Muscles!

This week in life drawing, I didn't get much time to actually practice drawing the spine. After learning about how it curves and what the spine is made up with, I had my shell critique and only got to draw one drawing from the model this week. I really hope we get more time to practice with the spine as well as learn how to draw the central line in the front, because I missed then while in critique as well.
I worked on building my muscles on my little skeleton model this last weekend, and found it a little difficult. Even though the book provides a variety of views from different angles sometimes it is hard to tell how big and the location of each muscle in comparison to each other. Some of the muscles that we were supposed to put on the skeleton this week were pretty little and just ended up getting covered by other muscles which is a little frustrating after working hard to make sure they are in the right spot and shaped the same as the one in the book. I think once we get further along in building the skeletons it will be more fun because there will be more muscles that I will be familiar with and be able to recognize on the body when I am drawing the model in class.

First week

The first week of classes went surprisingly well. I was excited that we got to start drawing an actual model right away. At first I thought it was going to be a little awkward, but it wasn't! Our first model we had did a really good job switching poses and making sure everyone got to draw from all angles. It took me a little while to get warmed up and used to drawing again, since I haven't taken a drawing class for a couple of semesters. Drawing in gesture form for the first half hour of class really helped me get things in proportion and see the figure as a whole. I am still having a hard time drawing with loose lines and trying to show the whole form only drawing the lines that are closest or most dominant in the figure.
After doing the in class contour drawing, I realized that I had done my wrong. I drew lines going in both directions to show the curves of the body form from both directions. I also, did it with fast lines and filling in most of the form with the checkered board-like lines. However, after looking around the room and seeing how other students created their contour drawing along with the discussion about how everyone drew theirs, I now have a better idea of how to draw using contour lines.

Intro Post

My name is Sam, and this is the first Life Drawing class I have taken. I have always been fascinated with drawing people, particularly faces, however I would like to expand my horizons by drawing the whole body. I have done lots of self portraits and people drawings in several of my art classes in the past and have really enjoyed working with the human figure.
I think this class will help me to draw things in three-dimension and learn how to draw better with line rather than just shading. I want to work on having clean lines rather than ones that have a sketchy quality along with having variety with my line weight. I also want to improve on drawing things/body parts in proportion with each other.
Here are a couple of drawings/paintings I have done in other classes.