week of dec 1st

The first day back after break I realized that I forgot to bring Lyle back to school with me, so when we got time to work on our manikens during Tuesdays class I left and went to work on homework from another class. But I didn't end up going to class on Thursday because Wednesday the first I spent sixteen hours writhing and crying in pain- ten of which were spent in the Menomonie emergency room. I got home at 3:00 in the morning and spent the entire day on Vicodin and sleeping... So I wasn't able to walk to class. I spent the rest of the weekend in pain and on Vicodin. what a waste of a weekend. So then the next week I wasn't able to finish my shell drawing but that story is reserved for the next post. Basically this week I didn't accomplish anything... I was a vegetable. And my vegetable-like quality is seriously making it difficult for me to continue with this post... so I think instead of randomly rambling just to get enough words, I think I will just leave it at that. Until next time...

nov 1-6

I'm not exactly certain what we did this week, as this is a back post but I'm sure we drew, and drew some more.. and probably did some work with the manikens and drew some more. All of these blogs seem to be running together. So I think I'm going to switch up the subject matter slightly, and discuss things related to drawing and my major that I did outside of class that week. The week I'm speaking of I sketched out a three panel painting I will be finishing over break. I also painted a winter scene on a panel for a gift for one of my friends. I am a painting major and it seems to me the most I will be using my drawing skills will be for sketching out paintings. which is fine by me. I used to draw well but as the years have progressed my skills have diminished. One of my drawing professors from my freshman year explained that drawing is like singing, if you don't nurture your talent you lose it. Which is very true. I suppose if I wanted to I could get it back but this has been an excessively trying semester and pushing myself more than outside influences did would probably have made me implode. Its hard to draw in this class without being able to shade. I'm so used to being able to quickly sketch and then go back over whatever I draw with shading and I can make what I drew look infinitely better. Maybe thats the reasoning behind my pessimism related to my drawing skills this semester. possibly, me thinks. well... I'm not exactly sure what to say on the subject, so... until next time...

nov 14-23

Back track blog post number two. I don’t quite remember what we did, this one may have been the trip to the museums. I got out of my 2D digital imaging class early, which was a waste to go to anyway- I was only in class for 15 minutes. Then sat in the stairwell by the doors waiting for the bus to show up… when we decided it probably wasn’t going to be there the bus garage was contacted and we were allowed an ho I don’t remember much about the walker. Nothing was really that interesting to me. The photography was about the only thing that caught my attention. Everything else just seemed to blur together- aside from the people that were painted and laying on the floor… that was just… weird. I thoroughly enjoyed the wall of the 38 theaters and a funeral home. I love old theaters anyway, the history behind them, the beauty of the way they were designed even the whiff of nostalgia they greet me with. I think I stood in front of those for a half hour. Each pass I made I saw things I didn’t see the time before. The little details that makes each of those places look loved, or abandoned; The things that draw me in; what I can relate to. The next museum we went to was the natural history museum. While we were there Liz and I trekked through all of the rooms and looked through the glass but couldn’t find much that sparked our interest… until we got to the children’s touch and learn center. Then we couldn’t decide what we wanted to draw. I settled on the grizzly bear in the center of the room. It was a little difficult trying to draw the bear’s head though, as kids and adults kept stopping in front of it. Kids were even hanging on his jaw… I did finally get the bear’s head drawn… and I was reminded how difficult fur was to draw. I think next time I will just draw tree stumps. Haha. Until next time…

nov. 7-13

I missed a few blog posts… so here is back track post number one. Looks like the last post was from midterm- so we shall pickup where I left off. That is, if I can remember what we did in class. They all kind of run together after a while. I know we did shell drawings, we started drawing more specific parts on the models. This may or may not have been the week that I have no good long poses to speak of due to sitting models syndrome- which is code for “something Kirsten is incapable of drawing the profile of when there is a chair blocking half of the anatomy she needs to see for landmarks.” As you can guess folks, its not a very pretty picture. And then trying to fit the entire model on the page… over five feet of model on a two foot paper… yeah… kind of difficult. I resorted back to my old ways and drew excessively small, sketchy, dark and altogether, crappy. Needless to say this is not one of my strongest drawings. In fact both drawings are ones that I would like to burn, tear in half, or use to mop up the ink that I will be using on the last shell drawing I have yet to finish. Up to this point I would like to point out that I, in fact had been getting better about using my full arm and using the whole page. But well I guess digression is a natural problem that can be fixed with baby steps. One step forward, two steps back. O well.

This Semester at a glance

This semester we learned about the long axis line, the spine, the spinal erectors, and abs. We also learned about drawing the rib cage in relation to the spine and proportions of the rest of the body. Through out the semester I've been relearning how to draw. It's been a lot more difficult than I had originally anticipated that it would. I can see the improvement in the long drawings. It is not so much the case with the gesture drawings though. Those seem to be a hit or miss. They kind of depend on the day. It was really difficult to pick out gesture drawings for my flickr account because I couldn't remember which ones I was told were really good. They all kind of run together and when we have umpteen days and a two drawing pads to flip through. Many days I can take the details I see and organize them correctly into what it should look like in my drawing. I've been working on drawing bigger and slower. Some days it works, others I just don't have the patience. The last two long poses I haven't been able to draw correctly. But they have also been the poses where the models have sat in chairs and the chair has prevented my ability to see the entire long axis line and other body landmarks. It also made it awkward for figuring out sizing and how to fit it all on the page.



 My Url for my flickr account is-


http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirsten-iehl/

 I'm having issues with uploading pictures to my blogs so... I can't really do anything with pictures at the point...  Until next time...

Oct 24-30th

      This week we drew our first male model. That was an interesting change of scenery... Actually I found it slightly awkward and I couldn't seem to get the proportions or even the basic anatomy correct. Maybe it was just on off day for me. I still have yet to have a day where I can actually draw. Guess this just isn't my semester. We also went over our shell drawings with critiques in the hall with people who weren't in our original groups- in my case at least. It was nice to get a new opinion of my shell and what I can work on. originally I was told that my lines had good differentiation, had a nice axis line, was a little small for the paper- which I explained during the second critique that I had originally plotted it out to fill the page and when I got to the individual parts of it my drawing apparently got smaller.
     I'm not really looking for this week... Between mid-program review and the billion things I have to do for this class and all my other classes I have almost no time to get anything done. So if I'm super tired for this class and have to force feed myself coffee before and during class... I blame life drawing. Maybe. Or possibly MPR, or voting, or any of my other classes. I will have to post the pictures of my works up soon and comment on everyone's blogs... I know I have yet to do that but only because when I  do this blog I never think about it. I will have to go through them all during the week when I have more time.

a week without class...

So, this week in class... oh wait... We didn't have class. well, it was a nice break, but I felt like there was a void in my schedule.. which of course there was. I kinda wish we had class so I could have solidified the project guidelines. I found the assignment online right after she assigned it but haven't since. I'm not exactly certain where I found it the first time.
     Its getting a little boring writing about just what we do in class every week but I can never think of anything else to write, nor am I sure that writing about anything else is acceptable. I really don't know what to write now... Since we didn't do anything and I haven't been in class for the past week and a half.
so... until next time...