Figure Drawing: Measure Twice!

I grew up with my grandparents. My grandfather loved to make random things out of wood. He'd have a saying, "Measure Twice, cut once." I didn't realize it at the time, but that phrase goes so far beyond woodcutting.

My first figure drawing class was at my junior college. It instantly became my favorite class.  One of the reasons was my boisterous New York bred teacher. We would start out working in charcoal, then move on to pastels on toned paper. The purpose of this technique was to allow the paper "breathe" through.  Here is one of my drawings:

Model: David

Here, at San Jose State, figure drawing is the building block to everything! And much to my dismay, it is taught 120% differently than I originally learned. Yes, I learned about foreshortening and form on the body, but I was never properly taught the laws of proportion! It was always "draw what you see".  Here, it's almost like a mathematical process of the torso equals 2 heads, etc. I am happy that I am learning this but what a learning curve!  I must say tho, my figure drawings are looking alot better. Here is a picture from this semester with the same model from the above picture from my junior college:

My teacher at my other school would KILL me if he saw this drawing. He would point to a line on your drawing and say, "if that is a straight line on the figure, I'll buy you a house/car".  The proportions though are alright on this one. The calves and everything below it are a bit grande, but this is one of my first drawings learning this new style so I won't beat myself up to bad. But you know....measure twice....

And that's when I developed my nervous twitch...again.

I'm thinking I might as well throw something in here. So I shall put up a project that kicked my butt.

This is the dreaded charcoal reversal.  The process was simple.  Find a photograph with texture, cast shadows, and contrast.  Cover an 18x24 board with compressed charcoal and erase away until you have a perfectly rendered piece!  Seems easy enough. The total time that was supposed to be spent on said project is anywhere from 40-60+ hours. This project was a whole lotta all nighters!
 Here is the picture of what I was too render:

Whales!

I love whales, therefore I was very happy I got to do this! I knew the barnacles were going to give me trouble, but I did not know just how much trouble.  The rays in the back were surprisingly easy to do. I tried several techniques from just wiping it with a shammy cloth to using the kneaded eraser. In the end, the latter was the way that worked the best. The two fins seen in the photo is where I got stuck. I believe I spent one night from 1am-4am working on them alone.  It's very easy to get caught up in the finer details of something like that. Especially when they were right in my face the whole time I was working on my piece.  Overall, I was pretty satisfied with how it came out, though I do want to go back and work on it some more. Who knows when I will have time for that though. And here is the semi-finished product: 

Rendered Whales! 

                                                                             Until next time! 

                                                                                    Mandy

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Art in progress... ^.^