Moses

Start Date: May 21 2012 Finish Date: May 21 2012

With the end of the semester quickly approaching and the deadline for this project coming even faster, I was beginning to worry that I might not finish in time. I talked my worries over with my teacher yesterday before class started, and she told me I'd probably have to scale down the size of my drawings so that I could finish in a timely manner. When class started she comes up to me and says that she's going to do an experiment on me and to draw a 7X7 square in my drawing notebook. She informed me that she was going to give me one square of this reference at a time, and that I was obviously supposed to draw it. This drawing is a recreation of Michelangelo's, Moses [See the Original!]. At first I was given the bottom right portion of this sculpture mouth and beard] and was pretty doubtful that the pieces would all fit together. I then moved on to the top left, left eye and hair] I found this part to be difficult because in the references I was given the hair and the background all seemed to fade into each other. I wanted to find a way to get the curls of his hair to stand out. This is when my teacher chimed in, and subtly reminded me that she loved the star mark I used when drawing a piece last semester, so I figured that's how she wanted me to tackle this corner too. I used the 'starring' mark to make the curls stand out and then used an eraser so that light could be present. Next I was given the top right right eye and background] I didn't really find this piece to be difficult, I found that it went by pretty fast and I guess that I was used to how I needed to shade so the color was the way it needed to be. and so I was able to deliver it on paper more accurately. Finally I was given the bottom left, beard] the reference looked pretty scary, so I was more nervous about the administration of this piece. I didn't want this piece to look messed up or not fit in the space with the other pieces. Looking back, my fears about this piece seem silly. Drawing in multiple pieces seemed to help me pay attention to details that I probably would've missed had I just been given one single reference; such as the stripes on the wall and the curliness of Moses's hair. I think that this was a very interesting technique to approaching a drawing that seems terrifying on the exterior. I am very happy with this piece.