Visual Design Week 5 - Dinosaurs are cool, end of

Week 5 was as pleasantly lovely as the trip to Bradgate park was, mainly due to seeing dinosaur bones but also just going to a museum in general. I like the feel of museums and how there's so many old things all sitting in modern glass cases and it's all just rather pretty really. I also felt relatively happy drawing the bones, as it didn't require the same amount of attention to setting up perspective as the previous weeks had done, so I was sort of back in my comfort zone. In saying that, I feel I could have probably produced more exciting drawings in the end considering I quite enjoyed doing them.

But obviously, first of all I had my usual life drawing class back to normal again, so here's all the work from there.

The two pages of studies above, not including the one in pencil on the first page, are all studies done outside of class using a material you can't erase, and so I used both fineliner and biro. I ranged from doing 10 second studies to ones which took a little more like 2 minutes-3 minutes. Overall, I quite enjoyed this exercise but found the only drawing I really like is the one on the bottom left of the second page, mainly because I liked the quiffy hair, but also because I feel it was mildly more successful than the others.

These are the usual warm up studies from the beginning of the life drawing class, however with a slight difference this time. We used charcoal for a few of them, and I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of it. It never really seems to do what I want it to, but I feel like being forced to use it in class will help me develop further so I can't complain.

This was a study in which we were given around 20 minutes after doing an initial 1 minute thumbnail to help us plan it out a bit. I have to say, I'm particularly pleased with this one as I think it highlights the fact I'm not very good at foreshortening. The feet are terrible as well, but I was a shown a trick in order to draw feet better later on in the session which I can now take on to further drawings. Although not hugely successful as a whole, after having avoided charcoal for so long I can't help but be pleased with what I finally managed.

And there we have all my bone studies, with the last one being my final piece. I feel like my final doesn't look all that much different from my preparatory studies, and I believe this is because I didn't spend enough time drawing my final and instead composed something rather simple, and it barely fills half the page which isn't ideal either. Overall though, I had fun drawing in the museum, and even went for trip number 2 a few days later and enjoyed it even more, and I can take a lot away from the experience as well.