Drapes and Folds

On Friday, Brenda was our substitute lecturer since our Fashion Drawing and Life Drawing lecturers were on holiday. At first, I wasn't that happy to have her back as our substitute lecturer since she didn't help me much the last time she substituted. But last Friday, I learned a great deal from her. Since there were only a few students who turned up, she was able to give attention to each student.

She was especially helpful during the Life Drawing class although, probably judging from the seeming lethargic atmosphere inside the room, proposed to cancel the class should the model not show up. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the model turned up albeit late. Before the model's arrival, Brenda asked everyone to do an exercise. She called it "Imagining the ant's journey". First we drew a letter of an alphabet, in this case, a "W" and made it 3-dimensional. Second, we imagined an ant walking up the alphabet. At each turn of the plane, we had to differentiate the shade or colour of the planes. The front plane would be lighter if the light is shining on it, the top would have to be darker than the front, the side would be darker than the top, and the lines at the back or where the planes couldn't be seen would be darkest. The object of the exercise was to make it easier for us to draw the drapes and folds of a fabric since a fold in a fabric would have different shades.




I, and I suppose the rest of the class, thought it was great. I wondered why we weren't taught this exercise beforehand. It would have made the Rendering the Fabric" relatively easier, for me at least since I had a problem looking at light, medium, and dark shades on a fabric. At the end of the session, we were able to achieve a better output, that's my opinion anyway. I was able to make 3 illustrations but I didn't like the first 2. I did feel proud of my number 3 illustration.

My classmate, Summer, didn't have any problem rendering or drawing for that matter. Her folio work was just awesome. She could already be doing professional illustration if she wanted to. I suppose that's the reason why she doesn't really pay attention to the lectures at times. She wouldn't be staying long at MSF though since she'd be going back to Korea by the end of the Feb then possibly going on to Europe.