Figure Drawing
Figure Modeling was the first time I’ve really gotten a chance to work with clay. The goal was to replicate a real-life item out of clay. By doing this we were taught how to measure with our eyes and the fundamentals of sculpting.
Before we picked our items or touched the clay, we went back to the basics. Focusing on gesturing and how to measure for drawing. Since drawing is something everyone has experience with it makes the transition to clay a lot easier and more familiar.
We started by doing some quick gestures and writing a short piece on what gesture drawing is.
My Gestures My Gestures
Definition of Gesture:
Gesture drawings are a tool used by artists to train their brains to draw what they see instead of what they think they see. One of the ways a gesture does this is by capturing the motion of the form or object.
For example, if you are drawing a model who is about to throw a ball. Your first instinct may be to draw an outline of them and quickly switch to detailing the drawing with shading and value. Your drawing may look realistic, but it will most likely look stiff and unnatural. Gesturing the model first will capture the action happening in the pose, which will make the model appear more alive in the drawing. For gestures to work though, you have to focus on the action and not on the form itself. Quicker gestures are very useful for this because they only leave time for you to capture the action. It can be very discouraging at first because your gesture may look nothing like the form, so it’s important to remember that again, thats, not their purpose.
Gestures are also useful because they can capture the personality of an object. If you are drawing a hammer laid on top of a pillow, there may not be a lot of action in this still-life. But gesturing is still important. You may find yourself subconsciously pushing down harder when you gesture the hammer, due to its heaviness and hardness. In this same instance, you may subconsciously gesture the pillow very lightly, because if its softness. This would reinforce the juxtaposition of the piece and the very nature of the objects themselves. So even though your hammer may not resemble a hammer yet, someone would be able to tell it was a harder, almost dangerous thing compared to the light and soft form of the pillow. They’d understand the object’s natures even if they don’t know exactly what it is. Capturing the deeper personality of the object.
Measured Gestures
Next, we moved on to measured gestures. These are done by holding a pencil up to your eye. This trains the eyes to naturally see proportions and angles correctly. Again we started with drawings because its something we all knew so it was easier to build off of that knowledge then start from scratch.
Next came picking our items and getting our hands dirty. For my item I picked a shoe. I did this because of its unique shape and its different textures.
We began by adding mounds of clay. moving quickly around our item not focusing too much on one side. The goal was not to make it look like a shoe, but try to just see the shapes themselves.
Then we began measuring, nailing down the height and width first. Then moving to the angles and proportions.
From there we began finalizing our angles and proportions
And finally began to add texture
For me, this assignment was both fun and challenging. If I could go back and change things I’d wish for more time to get the details down. It was more about the process though, and I don’t regret spending as much time as I did on my angles and proportions because, in the end, those were the skills I needed to focus on learning. It was less about have an amazing ready to exhibit shoe and more about learning to use clay and the process behind sculpture.