Gesture Drawing Again <--my titles are boring

Another Monday and another gesture-focused class. Fortunately I left with some S-approved gestures. I think I can finally feel them on my own, though. These were done with a piece of really hard vine I found on the bench last week. I usually get the soft stuff, which marks more easily, but is also darker because of that, so drawings tend to get really messy really fast, so my new method is to do the first gestures with this found piece of vine, and then layering with the softer willow after. Thanks for leaving this behind, whoever you are! Maybe I'll leave a little piece of my own in exchange. The only thing is that it makes an awful scratchy shriek when you drag it across the paper at the wrong angle. ::Shudder::

And we started the face today:


But not features. See how S was not letting us "get into the nitty-gritty"? That's why her eyes look like they're closed...but not really... And why she also looks like she can't speak. And have I ever mentioned how boobs are strangely hard to draw and place?

Today's studio music: Erik Satie. Perfect because I just fell in love with him recently. I caught him on the radio when I was driving a couple weeks ago, and I heard "Gymnopédies" and "Je Te Veux" and was like Who is this?? because they were like songs from a dream: I couldn't say I really knew them, but I could hum them. I think "Je Te Veux" is from a Family Computer game I used to play ["play" being used very loosely here—"play with" is maybe a more telling term since it never occurred to me to get past level one in a single sitting]. And "Gymnopédies" is very haunting. Is it possible that I learned this song at some point during my piano-playing career? What a memory. Anyways, I liked it so much I stayed in the car after I got home just to find out who it was. Erik Satie. Go listen to him.

Sweet Potato or Pig?

Just an exercise for D. I think I hate this paper.

Gesture Drawing

Mondays are all about gestures. Sometimes I don't even know if what I'm doing is gesture drawing until the teacher comes around and gives me her nod of approval. Or folds her arms and winces.

Model Discontent

Back from class early today because I didn't like the model. I hope it didn't show on my face, but I almost groaned when I saw him today because I remembered him as the reason I never went back to Friday night figure drawing sessions at SFAI. And what was even funnier was that he did the exact same poses today, too! I could've brought my old drawings and been like, Look! Same! But I didn't have to because he ended up recycling some poses during the 1.5 hours I was there today. He does what I call the Hero poses. Or more like "Graceful" Hero. With lots of ponytail flicking and a shiny body that has seen many hours in a tanning salon. And a purple ring around his...thing. Anyways, then I was talking with some girls at one point, and he actually told us "ladies" to please leave if we weren't going to draw! Way to usurp the power when the teacher's out enjoying his cup of coffee. Whatever, I didn't feel as bad about leaving early then and now I have time for a nice nap before dinner.

And I need my nap because I didn't go to bed last night until 5 in the morning, working on this:


The exercise was to do a figure in motion, preferably an athlete, and using color. Luckily, I had April's "fitness" issue of Vogue still lying around and this is Shawn Johnson from an awesome group photo of some of the women's Olympics gymnastics team. The beauty of the photo really is in the four of them jumping around in the same frame, but one figure to focus on was enough for me for now. Huh...interesting to realize that I've never done a drawing with more than one figure in it... Something to think about. Anyways, I think I love Nupastels. And look at those muscles! On that note, I think it's time for my nap hee hee.

Getting back into the swing of things.

So my machine got fixed and I think all it was was that the machine was dirty and dusty inside...aaaaaand I was threading it wrong. And that's why I was having problems. I didn't think I was THAT off though—I just wasn't maintaining tension, but apparently it was at a very crucial point or something. Anyways, problem solved, I learned something, and I got some stuff done over the weekend.

First, cutting on the bias. I need a rotary cutter. I hate cutting fabric, especially slippery stuff. On the bias. Ugh, you do not know how annoyed I was after hours and hours of trying to get the pattern on a perfectly true bias. I was really excited at first because since my silk is polka dotted, on the bias, the dots line up in a grid, giving me lots of vertical and horizontal reference points. I wanted it perfect, so I assumed that if I pinned the center front of the pattern to one column of dots, symmetrical points on either side of the center line would automatically line up on the same row. Except they didn't. Or more like WOULDn't. After a lot of whining, I made the educated guess that while I was pinning the center line, I'd probably stretched the fabric unevenly, so... ANYways, I ended up pinning every 2x2inch grid corner to every 7th dot. And pinned exactly on that corner, exactly on that dot. As you can see here:


And then these are the sewn front and back:


I'm not going to go into the details (no one cares!) but the darts sewn and the lace is all arranged and appliqued. My front neckline is going to be different from the pattern because she said I could do whatever I wanted design-wise, as long as it involved more work and not less. See how mine has that slight V in the front? Well the original pattern is flat across, which I hate. I always feel like I'm being strangled by necklines like that, even if they're nowhere near my neck. So...that's it for now. So far so good.