After two long weeks of lab work and one INTENSE first week of classes, I have finally wound down enough to post in here again. This semester I'm signed up for two studio classes - Figure Drawing I and Color Theory. So far in Color Theory we have only watched a movie about the glassblower Dale Chihuly, and all I have to say about his work is "HOW"
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| Cadmium Yellow Basket Set with Dark Oxblood Lip Wraps, 1993 |
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| Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Chandelier, 2004 |
Venetians, 1990
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| Pink and Opal Seaform Set, 1981 |
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| Putti in Nest Kissing Opalescent Hummingbird, 1999 |
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| Reed Green Persian Set with Scarlet Lip Wrap, 2000 |
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| Shell Pink Basket Set with Oxblood Wraps, 1995 |
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| Two Opalescent Putti in Tree with Lovely Fairy-Wrens, 1999 |
....HOW.
And I drew from my first ever live nude model in my figure drawing class last Thursday. It was surprisingly not awkward, which is a relief because this class is 2 1/2 hours long. But I am so happy I'm finally taking this class. Drawing from life is a huge part of scientific illustration, and it's something I haven't had much experience with. And since live models can't stay in the same position for hours, no perfectionist tendencies are allowed. We'll see how that goes..
These are just a couple sketches I made in my class. We focused on gestural drawings, starting from ten seconds and going up to ten minutes. These were drawn on 18"x24" newsprint with a stick of charcoal.
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| 10 seconds |
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| 30 seconds (left) and 1 minute (right) |
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| 3 minutes |
Kind of added a couple vertebrae to her backbone in that last one, but if Ingres can do it it's fine, right?
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| 5 minutes |
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| 5 minutes |
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| 10 minutes |
And finally, I wanted to leave on this note. I'm sure everyone in the world has already seen this, but it's good enough to look at a second time. Or third or fourth or twentieth time. This is the beautiful restoration of a 19th century Spanish fresco done by a lovely elderly woman who frequented the church that this piece resided in. Apparently this woman was unhappy with the rate of the restoration project, so she took it upon herself to finish the job, and it resulted with what BBC says looks like a "crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic." But this destruction of an antique fresco has proven to be beneficial, as it has attracted thousands of tourists and has even needed to be roped off and watched by security guards. I would pay big bucks to see her restoration of the Sistine Chapel.
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| Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) restored into Ecce Mono (Behold the Monkey) |
Gah, I love Chihuly so much. I saw an exhibition of his at the Fairchild Botanical Gardens in Miami a few years ago. You'd walk around the gardens and suddenly see bright red reeds, or unnaturally large flowers peeking out of the natural flora. And the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach has a small room with a glass ceiling, and through it you just see pure Chihuly goodness. I'm not sure if that last one makes much sense, but it's awesome and you should go see it next time you're in SoFla. I like yo' sketches, girl. And the restoration story makes me SO MAD >:[[[
ReplyDeleteI think the movie we watched was about how he made the Botanical Gardens exhibit! It was crazy. There was one part where he was just throwing glass tubes into the river for like 10 minutes, haha. And I will have to see it next time! I didn't know it was still going. I should probably research museums in Florida a little more, lol. Oh my god, the first time I heard about the restoration thing, I was like "who the HELL did this," but now I can't stop laughing every time I see it. It was just a sweet old lady who thought she could paint like a master from the 19th century. It could happen to anyone. haha
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