Well guys, It's been half the first term already. Being someone who's been through Sheridan and Calarts, its interesting to get both sides of life drawing expectations from both schools.
I'm possibly too interpretive for Sheridan, and maybe too focused on structure in Calarts. Sheridan really stresses on line quality, proportion, and construction while Calarts is more explorative and experimental. I think this also has something to do with the two degrees being different. Sheridan's animation couse is BAA (Bachelor of Applied Arts) while Calarts is BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts). Most of the life drawing teachers here, are complete fine artists. Although they do teach anatomy and structure, I can tell they hate it.
There are weaknesses and advantages to both teachings. In Sheridan's animation course, you really understand form, proportion and line quality, a huge HUGE biggie in animation. However, this can limit you in the way you draw and design characters, environments, etc. It still happens to me, I start drawing things as a stock symbol. In Calarts, you really get a sense of observation, design and interpretation. This is exceptional and super important for design, composition and exploration - giving new takes on characters. This gives you new ways to solve problems. The down fall to this: they don't want you to focus on structure. Your drawings will suffer having solidity in them without them. Thats a huge problem when it comes to animation. The program still sees itself as experimental.
There's always this debate of sheridan kids seeing calarts as "too artsy farsty" (which i can agree) and calarts kids seeing sheridan as "too constricted, playing by the rules" (which i can too agree)
It's like saying Sheridan prepares you to work in studios, while Calarts prepares you for innovation and invention. Both have their own ways of problem solving. That's what I learned.
I'm sure the schools can learn well from each other.
So in other words, both schools have their ups and downs, so its always best to remain in the middle ground with this situation. As far as where I'm at, I suck at life drawing. My drawings at calarts are too "boring", and if I were in Sheridan it'd be too "artsy fartsy". Anyways, I shall upluurrrd.
My attemps to academic drawing. (AKA My attempt to the Sheridan way)
Structure, structure, structure... Line quality, line quality, line quality...
For me, the sheridan way is my time of purely studying the model. Looking at proportion, shapes, form, construction, etc. My life drawing classes is 6 hours long, I use the first three to do complete studies. Most of it is just lines and a lot of gesture work. I also study arrangements of the face, and specific body parts.
Most of these were done between 30 seconds to 5 mins for each pose/face/figure. The last 2, I think they were 10 mins? I can't remember.. For this section, I mostly use a conte stick (a sheridan favorite) and charcoal.
The interpretive way (The Calarts Tradition):
In other words, f*ck the rules and f*ck around. Explore and make design choices...
So yeah, there's me with barely any structure. Now this is interesting because I am getting some really exciting design choices and approaches. I'm using any medium I can find, like a twig and some ink, or drawing with my none dominant hand. The rules that I learned in Sheridan does not apply, and I am making some crazy choices.
The interesting ting about Calarts' life drawing course is that they want your models to have story. Story, character, narration etc. If they are wearing a witch costume, dont draw the witch in the costume, draw an entirely different character or something. Even up to now, I find this insanely hard.
Well, there's that to this entry.
