drawing, but I enjoyed trying to fill the location with objects to create a unique narrative that was personal to me. I had never thought about creating a narrative in my pieces before, since I usually just draw objects that I find interesting, but I found it to be both difficult and interesting. My favorite piece this semester was the fantasy project on Duke campus. It allowed to to bridge my other aspects of my life, skiing and Duke, through the medium of my drawing. Once I approached it as smaller drawings that I'm used to within one larger piece, it was easier to handle the project.

I still struggled with perspective in my pieces and I hope to improve on it in the future. I liked drawings that have a strong foreground that quickly angles back into the mid ground and background because it was definitely something I couldn't do as successfully this semester, but something I hope to get better at. I also can rarely draw something without a strong reference i.e. a picture, a previous drawing, etc. I don't know how people free hand without a reference because all my drawings this semester have had strong references, but that is also something I'd like to try.

Finally, I'd be interested in different mediums of art. I have now taken traditional drawing and experimental drawing (primarily focused on photoshop) and I would like to eventually try painting. It'd be interesting to learn how to use colors to create a narrative rather than values (as we did in drawing) to do so. 

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