#gat110

"Hollow Woman” - Graphite on Paper (A3), 2021

Toying with the female form, I attempted to draw the body as if an old tree, semi-entwined with nature. The limbs and head extending into the darkness with no direct cut off symbolize lost roots and ambition. The hollowing out of the stomach suggests a lack of nourishment, despite it being a well matured body pictured. 

If I were to make the image more anatomically correct, proportionally, the rib cage needs to extend down further. There may also be more distance between the two collar bones and the serratus could also be reassessed. 

The contrast of the surrounding leaves against the deep black background makes the figure almost the last point of interest, this is also supported by the piece being compositionally balanced (No direct interest points we are immediately drawn to). However, given that the woman was meant to fade into the background - this is not too big of an issue.

Movement:

Movement study:

 When I first started drawing gesture poses in class I struggled a lot. I found it difficult to correctly draw the models line of action. I gradually improved on it overtime by taking note of the models standing stance. The model usually had most of their weight balanced onto one leg. (Although sometimes the weighting between the models legs where completely balanced). From this I understood that the Line of best fit must be drawn from the head to the leg with the most weight on. The line of best fit is mainly curved, in an “S” shape or a z shape. This looks best due the natural curved shape of the spine. From my understanding the females anatomical line of best fit looks slightly more curved than the males line.

Form and light:

 Whilst in life drawing class, I had a hard time completing a fully rendered drawing of the models. This was most likely because I spent a long time getting the contrasting areas looking realistic. The light bouncing from underneath the models body (reflections from the floor) where time consuming to render properly. I think I could speed this process up by rendering the rest of the models body first (leaving negative space around the outside of models outline). If I did this, I could leave whatever time I have left to correctly portray the light bouncing from underneath the model. Another problem which drastically slowed my work flow was getting the form of model proportionate. Sometimes the models arms/ legs/ hands looked slightly bigger/smaller than the rest of their limbs. I attempted to minimize the un-proportionate limbs by drawing those limbs isolated from everything else. I explored that further in my anatomical studies.

Anatomy study: 

Final piece done wooo. Bad photos but I swear it looks better in real life. I added some white outlines that somewhat complete the piece in the way that it leads the viewers eyes to the main focal point as well as making it look cleaner. I then used plain medium over the whole piece to seal everything in and to give it a glossy look.

“Overthinker”

WIP of my final submission. I wanted to try out something new for my final piece. Rather than focusing on the finer details and being more precise like I normally am I wanted to have a more rough and textured look to my work.