Drawing Track Winter Quarter Assignment 6, due Tuesday 2/19
The purpose of this assignment is to make you more aware of proportions and angles in the figure and to give you a greater sense of how the nude has been represented in Euro-American art traditionally.
1) In ARTstor: Go to the Institutional folder/Trajectories pastels/drawings of nudes and review the images there. Download ones you’re interested in, examine them further and then choose two images that use significantly different poses to work from. Do the following in color pencil your sketchbook for each image:
- Make a thumbnail compositional color study of the whole image. Make sure that you’ve reproduced the aspect ratio of the image (ratio of width to height) accurately. Make the study at least 3 inches in one dimension. Use the three most dominant colors in the composition and focus on general shapes rather than detail.
- Make a full page study of the image that represents its main compositional elements, starting with a light outline of the frame itself using a correct aspect ratio, and then gestural lines and shapes indicating the spine, shoulders and pelvic cradle as we’ve practiced in class. After laying out those forms, complete the sketch by drawing in other parts of the figure.
- Study the attached image by Joanna Quinn and read her explanation of how she finds proportions in the figure. Using a straight edge, section off your sketch as she has done to hers. Mark significant points and add lines that show the relationships between adjacent body parts.
- Print out the image on letter size paper. Grayscale is fine.
- Using a straight edge, section off the image using to Quinn’s approach. Then compare the spaces defined by these lines with those you made on your drawn study of the image.
- Note any discrepancies in proportion between your drawing and the printed out image, and then redraw the study to see how close you can come to the original without tracing.
- Glue or tape the printed out image into your sketchbook and at the top of the first page of studies, note the title of the work, the artist’s name, the dimensions and the date.
2) Spend an hour in a public place drawing gesture sketches of people that you see. Do not spend more than one minute on any gesture drawing. (It’s okay to overlap sketches on the same page.) During the last 20 minutes of your hour, sketch the whole scene with images of at least five of the people that you witnessed there in place, (even if they have left already).
