I can make it better for you.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/meganwieczorek/

I can't believe that life drawing is over with and in some ways I am happy but I also feel like I had been improving and so it's a bummer... As far as my blog goes for this semester I feel like I have been getting better in talking about if and how I have been improving in the class. This semester I have learned a great deal about not only life drawing but also about how well I work in drawing gestures as compared to long drawings and about how much time it really takes for me to succeed over the time that it takes other people. I found out a lot about the way that my brain works and how I connect the shapes that I am drawing to those on both the manikens and on the model's figure. Over the sum of these past five months in this class I wish that I could have improved a lot more than I ended up improving and I get people telling me that I have and that I should really keep looking at my drawings so that I can see what they are seeing... I think in the end when we look at our work just as sometimes we catch ourselves examining our lives well, we will always in some ways feel like we have fallen short. The way that I believe that this applies to my drawings is in the fact that I see myself using some of the same techniques that I have been trying to change for years. Now, I'm not saying that I haven't improved at all because I know that I have but I guess it's just the level of improvement that I have grown to expect and the contrast between that and what I see in my drawings. One of the most interesting things that I have picked up on this semester is the muscles that we put on the maniken and how they really are visible in the body and how they move when we move and how we draw those movements and even if the body moves the slightest bit there is still a change and should be a visible change in the drawings. I also noticed this especially while drawing the face, how different the model's expression is even if the angle on the mouth is changed only a tiny bit and the same thing goes for the nose and ears and hairline. My strengths this semester in drawing were more along the lines of me narrowing my focus enough to be able to focus on one aspect of the figure just long enough to get the right movement. Life drawing is so much more different than drawing still life objects, it's a great deal about examining the body and the forms that it takes but also about (for me) being able to separate the fact that I'm looking at a body and see the figure more as a form in which you need to execute perfect angles. I will use all that I learned in life drawing in every aspect of my life. As long as I'm around people I am using what I learned haha something quick and funny about this is on Saturday I hung out with a guy that I'm interested in and whenever we talked I couldn't help but to look at the planes on his face and the muscles and how they moved in his forearms. On the same day I went to a movie with a friend of mine and all throughout the movie I was assessing the angles and thinking about how I would draw them. I hope you all have a wonderful summer :)

If you're not moving forward.

It's funny that as I actually sit here with this picture in front of me I can see everything that's wrong with it. First off, the model that we were drawing is not nearly as fat as I made him in this drawing. Though if you were to look at the progression of drawings and how I have improved greatly since the start of this drawing, maybe you'd say that I just needed another half an hour or so and I might believe you. I do like the way that the lines are looking though because it's been pretty hard for me to actually realize those lines and find how they fit into the bone structure of the face. Some of the things that I thought were really difficult were the eyes because of the fact that he always seemed to be opening and closing them rather than keeping them open, which really does make sense because your eyes can get really dry and tired. As you can probably see, I made the chin really quite large which in all actuality it looked proportionate when I was drawing it and seemed like it when I looked at it in the drawing room. But, such is life, and I'm just glad that I'm not making Rob pay for this portrait or something haha because than... Well, he'd give me a receipt. In other news and notes... my back is breaking because I'm bent over this board I'm working on for sculpture. No kids I dont guarantee that handing over your life is a good idea but I'm gonna say that you're eventually gonna hand your life over to someone or something. I chose art a long time ago.

You spread your wings.

This week has been something interesting and frustrating and somewhat unproductive and productive... Yeah, if that makes any sense to you I will be surprised because lately everything has been really jumbled. In life drawing this week we worked on drawing noses, ears, and lips and I feel as if when I actually take a look at my drawings they are significantly worse than I had originally believed them to be. It’s a bummer that its almost finals week and I feel as if I haven’t improved at all in my drawings but the good thing is that I feel as if I have gotten a further appreciation for life drawing and how difficult it actually is. Also, I realized that when we study the individual body parts and how they fit into the body I become more and more aware of these parts and I look for them in people as well as through pictures. I was actually sitting here typing and I leaned over to a friend of mine and showed him how I actually found a bunch of pictures of lips and eyes and put them into a folder on my computer. I have a long way to go with my drawing abilities as well as in adjusting the way that I see things in order to really make any changes and so I feel that I will be doing that a great deal this summer if I can help it. Okay, so anyways… I think that I have said something like this before but I think that the structure under the surface is what makes me so uneasy when I draw. I hate the fact that I’m rambling but if you ever really talk to me you’ll see that’s how I am on a normal basis. As far as the title of my blog goes, all of them really have to do with things that I am thinking about in my practice and throughout my life…. This week is more of a commentary on relationships and the fact that we are all capable of growth both with and without them.

Silly Silly people.

I'm not one hundred percent sure that I really remember how this week went and that's not because I wasn't present just maybe because it was a short week... On Monday we worked on our hand drawings and I found that I quite enjoyed them which is pretty good because I haven't really found anything in particular that I've enjoyed drawing in this class. In a way I think that is sad to say because I'm supposed to be a Studio art major and here I am struggling with what should be the most simple concept to grasp... maybe it's the human figure that stresses me out but I also think that it might have something to do with how I have knowledge of the time restraint, and I'm the type of person who can get really stressed out in timed situations. At the same time that I say that I also think about how I could just be making up excuses for myself; I don't have to be good at everything if I'm a Studio Art major... My concentration isn't life drawing anyways. Okay, so getting back to business, on Wednesday we drew skulls and I am finding those to be one, if not the most complicated things that we have worked on and I think that it has a lot to do with the proportions and putting all of the individual pieces together. So now that we are finally boiling down to the end of the semester I have realized how just about everything has crept up really fast and I'm gonna be spending most of these last few weeks in the library, picking up where I should've left off.

asdfghjkl.

Report · 9:43pm

haha, i'm excited for it

but my parents wont like it

Report · 9:43pm

yeah well

...that's how it is

Report · 9:44pm

haha yeah, i told my mom last fall i was thinking about getting a tattoo and she didn't even look at me and she teared up a little bit and said i should do that to my body

so i'm a little nervous

Report · 9:45pm

*should do that

?

i think you mean *shouldn't

Report · 9:45pm

haha yes.

good catch

Report · 9:46pm

yeah but how long can we feel guilty for what our parents do and don't believe

Report · 9:47pm

well said

Report · 9:48pm

Lars and I have been talking about that lately

Report · 9:48pm

haha, bad influence?

ha

Report · 9:48pm

no

ha

we have been talking about it

he hasn't been preaching about it

Report · 9:49pm

oh ha ok

Report · 9:51pm

we talked about family and how the bonds between blood take too much of a precedent over how we make our decisions and live our lives

Report · 9:51pm

i've never thought about that

but that makes complete sense to me

Report · 9:53pm

he thinks that we follow this dynamic because that's how it's been for centuries but in all actuality we owe our families nothing because we were born into these bonds

Report · 9:54pm

hmmm, idk if i agree with owing our families nothing

but i get what he's sayin

Report · 9:54pm

mmmm

it's all relative

Report · 9:55pm

right

Report · 9:55pm

I think that we owe our families something

but not our free will

Report · 9:55pm

yeah

i agree with that

Report · 9:56pm

If we owed our families that than everyone would always be a product of how they were raised

Report · 9:56pm

definitely

i hear THAT

Report · 9:57pm

well, so where does it end?

Report · 9:57pm

megan you know i don't know the answer to that

Report · 9:57pm

neither do I

that's the beauty of it

Report · 9:58pm

haha

i se

see*

Report · 10:00pm

the beauty is in the discovery of the question and the knowledge that no matter how many times you repeatedly answer it there are always more questions and more explorations to make

Report · 10:01pm

and how questions like that kind of just make you sit down and go blank

Report · 10:03pm

not actually blank but like only think about that question trying to come up with an answer

Report · 10:05pm

yes sir

I'm an addict

Report · 10:07pm

intervention?

Report · 10:07pm

ahhhh nothing can stop it

and I would never ask for such a blissful existence

Finding a mind is easier than finding a brain.

This last week was pretty weird and that is one of the reasons why this post is so darn late. I'm sorry to all of you that had to do two comments when I didn't have my post up. So just to start off I want to take a look at my drawing/picture because this is what I believe to be one out of only two drawings that I produced last week. I like drawing the hands because I don't get so stressed out about the proportions and how they move etc. This picture however could have been a great deal better because the lines are really thick when they shouldn't be and the contour lines really don't add up as well as they should but I am working on both of those things. This week we worked on our manikins and on hand drawings, and I think that thus far working on hands is a lot more enjoyable for me. Not only because I am fascinated with hands but also because of the way that we have been able to work and how we can do the manikin hands or the model's hand or the clay. It's a bummer though that I feel as if I'm starting to improve and now we are really getting down to the last couple weeks of class. I'm so nervous to be out of school because I really do think that I'm going to lose a lot of the hard earned progress and that scares me. I suppose that we will see whether or not that is true when we all show up next year. I wish I could be in school all year round but unfortunately I don't have enough money to do so. I hope that all of you have been having a wonderful week and that I see you all in class on Wednesday before we get a little bit of a break.

Nightmares of a wasted existence.

This week has been somewhat interesting and not necessarily in a bad way which seems to be unique if you look at the last couple weeks and see how I've been doing. We only had two days of class this week and though it was nice to get a little bit of a break I still wish that I could have drawn Friday because I'm starting to feel like I'm improving. I apologize for not having pictures up throughout the last couple weeks but I just picked up a new computer yesterday and now I can actually upload images which is simply spectacular. So this whole week we have been drawing, we had a couple muscle assignments which the first one seemed to go really well but I haven't gotten to the second one quite yet... Monday we did quicker long poses which turned out really bad for me but I'm glad that I ended the week on a better note with the hour long pose. I have a great difficulty finding a good way to execute what I'm seeing in front of me and as we all know that can become problematic. For the muscle assignments this week I feel as if they have gone relatively quickly and that I like but today I'm just sitting outside and soaking up the warm air because I'm sick as a dog and so finding motivation to go down to the art building and build muscles onto my manikin is well... pretty much impossible. It's strange watching all of the hustle and bustle as compared to the winter months of people deciding to use their homes as a barricade between them and the outside world. So, I used this picture because I feel as if it best represented where I'm at in the class. Believe it or not, I am improving. The angle that I was at compared to the model was difficult in this situation and trying to find the angle of her head was really hard too but I think that in the end it worked out just fine and now I hope to improve in other areas. As for the title of my blog, it references a dream that I had one night earlier this week about a girl that I'm nannying this summer and last summer as well. The dream consisted of her yelling and carrying on to me about how she wasn't going to do what I wanted her to and unfortunately that's exactly how she is. But, I feel like it references more than just the summer. It brought into account everything that we do in order to earn money and in order to get by in school and in everyday life. I always tell my Mom that I'd rather live poor and do what I love than be rich and work at a desk for ten hours a day... but now I'm trying to see if that's the truth at all because I'm taking a job again this summer that I'm going to be absolutely miserable doing but if I don't take it I can't come back to school next year. Makes me wonder really if it's foreshadowing.