drawing crit

our final project for drawing was a narrative, using figure drawings from in class as a prompt, & working big (5 ft x 5 ft.) i got a studio for this one, hoping that it would give me a chance to separate drawing from the rest of the assignments i was working on in my room... and to truly focus and spread out. that was a good idea.

i decided the only way i could dive into the term narrative was to pick a song as a basis. i listened to it over and over again. i tried to find marks that would mimic the music. i thought about distance. and solitude. this was a spilling out for me of so many comments/critiques/thoughts: using layering, but having each layer be distinctly different. not worrying so much about starting light... skipping the vine and going straight to compressed charcoal. being decisive with marks. experimenting with acrylic (and realizing it doesn't work so well with charcoal.) my inspiration was an exercise we did in class. our model would pose and we would draw for 30 seconds, and then each rotate to the easel next to us and continue the drawing for that person. by the time 10 people had added to it, things started getting messy. you would look at the drawing and think that there was nothing that could possibly fix it. but then someone would add something, just one mark to make a difference, and it would completely bring the piece back to life. that kind of surrender of control, so not me, was exactly what i needed to embrace when drawing.

it was so cool to pull everything from the semester together and curate it. it doesn't seem like much when you're wrapped up in it all, but when you look back at everything you realize how much you really did. drawing was definitely a class that i struggled with first semester. not so much that it was hard, but that i knew i was lacking passion for it. it seemed like just a requirement that i had to get through to get to the good stuff. but when i see how much i have grown in just a semester, i am so glad that i'll have drawing two next semester. it's shaking things up for me, which is always a good thing. i'm constantly questioning my definition of drawing, and beginning to realize that i don't have to keep it separate from the rest of how i create.