The Skyliner

Issue date: 2/21/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Andrea Brazell/The Skyliner Brandon Nelson, senior arts, holds a pose as Aubrey Jones, freshman undecided, studies and sketches his figure.

Carrie Parker
Staff Writer


Students-turned-models strike a pose for art students working on figure drawing in the Drawing II course taught by Jim Craft.

Drawing II students have to see three-dimensional figures in front of them to learn how to accurately depict mass, space and proportion.

Figure drawing is not as simple as picking up a pencil and drawing skin. It is necessary for these students to know how the bones and muscles work together underneath the skin to form the human body.

"We can't look at a two-dimensional picture of the human form and just know how things are supposed to look," said Aubrey Jones, freshman undecided. "We need models to pose for us so that we can see with our own eyes how the muscles work underneath skin. We have to learn how to correctly portray the body for our figure drawing for it to be convincing and realistic."

At the beginning of class, Drawing II students do several quick, three-minute gesture drawings. This is meant to be a quick warm-up practice using long, abrupt pencil strokes to capture the basic form and position of the body. The model will strike up to 10 quick poses where their body is twisted in extreme, exaggerated angles.

"Most of the twists that our models do are mainly to show the torso," said Jamela Carnes, sophomore art. "We do this exercise for practice, because once you find the torso in a gesture drawing, it directs the entire picture. The more extreme poses are meant to accentuate the torso and muscle definition."

After the warm-up exercises are completed, the artists move on to the more complicated drawing. The model is then set up to do an extended pose that takes around two hours. Although it is a long stretch of time, the model is not in an extreme, difficult pose like they would be with the gesture drawings.

This time the model is in a more comfortable position, such as sitting or lying down. This drawing will be more complete and much more detailed, and the finished product is then turned in to be critiqued.

So students who choose to model for the Drawing II class need to wear tighter, form-fitting clothing such as shorts and tank tops. Tighter clothing is required because folds in looser clothing can hinder the artists' view of their figure.

Drawing II meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:25 to 12:05. Any student interested in modeling for the class can contact Jim Craft at (864)977-7095 or jcraft@ngu.edu.

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