what I've been up to:

It's a myth that those who do art can draw. I was good at drawing once: in the first grade. My teacher would sit at the piano and play and my fellow pupils and I would draw "what the music makes you feel". No matter what music was playing I'd draw a landscape: three mountains in the background, two smallish hills in front, a tree to the right side with a path curving up and through the middle, and always ALWAYS grass blowing in the wind. The music always made me think of wind. I even got so good others would hire me to draw grass for them. (Lala, Kait, remember that?). Then I went through a stage of drawing irises (the flower), cartoon pigs, and bubble letters. Then I stopped drawing. stopped cause I realized I'm not all that good. Naturally I'm my worst critic and all but the truth of it is: relative to artists, drawing aint my thing. So you can imagine my hesitation for signing up for a figure drawing class....but I wanted the challenge. I wanted to be able to look at a person and portray them more accurately than my signature stick figure. And {i hope this doesn't come off braggy} I'm really proud of my improvement! wanna see?

*I've cleverly titled them for your enjoyment.

photo of a drawing of a blue girl by a silly girl with long toes.

old girl body with a little girl head

I hope this bum doesn't offend anyone. {FYI we don't have nude models at BYU, speedos and bikinis is how we roll thank you very much.} I promise you won't see any other bums on this blog or in my art, this particular work was to copy a masters work.

girl with outstanding body strength who can balance on one foot and look like she is sitting in an invisible chair.

okay but in all seriousness, my favorite exercise was doing blind contour drawings. I loved them so much in fact I filled an entire sketch book full of them (I'll share these later)! For those of you who don't know what blind contour means it's the act of drawing something without looking down at your paper AT ALL. I took the blind part very seriously and even taped a paper towel under my eyes so I couldn't cheat and see out of my peripheral. tricky yes, but the results are soo fun especially when coupled with all nighters.

(you might want to click to enlarge them to their full glory)

My teacher called me "the blind contour master" so I'm changing my future plans to become a full time blind contour portraiture artist (cause there is totally an industry out there for that profession). I charge $1 for commissions

hehe

2 finals down, 1 to go!!