Posted on by saravipond

FIN 210 Unit 2

Bonus Artist Talk for FIN 210 – Katie Brennan

ARTIST TALK – Andrew Moncrief

Human Form and Anatomy Notes & Drawings

The Figure and Anatomy notes

-artistic anatomy- how the substructure of the human form influences the surface appearance – this especially relates to the skeletal and muscle structures, their relationship to each other, and their relationship to the visible surface of the fleshed figure

-surface activity can be very subtle or very abrupt

-bony landmarks- where skeletal structure rises to the surface and makes itself evident

-musculature- note especially how it relates to the skeletal structure and how it changes with various movements and positions of the body

Cumberland Life Drawing October 21st

Cumberland Life Drawing October 21, 2020
Cumberland Life Drawing October 21, 2020. Contrapposto stance on the left.
Cumberland Life Drawing October 21, 2020

GESTURE DRAWINGS October 30, 2020

  • Charcoal pencil
  • Charcoal pencil
  • Charcoal pencil
  • Conte – negative space
  • Graphite
  • Charcoal pencil
  • Conte
  • Graphite
  • 15 minute continuous line
30 minute continuous line
Tonal drawing with chalk pastel (about 45 minutes)

Sketchbook drawings

From an internet photo
From an internet photo

Cumberland Life Drawing November 4th

Drawings – Week of November 2nd

  • Charcoal
  • Charcoal negative space
  • Graphite sustained
  • Charcoal scribbled
  • Conte, maybe some mass effect
  • Graphite, sustained
  • Charcoal
  • Conte
  • Ink background, plain paper, chalk pastels
  • Black Stonehenge paper, chalk pastels
Ink background, plain paper, chalk pastels

Week of November 9th

Hand on right done first, trying to emulate my actual skin tones. Many different hues used.
Hand on left done next, trying a variety of colour combinations. 5th finger and hypothenar eminence were done using only 3 different hues. I am most satisfied with that.

Critique Drawing

Above drawings are from videos my son sent me from his rock climbing outings. I like the way the figure position and the rock/hold arrangement create the sense of movement up and across the picture.
A still from the rock climbing video. He wasn’t allowed to climb without a shirt on, so he later struck similar poses without a shirt on at home, and a friend took pictures of him. I used those for the shading and musculature of his torso and upper arms. Not perfect, but I was able to create what I felt was realistic.
Rough coloured sketch for Critique Drawing.

“New Horizons”, October, 2020. (22″ x 30″)

Chalk pastel on white Stonehenge paper.

Although enjoying himself, my son was finding life away from home for the first time somewhat difficult, especially in the face of the pandemic. So when he sent me videos of himself rock climbing I felt the parallels with what he was facing were very evident. I reviewed a variety of figure positions in the videos, but felt this was the best as it had areas of muscle tension and relaxation, some challenging foreshortening, and I liked the sense of movement of the figure up the wall. The holds/rocks are as they were in the video, so this further convinced me to use this composition as they too contributed to the sense of movement.

I felt limited by the detail I could get with the chalk pastel, but perhaps a larger variety of colours might help. In my mind, I wanted this to be more finely detailed and shaded, but I was left feeling the chalk pastel don’t lend itself to that effect. The raw sienna I used for the background was more concentrated where I had rubbed out my drawing grid lines, and I couldn’t get rid of it. However, it mimicked nicely the seams of the plywood on the walls anyway, so I left it and thoroughly erased all the grid lines to get the same effect.