This class was a bit different than I anticipated. As a working artist in the field, I had assumed I would be working on my own projects, rather than being taught how to draw the figure.
Originally, I had wanted to work on a project where I was focusing more on Trans people, and the beauty of their bodies in transition.
I also had dedicated my practice to only drawing and painting Black bodies in an effort to showcase both the traumas and beauty we hold within us as descendants of the enslaved.
Creatively I have been studying the processes of making Art for years, but I find it to be more fruitful when I have live models to work from for long sessions.
After attending this class I've grown a greater relationship with the animation assist on my IPad, without it I would have had to use photoshop and illustrator to complete these projects. However, Procreate is still my favorite app and software for illustrating, as I find it to be more user friendly than Adobe.
I also took away the concept of staying on model, but I find it to be more relevant when animating people or objects, as the imagery and motion become more seamless. It's also a lot easier when one has longer drawing sessions with posed models, rather than digital images of models.
While I don't think I'll be including work I've made in class in my permanent portfolio, I am grateful for the things I learned in making it and the other artists who weathered the storm with me in the process. Without the engagement with other students, this class would have been much more difficult for me.
Many of the tools we learned I have been using for years while working within my own style. I think now my interest is more about creating imagery and my own set of stills to work from as I draw and continue to make more work in the future.
The one thing that stuck with me the most during this class was learning the process of making GIF's.
Prior to this class I always wanted the ability to make put my illustrations in motion, and this class has given me the pointers to do that.
This is a collaborative drawing digital collage of myself and other students work within the class. The below text is the title of each piece and a declaration of which artists work I used and where.
Black Girls Sitting on The Porch, 2021: Akane, Alex, Isabel
The Mystics Rumble, 2021: Clover Carissa, Hime
Haaaaaaiiiii, 2021: Sol, Madisen, Mohini, Amelia
2021: Nungratai, Hailey, Heli
These sketches are all gesture drawings made during the second week of class. That week I spent about an hour each day practicing gesture drawings from images found on the web. I occasionally was able to go out into the field to sketch people as they sat around the lake, or did yoga.
In these drawings I am more focused on getting the gesture together, as the subjects often move a bit faster in 1 minute poses.
During week 3, I focused on one of the figures I liked from the previous week and spent more time making them into an illustrative being. This figure was a bit more challenging for me as there was more foreshortening in the torso and parts of the body that are more pushed back in the field, while the legs are a bit larger and more exaggerated.
I focused on using shading and contour lines (something we didn’t really discuss too in-depth in class) to help myself achieve the perspective I was looking for.
For this work I decided to abandon color and focus on trying to bring my figure to life with black and white. I found this image to be extremely difficult as the model itself was from an image. I find it easier to get more accurate poses when drawing from live models.
In this pose I had similar issues to previous works I had encountered; exaggerated limbs and smaller head or torso.
Working in black and white helped me present the illusion of these shaded and exaggerated body parts.
For this week we focused on placing figures within an environment, while showing their body shift from one pose to the next.
This image was inspired by a small collection of poems and short stories inspired by Octavia Butler entitled Ina. The figure here represents a subject in one of the poems, this subject is emerging from the roots of the soil and taking shape into the form of her sexuality.
For this image I wanted to emphasize a more dreamlike perspective, so I decided not to use bold lines, after receiving criticism against it. While the image came out nicely, I prefer to define things within my own style of work.
This week, we focused on reworking a figure that we liked from the previous weeks. this figure stood out to me, as it seemed to be laying down, and i rathe liked that perspective and found it challenging.
From this work I made my first Gif in the course. I learned first hand how difficult it is to draw the same thing over and over again while still attempting to stay on model.
CONTACT: annewsom@ucsc.edu