Like many others, drawing was one of my favorite pastimes when I was younger. I was always fascinated with cartoons so for the most part that's what I drew. I didn't get the opportunity to take up drawing classes outside of the ones in elementary school so my skill level stayed stagnant and I struggled with drawing realistic figures. As I got older, I found it harder to find time to draw given that I needed to devote more time to my academic courses, however, I still found myself sketching images and drawing animated objects from time to time in my notebooks.
When I saw this class in ACES I was thrilled and thought I would finally get the chance to properly learn how to draw. I also intended for this course to be my breakaway from the rigorous load that my Pratt courses demanded. I've always been told I had an aesthetic eye and in different personality tests I scored high in creativity so I was excited to now have the opportunity to allow that creativity to flourish. Unfortunately I did not do much research on this course before I enrolled and soon found out it required a larger time commitment than I had imagined which made it even harder to fully develop my skills seeing as though I was overloading this semester. In the beginning of the semester it was relaxing, however I soon started to realize I could only dedicate enough time to do the assignments and not really practice as much as I would have liked to. Even though I did enjoy this class and improved slightly, I felt like I could have gotten a lot more out of it if I waited until my senior year where I wouldn't have been bogged down by my core engineering classes.
In terms of the structure of the class, it was not really what I expected either. Although we did get feedback on how to improve drawings, I thought there would of been a more hands on approach in showing us exactly how to draw certain things like trees for example which I struggled with. The class seemed to be set up in a trial and error format and the only way you could really improve was if you studied yourself and others' techniques as well as practiced enough to the point you were satisfied with what you were drawing. So again back to time commitment, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who is overloading or has a bunch of classes requiring problems sets due each week.
Despite the few personal problems I had in this course, overall I enjoyed it and don't regret a minute of it. In this class I learned about line weight, shading, and negative space which were all techniques that helped me to achieve realistic drawings. In class we focused on drawing what we saw rather than what our minds imagined because sometimes it was easy to distort shapes and scale objects differently than how they actually appeared in front of my eyes. Looking back over my body of work I am proud of the work I have done thus far and plan to continue practicing how to draw in my sketchbook. Hopefully senior year I can take another drawing class so I can really commit to my artwork and truly express my creativity. Although my drawings may not have always been the most impressionable, the stories. themes, and reason behind them made up for the lack of artistic expression. It also helped that I drew from a personal standpoint and sense of familiarity.
I would like to get more practice with drawing from realism and maybe get the opportunity to learn how to draw people rather than just buildings and architecture. My first blogging assignment on Lord Leighton really peaked my interest on the matter of using humans as the subjects of drawing because his pieces were so beautiful yet seemed so simple. Also once color is added into the mix, there is no limit on the possibilities of what can be created! But if that does not work out, there is always animation which got me interested in drawing in the first place :)
In terms of the structure of the class, it was not really what I expected either. Although we did get feedback on how to improve drawings, I thought there would of been a more hands on approach in showing us exactly how to draw certain things like trees for example which I struggled with. The class seemed to be set up in a trial and error format and the only way you could really improve was if you studied yourself and others' techniques as well as practiced enough to the point you were satisfied with what you were drawing. So again back to time commitment, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who is overloading or has a bunch of classes requiring problems sets due each week.
Despite the few personal problems I had in this course, overall I enjoyed it and don't regret a minute of it. In this class I learned about line weight, shading, and negative space which were all techniques that helped me to achieve realistic drawings. In class we focused on drawing what we saw rather than what our minds imagined because sometimes it was easy to distort shapes and scale objects differently than how they actually appeared in front of my eyes. Looking back over my body of work I am proud of the work I have done thus far and plan to continue practicing how to draw in my sketchbook. Hopefully senior year I can take another drawing class so I can really commit to my artwork and truly express my creativity. Although my drawings may not have always been the most impressionable, the stories. themes, and reason behind them made up for the lack of artistic expression. It also helped that I drew from a personal standpoint and sense of familiarity.
I would like to get more practice with drawing from realism and maybe get the opportunity to learn how to draw people rather than just buildings and architecture. My first blogging assignment on Lord Leighton really peaked my interest on the matter of using humans as the subjects of drawing because his pieces were so beautiful yet seemed so simple. Also once color is added into the mix, there is no limit on the possibilities of what can be created! But if that does not work out, there is always animation which got me interested in drawing in the first place :)
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