Final

And so, and so, and so,

I really enjoyed the final project, I think it would have helped though to have done it two or three times first to get a better feel for the size of the image and the ink. I do feel like the size really gave me the chance to make some bold strokes in wash, and really get my whole body into the movement. At first mapping out the image seemed a little difficult, but I made some compositional decisions to not include all of the spikes and to enlarge the image to the most bulky point of the shell.
It was hard to position the shell, because the spikes form straight along three "sides" of the shell, many positions (with a diagonal axis) still seemed flat. So I minimized the spines and tightened in the composition.
From the time between the final and midterm, I felt like I learned a lot just because we were revisiting some of the structures that most commonly define us as human--hands, feet, and faces. It's really relieving to be able to understand how to really "see" these structures because you can start to get past these really popular misconceptions of what a nose or mouth or anything looks like.
I feel like in the last studio, the full body image I drew was my most successful. I was also excited to start using conte again, it has a really great quality to it. I can't wait to do more like this.
Some things I still need to work on are checking and rechecking plane changes to make sure that when something is pointed at the station point, it makes sense in how it falls away from that point. I would also like to keep working on contours and exaggerating lines where they need to be and recognizing lines that need to be simplified or left as they appear. I also want to work on starting lighter and moving towards the dark.


Final Images on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10thstreeteast/sets/72157622914297057/