I’m in NY, doing a figurative sculpture marathon with Bruce Gagnier at the NY Studio School. I’m three days into a two week intensive, and I’m loving it.
One of the topics my instructor presses is contrapposto. I learned about contrapposto at WWU, but I’m understanding the real value of it now. Bruce Gagnier showed me how exaggerating the tilt of the hips, and then exaggerating a responsive tilt to the rib cage (not the shoulders, as I had previously thought, but the imagined/invisible rib cage) and moving it to the side makes for a dynamic drawing or sculpture. He’s trying to get me to push my drawings more into motion. It’s good.
See how the sections are tilted, but also pulled side-to-side?
For another example, here’s my classmate’s figure drawing. She tilted the hips one way and tilted the ribs the other way, but she didn’t off-set the pieces to the right and left. Gagnier ripped the drawing into 3 pieces so we could move and tilt each section. What a difference the changes make! I’m adding contrapposto paper dolls to my class lessons!
Here is how the pieces can be used to shift the figure’s segments left and right.
Effing Argots
I was slow to catch on to this lesson. Too slow. Gagnier speaks the most stubbornly convoluted art speak I’ve ever heard. For the love of Pete, it took me two days to understand what it’ll take me two minutes to show my figure drawing class. An articulate vocabulary is expressive and delicious, but exclusionary argots have no place in our Seattle Artist League.
Here’s a wee snippitty boob flick from The Patriot TV sequential, to illustriate my tantamount anti-idolatryius, in excelsis deo. https://youtu.be/P5-9Rfrui9A?t=1
The League has a new mural, designed and painted by Nikki Barber. The mural honors Charleena Lyles, a 30-year-old Black, pregnant woman who was fatally shot in North Seattle by two white Seattle police officers on June 18, 2017. This post was written by Nikki Barber. Painting the mural, there were occasional, unpleasant jeers, and …
Dallas Contemporary’s digital exhibition EVERYTHING HURTS opened yesterday, June 16, 2020. In response to the recent murder of George Floyd, Dallas-based artist Jammie Holmes, with the support of Library Street Collective, initiated a public demonstration across-five U.S. cities on Saturday, May 30 between the hours of 11:30am and 9pm EST. Airplanes with banners highlighting Floyd’s …
Last week Nikki Barber and I surprised my drawing classes with an unexpected session of printmaking. After a few weeks of drawing practice, Beginning and Figure Drawing students made monotypes for the first time, and LOVED IT. Yesterday I posted still life monoprints by the beginning drawing students. Today are figurative monoprints by the figure …
[image_with_animation image_url=”7550″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Using a ruler and colored pencils/pens on paper, or string and nails, or by fastening skewers, use straight lines at intervals to make a curve. There are a lot of ways to approach this project. For a simplified “How To” with 3 printable templates, click here. To print out graph …
The Dynamic Dance of Contrapposto
I’m in NY, doing a figurative sculpture marathon with Bruce Gagnier at the NY Studio School. I’m three days into a two week intensive, and I’m loving it.
One of the topics my instructor presses is contrapposto. I learned about contrapposto at WWU, but I’m understanding the real value of it now. Bruce Gagnier showed me how exaggerating the tilt of the hips, and then exaggerating a responsive tilt to the rib cage (not the shoulders, as I had previously thought, but the imagined/invisible rib cage) and moving it to the side makes for a dynamic drawing or sculpture. He’s trying to get me to push my drawings more into motion. It’s good.
See how the sections are tilted, but also pulled side-to-side?
For another example, here’s my classmate’s figure drawing. She tilted the hips one way and tilted the ribs the other way, but she didn’t off-set the pieces to the right and left. Gagnier ripped the drawing into 3 pieces so we could move and tilt each section. What a difference the changes make! I’m adding contrapposto paper dolls to my class lessons!
Here is how the pieces can be used to shift the figure’s segments left and right.
Effing Argots
I was slow to catch on to this lesson. Too slow. Gagnier speaks the most stubbornly convoluted art speak I’ve ever heard. For the love of Pete, it took me two days to understand what it’ll take me two minutes to show my figure drawing class. An articulate vocabulary is expressive and delicious, but exclusionary argots have no place in our Seattle Artist League.
Here’s a wee snippitty boob flick from The Patriot TV sequential, to illustriate my tantamount anti-idolatryius, in excelsis deo. https://youtu.be/P5-9Rfrui9A?t=1
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Dallas Contemporary’s digital exhibition EVERYTHING HURTS opened yesterday, June 16, 2020. In response to the recent murder of George Floyd, Dallas-based artist Jammie Holmes, with the support of Library Street Collective, initiated a public demonstration across-five U.S. cities on Saturday, May 30 between the hours of 11:30am and 9pm EST. Airplanes with banners highlighting Floyd’s …
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