Practicing figures

The professor that I had in Alfred that I was talking about in my last post had us as students doing these "drawing drills" that I absolutely hated at the time, but as time went on, I came to appreciate the fact that she made us do these drills. We would spend two hours of class time multipul times a week standing infront of our easils, and just drawing lines quickly over and over again. Going through dozens of sheets of newsprint. We moved onto cirlcles as well, and also adjusted the pressure of our charchoal on the paper.
As students we found this wastefull and pointless. But by the end of the semester we finally realized the use of these drills. Your body remembers the movement for specific shapes, it was training us to draw straight lines, to draw circles, and teaching us controll of our pencils.
The next unit we moved into figure drawing. We started off by learning the basic atatomy of the human figure. How the bones are connected, how the muscle lays on the bone, how the skin is stretched. Again we didnt see the point we were in an art class, not a Human Bio class! We started doing drills with a live model. We would have to draw the model as a stick figure. In quick 5 second drawings. The modle would change position every 5 seconds. Again we went through so much paper and we saw no point in this. But by the end of this we realized it is really teaching us how the body moves, so we can draw it in poportion. We then moved onto 10 second sketches adding a little more detail, then 20 second scetches. We added muscles onto the body for 10 second. Just with quick strokes. It was a whole new art form. (examples of these pictures are shown below.)
By the end of this semester it really made me confident that I could look at a person a draw their form in porportion accurately.

Drawing negative space.

During my time at Alfred State, I had a professor who was one of my biggest inspirations. She taught me more than any other professor has about life, and about art itself. She really made me start viewing the world in a different way. Still today (2 years later) I find myself doing little habbits she taught our class to do while we were creating art pieces. She truely had corrupted my mind in the best way possible.
One of the most important lessons she taught me was about viewing the world around you. She had all of us go outside (she taught quite a few lessons outside when the weather was nice) and she had us each focus on a brach with leaves and start to draw it. We all drew these branches with leaves, which were very good, but she pointed out how inaccurate the distance between each leaf and twig was in our drawings.
She then told us to look at the branch, and instead of drawing the object itself (the leaf, the branch, the twigs) focus on the negative space between the objects and the size. Do not look at the object itself. This really makes you look at things differently. Like what shapes make up the negative space between objects, and it really helps you with porportions. The image you come out with is not going to look like a normal piece it will look odd, but it is very good practice and it will train your eye to look at every piece of a picture.

14 Day challenge.

I have recently read a book written by Freeman Patterson, who is a well known photographer and he inspired me to challenge myself a little bit. In his books, he has activites you can do that helps you advance in Photography. One of these activties were to take a picture every day for 14 days of an object you wouldn't normally take a picture of. Now looking for objects you wouldn't normally take a picture of is quite interesting and it allows you to view the world differently around you. Some of these objects can be abstract images in the photographs because you are looking more at the shapes and shadows that make them interesting, not of the objects themselves.

Letting real life events inspire your art.

One of the most important things I have been taught over the years is to just look around you for inspiration. The smallest thing can inspire you to come up with the most beautiful pieces of art. Look at a leaf on a sidewalk. The colors, the shapes, the textures, any variable can contribute to inspiring you. Sometimes even a feeling can inspire you.
Just two weeks ago, my grandfather passed away. My family has been grieving in different ways, and my way of grieving has been through my artwork. One thing I have recently been focused on is my photography, and this event has inspired me even more. My mother had received a rose from the spray on his casket, and each of his grandchildren (including me) had recieved a carnation.
After the service we came home, and had our flowers in a vase and I needed to take pictures as memories were flooding my mind of my grandfather. In some of the pictures, I have the flowers laying across a notebook, which is actually my sketchbook/journal filled with these memories, so it has hidden meaning.