Week 7 Drawing Assignment (due week 8)
1) Go to the Natural History Collection (Lab 1, 1060) during their open hours Wednesday 1-5 and Friday 1-5, to draw one of the skeleton specimens. If those times don’t fit your schedule, go there to make an appointment for another time. If you have access to other skeletons you may use those instead.
2) Choose one skeleton and do 5 pages of gesture drawings in your sketchbook (each no longer than 1 minute).
3) Do two blind contour drawings of the skeleton in your sketchbook (5 minutes each).
4) Make three thumbnail sketches of compositions that feature the skeleton but also balance negative and positive spaces. Remember that you don’t have to show the entire skeleton (15 minutes).
5) Choose one of these and develop it into a full size drawing in your sketchbook, balancing detail that communicates the specimen with lack of detail that allows the viewer to practice closure. (1 hour)
6) Another day, review all of your sketches of skeletons to do some work from your imagination. In your sketchbook, invent new animals based on combined parts of different animals’ skeletons. Do at least 3 studies of new skeletons that are composed of different parts of the skeletons you have already drawn to build structures for invented creatures. Choose the invented skeleton that appeals the most to you and then experiment (i.e. do some quick sketches) with what that animal might look like when alive. Choose one of the versions of the new animal, and use one of your nicer papers to make a composition that includes both it and its skeleton. (1.5 hours)