This week I did really tried to connect my forms. Mattesi observes that Michelangelo had a great ability to draw anatomy as groups of muscles and bones that harmonized one with another. Many artists draw individual muscles and structures great but fail to see them as a whole and how they relate one to another. By drawing through the subject I was able to better connect my structures and feel more rythym in my drawings.
Another great help was to look for the "D" shapes. Mattesi suggest as an excercise to cut out a D-shaped piece of paper and place it on your drawing surface. He instructs you to then draw the figure around the D. This excericise to help you find the most major force in the pose. While I did not use the cut paper, I did begin every drawing today with the letter D and was amazed at how quickly I was able to make sense of the gesture on my paper.
Today I was very excited to return to the studio and practice more of what I've learned from Mattesi. I struggled the first little while as I was more focused on doing a good drawing than I was applying his principles, but after being humbled I returned to what I had learned last week about drawing in four point perspective and this is my result. Not too exaggerated, but I really liked the twisting/zigzag movement from her left foot all the way through her neck. I feel more force in this than all my other gestures from the day.This second drawing I was trying to apply what Mattesi teaches about finding form. He talks about moving away from the edge of the figure and try to re-mold the figure on your paper as it moves through space. This "re-molding" is a principle that really changed my approach today. I'm not too happy about how messy this drawing turned out, but between the foreshortening and contour modeling I felt I somewhat achieved what I was going for.
