a r t . p o o p a g e: the metaphorical body

This past week has been a productive one! i was at the Toronto School of Art for a week-long intensive life drawing class with Megan Williams. i initially enrolled in the course for the purpose of improving my technical skills, but the curriculum was more about exploring what the human body means to us and how we want to express it in our art. It was great, though. i'm really happy with how the course went down.

One of my overall goals was to loosen up and not think too much while drawing. i really feel like this summer is my last chance to explore these sorts of things, as i'm going to have to seriously tighten up for Biomedical Communications this fall. But anyway, i just wanted to write down what i did this week - mostly for my own benefit.

Days 1+2 (Mark + ? i forgot her name ><;;; ) We started off the week exploring fast (e.g. using 1 or 2 line gestures) and slow methods (e.g. blind contour of self) for depicting the body. Afterwards, we looked at ways of capturing motion in order to portray the passage of time and movement through space. i found these movement exercises quite challenging and frustrating... i decided not to pursue this any further for the rest of the week... lol!

15-20 min each + 45 min for bottom right corner
conté + charcoal on newsprint paper, 18x24"

In the afternoon, we took a look at William Kentridge's incredible animations. i found his creative process to be quite fascinating - he doesn't start with a storyboard. Instead, he goes with an impulse and feels that the physical act of working at a drawing releases new ideas. We also looked at Bruce Samuelson's incredible drawings.

Day 3 (Fiona)
We looked at Heather Graham's latest work today, which served as an introduction to the notion of subjects that are just barely there. i've always had difficulty with making things too literal (comes from doing too many anime-styled illustrations, i suppose!), so here i'd end up drawing everything first and erasing most of it after...

i tried dissolving the body into darkness and pulling it out of white fog...

40 min-ish? (excuse the wrinkles)
charcoal on newsprint paper, 18x24"

Oh, and here is one of those painfully slow blind contour exercises! :\

30 min
conté pencil on newsprint paper, 18x24"

Day 4 (Murray)
i continued to work with ghosting on a white background, but changed the materials from dry to wet media. We looked at Arikha's beautiful ink and brush drawings today as inspiration. i had a lot of difficulty with controlling the whole dry brush + ink combo... i did like the idea of addition and subtraction, though.

10 min (?)
brush and ink on cartridge paper, 18x24"

45 min
brush and ink on kraft paper, ~18x24"

Day 5 (Sandi)
i felt that the last day was the most productive of them all. i focused mostly on ghosting and making sure my drawings weren't too literal. i think i had Sophie Jodoin and Alex Kanevsky's works in mind today. i'm pretty happy with how things turned out in a single week; it was a great experience!

i think my first attempt was my best one...