Advanced Figure Drawing #1

One of the main reasons that I started this blog is to track my progress in my Advanced Figure Drawing Class. This class involves an in-depth study into human anatomy (minus the head, hands and feet...that's a separate class). This class is going to be a real challenge for me as the work-load is infamously overwhelming. Yesterday I went out and bought the materials so that I don't get too far behind. The total came to about $120 (which is very good, since the professor estimated that it'd be rare if we could squeek by with spending less than $150) though I only bought five pounds of clay for starters and will probably buy at least five pounds every week or two. For my $120 I also bought what I needed to make the sculpture stand. This thing has to be sturdy to support the 50-80 pounds of clay it'll contain. I was proud of myself though, as the kit sold for $35 at the art store (without the lazy susan underneath) and I managed to put an almost identical one together for $19. The turntable was another $20 though, bummer.

After the stand is set up I'll have to put together the armature, but since I'm not sure of the scale just yet, that'll be another post. To get the pose down, we had to make a bosetti - or a small clay sketch. It's moveable, so I'll continue posing it until I get it just right, then I'll photogrpah it and smash it up so I can use it for the real sculpture.

I chose a pose from the Muybridge photographs and hope it'll be dynamic enough to be interesting, but not so extreme that it looks like an action figure. The idea is to place the figure slightly off ballance so the movement is implied. It's a still pose, but it has life because it indicates the next move.

So next week we'll be getting our plastic skeletons and begin building the muscles in class. The homework will be to build those same muscle groups on this sculpture that I'm working on at home. Then we'll be drawing them from various angles. This class is all about repetition. It should be a good time.