Finale

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Its finally upon us. The end of the semester. Another year gone, I can't believe it. This semester has been great, not just including this class but some of my other classes. I'm happy to say that I have some new stuff to add to my portfolio after this semester. I had a really good Graphic Design Project that I'm planning on taking further on my own. Also, this class has greatly improved my skills of drawing the human form. I'm already signed up for the next class in the fall. I'm making it a goal to draw a lot more this summer, as long as work doesn't consume my entire being and giving me 60+ hours of work.

In the beginning of the semester I had little knowledge on few body parts of the human form with little understand of how each act and function together to create the human form. After this class I'm well aware of the unique body parts. I understand how to start of drawing the human form by figuring out the mid line or spine's placement. From there its using other landmarks to begin drawing the rest. One thing I need to improve on is controlling how hard I draw, I draw with the lights tools and they still draw dark when I'm trying to erase. But that is something I'll get better at over time. Another thing I'll get better overtime is gesture drawings. The idea of gesture drawings angers me because, its forcing art. I don't like to be rushed when their is no need, so you may find some of my gestures not good because lets face it I don't work well while working fast. She told use about 3/4 into the semester how she actually wanted us to draw gestures which irritated me because I've been doing it one way with out hearing complaints that now I suddenly have to adapt this new style. I tried it her way and they turned out like shit. I'm not a speed drawer yet, and hopefully I get better at it, but I promise you its not something I plan on doing over the summer, I'd much rather do long drawings.

Overall the semester was great, and I cannot wait till the next class. Oh and before I forget, the self portrait project I originally was excited for because I wanted to pump something good out, but after doing it with a MIRROR, I'll never draw from a mirror again because it constricts my drawing ability while I sit there not moving. I'll just go from a photo, which I believe shouldn't be frowned upon. But here is my self-portrait even though its silly looking.

12th

Well its the last week before we start finals. I learned on Monday however that I have mono. I really didn't think much of this at first, like oh all I'll do is sleep. I was really wrong. I miss almost an entire week of classes because of it. Worst part is that mono has now made me behind on everything! Luckily for me, all my Professors were really understanding. So If this blog post seems to be missing on general weekly updates its because I've spent most of the week sleeping and coughing. I did make it to one of the Life Drawing classes this week. There we finished up our manakins and started to apply what we learned from last week onto the face. I did a long post face of the drawing and I've got to say, I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. Here it is!

11th

I really enjoyed drawing and learning about the skull and face structures. This week we learned about how to draw the eyes, nose, mouth and ears. I really love how she takes basic shapes and eventually turns them into the part of the body we are covering. Like the eye for example is sphere obviously, but then adding this distinct areas that can change based on the person like above and below the eye that make each person unique. I found it interesting that 1/3 of our eye is seen on the side of our head, I mean I guess I never really realized that until she said it then i started looking around. That was a great thing to know when drawing the face, because it will add the sense of the figure's 3-dimensionally.

The nose is another part of the face I found really interesting to learn. In genreal noses are tough, and learning the basic forms to start out with really excelled how well I could draw noses. I mean in all my face drawings, the nose is the first thing I start with because it connects to the rest of the face. ITs the center point of the face. Working from there made it easier to work my way back out of the face without running into to much disproportional issues. Next after the nose comes the mouth. She covered the basic stuff like, top lip is always above draw the middle lip line and not the others because it makes them look silly. yatta yatta, big bang boom!

Ears were really interesting to learn! They are soo weird in genreal I was really unsure how to draw them. But If you draw certain parts individually then combine them all together it turns out great! Now after this week of drawing facial features I can only imagine we will be drawing faces next week. Here are some eyes and nose drawings I did in class.

10th

I'm sorry for all the late post. I've kind of been dealing with a lot, you know finals, plus not feeling to well but here was what happened the next week. We learned the skull! I loved learning about the skull. It was like taking an anatomy class, this entire semester! No but thats not the best part, I loved how my 3 skull drawings turned out. They will defiantly be in my Final Portfolio work for this class and in my web portfolio.

In other class related news, the two German Graphic Designers that joined my GDII critique really liked my design and idea. They loved that I thought beyond the 2d world of paper and was thinking about how my logo would work in the digital world.

Here is my favorite skull drawing I did. Next week we will start to learn about the face!

9th

Well, Last week we covered the Hands. Finally! I really liked how she taught them. Pretty much treat each bone in the form, not just make the hand as you think it is. You need to take in everything that makes it. My Hand drawings were some of my best work I've made lately. Usually hands are tough to draw. Thursday was the same thing pretty much, drawing hands and the bone hand. Not much else happened. Here is some pics of my hands.

8th

Well, its been awhile since I've blogged so I figured I'd update. Though this week was a bit odd since we had Advisement day on Tuesday, and then Mid Program later in the week that Friday. So we've had little classes this week. But in general news, my GDII Project is nearing the end, next week its due and we are having a some professional Designer look at all our work, so I'm really excited to hear what they have to say about my design.

In Life Drawing, we've finally gotten into the shoulders and arms!! I've probably enjoyed learning how to draw these the most, because arms are quite difficult to drawn, but yet so is the entire body. Yet, I've found myself lately forgetting the lessons about the other body parts we covered earlier in the semester. I'll need to ask her to go over a few of the parts I've been having trouble with like, the Knee and the Pelvis My Egg body could use some work also. I'm getting really excited that we are almost done with the Manakins, they're neat to have and look at but they're lately become one more thing I have to get done, and I'm hopping by Finals time, we don't have to worry about them at all!

After my Exam in History on thursday I spent 2 hours in the library reading books about animation and drawing. I found some really powerful stuff in the books. I even checked one out to have for when I have some free time because as soon as I start reading about animation, I get a sudden urge to work on some animation. I'm sure its gonna help out alot!. As for a picture for this post, I don't have any new drawings yet so I'll show you my final logo design for GDII.

7th

Well, now that mid-terms are over with and spring break done. Its back to the same old routine. Had a hard time catching back up to speed but, hey who can blame me after being Las Vegas for Spring Break. Being in the 70 and 80 degree weather only made me want summer here sooner. Anyways before we left for Spring Break we, started the feet. Kind of weird just drawing feet all day but, hey I need to get better at it.

After Spring Break we begun drawing the shoulders FINALLY! We are almost done with completeing the entire body. I'm still excited on the arms and hand section though. I just hope I don't forget everything that I've learned in this class. I've already been thinking about taking the 2nd class of Life Drawing. I talked to Prof and she said we focus a lot of the face and skeleton throughout the semester. I really don't care much about learning about the skeleton but learn about the face would be REALLY COOL! I'm sorry I have nothing much to show as of now but next week I'll have pictures of a Logo I'm Designing.

Company is a Electronic Store called Nu. My logo is a butterfly that I'm trying to make it look like a loading circle. After class tomorrow, I'll know which direction to go with!

Midterm!

Flickr:

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Well, its March 4th which by the way is my birthday!! I'm finally sitting down to post my midterm blog before I hit up the night again! I've just been waiting ALL week for this day to come.

At this point in class, I'm very happy with how well this class has helped me at drawing the human form. I'm excited for what I will learn next. The link above will take you to my 10 best drawings from the class and 3 pictures of my clay maniken. I've found myself creating the proportions of each body part correctly.

I'm really happy with Drawing_10 where I took the challenge of drawing the torso with foreshortening going on!!! Foreshortening is only tough to draw even with simple shape yet I managed to figure out how to draw the torso!!

I'm excited to learn on how to CORRECTLY draw the human hands, feet, and head correctly. I'm already pretty good with drawing the head but improving couldn't hurt. But hands, man screw hands! Especially fingers! I'm hoping she teaches us how to draw those correctly! I've already made up my mind about taking Life Drawing 2. I've taken a liking of animation and drawing animation, and this class is helping me with drawing the human form which is all I've ever wanted to animate.

Lastly, I'd like to add, that I'm really happy that we have those Life Drawing sessions outside of class on Tuesdays. I've found those to be helpfull for just wanting a certain pose to draw and the model does it! Thank you! For my senior project I'd like to draw a frame by frame animation of fight scene soo I'll be needing those night sessions a lot when I begin to work on that. I'm happy with the class and excited for what we will learn next!

5th

Thank god this week is over!. I had bunch of stuff to do this week, 2 tests (which were canceled and moved back to later in the week...) a project and general daily hw stuff. AND I finally caught up on all my blogs I missed the past 2 weeks, sorry about that blog buddies... I'm actually happy all this work fell upon me on this week because next week Friday is my birthday! God knows I don't want to have a stressful week as I'm waiting for my birthday to approach.

Anyways this week in Life Drawing was pretty successful! After the lack of class time last week, I felt I made some progress. Though the pelvis took me awhile to get down but after she went over it again I'm getting it down.

Thursday I was really happy with that hour long drawing session! I am really happy with how it turned out. Though I picked a tough location. I had a very low angel and A LOT of foreshortening. It took me a couple of tries before I got it all situated. I was a bit angry when we had the break in the middle of it because after he re situated everyone kept moving him to where HE WASN'T! Whatever, In those situations I figured I just take a picture to be nice to the model. Here it is!

4th

Alright well this week was not a productive week. 1st being class was cancelled on that Tuesday, and second her leaving for the rally outside. At least we learned a new body part to draw and was given 30 mins of drawing. Still, I felt kind of rushed. Oh well my manikin is at least looking good.

On a side note my GD Project is finished. I'm quite proud of it. In case you don't remember I had to redesign some product that is a 3rd party brand. I chose Aim Toothpaste. Here's my final logo. Here was my final design.

Oh and here's my big inspiration for getting better at animating and drawing the human figure! His name is Ryan Woodward. I was floored at how good he was at creating a frame-by-frame animation. I also visited his site, where he has more awesome artworks. I hope to get this good one day, I just got to keep on drawing and practicing.

3rd

Alright, so let me apologize to my group members for not keeping up with this blog. I've been focusing on other projects and such that past two weeks, soo ill try my best to update chu on whats new with me and my life drawing skills. Lets start back from where I left off. Well two weeks ago we covered the torso by drawing the egg shape. I'm gonna be completely honest with you, the egg shape is my least favorite shape.... That guys is hard to draw! Granted I am getting better at drawing it.

After 2 days of drawing eggs and lines you get sick of the 30-60 sec sketches. Thankfully we had a couple long ones where I added more, because only drawing an egg and a line for 5 mins is freaking lame.

Its hard to talk about stuff that already happend... Granted its my fault I haven't been keeping up with this blog.. But outside of this class, I just about to finish up my GD project. We had to chose some 3rd party brand of something and redesign the logo and packaging. I chose Aim toothpaste. Its almost done and I'm really happy about having that over with.

2nd

Well, the second week is over and I'm finally feeling the pressure of college homework again. Graphic Design we were given our first project and assignment for the next week, which is, 30 sketches of a logo that I have redesign...fun. Computer Programming is starting to re warm me up in html code with the first assignment. Video Production we were given our first project also, making a musical composition short. And last in Life Drawing we finally started to work on the parts of the body.

Thought the first part we learned about was interesting, the time we spent drawing on it got a little boring. The first body part we learned about is the spine. We learned about how it is form throughout our early childhood. The later half of the class we spent the rest of the time drawing, the spine….or should I say a line. Now I don’t mean to be harsh but that was boring after a while, only having to draw the spine or a line isn’t fun. I know it will be important when we learn more body parts, but I feel the spine learning portion should be integrated with another part just so its less boring.

Thursday since our model didn’t show up we got to begin working on our manikins. I actually had enough time after the lecture portion to get some of it started. Our first assignment is base on the spine and neck muscles, which makes sense seeing as we are going along with the body parts we learned to drawn to learning what muscles go with the spine. Sadly, this past weekend was not a productive one, being because of the PAcker victory at the

Super Bowl and general laziness, I’m suffering from it in the start of this week. It’s mainly a wake up call early in the semester. When next weekend hits, I catch myself up and hopefully wont get behind.

First!

Here's my first blog entry, though I'm not completely new at blogging.  I've used Tumblr and Twitter before so I have some blogging experience, but right now I'm using this blog for my Life Drawing Class, where I'll be posting my work from the class.  I hope to use this blog long after Life Drawing to show future work.  I hope this blog will become an inspiration for me to keep drawing and updating to this blog.

A little bit about myself, my name's Garrett Dittrich and I'm a Multimedia Art and Design Major here at UW-Stout.  I'm currently in my Junior year and I've enjoyed everything Stout has offered me.  My big inspirations for anything I do, usually are traced back to my love of Video Games, Movies, and Animation/Cartoons.  Some of my favorite games include, Team Fortress 2, Bioshock and Half-Life 2. Some movies would be The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Wall-E, and Spirited Away.  As for cartoons and animes, Eureka 7, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Futurama.



As for my Life Drawing class that I've just started taking, I will tell you that I am excited.  I've been wanting to take this class since Freshman year.  I've been waiting to take a class that will improve how I draw the human body and form.  I hope to be able to draw a human pose without using a physical reference but instead draw from what I image in my head.  I want to be able to do that because right now, I've taken a liking in animation.  I drew a frame-by-frame animation for my Digital Narrative 2 class' final last semester, and I found myself saying a lot, man I wish I could draw what I imagine in my head onto the piece of paper and feel confident that it proportionally correct. When my Professor said that will be one of the skills I will gain from taking Life Drawing in class on Tues, I was very excited.