Wednesday 21 September 2011

More Snail Studies

I may not have been the most active blogger, but I have been drawing my chosen animal- since it is an interesting one. I've been thinking that, for my portrait- I would look something more like the Blob, than a strange human/animal hybrid, since snails, like most invertibrates don't have an internal skeleton, though they do have a shell- which I was thinking of 'dropping' for my final portrait as, at least now- it doesn't seem to fit well on the human body (at least in my head). I still have tonnes of sketches to do, and a reveiw of the 1986 version of 'The Fly' (which I have no idea how to start or finnish.)

in anycase; Here's the sketches I've been working on over the past three days:



As you can see from these sketches- I'm not that good at drawing Snail shells...

2 comments:

  1. just a thought...you could try drawing the shell around an axis (like a helter skelter). A lot of gastropod shells are built this way so it might help to get the proprtions right.

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  2. Hey Ami,

    You suggest you're not sure how to start the film review; start with something that you feel confident about - and build it up from there. The good thing about writing in the 21st century is the ability to cut and paste, so just get your thoughts down in the first instance, and polish afterwards. The brief gives you very clear instructions in terms of structure/use of quotes/illustrations etc., but you can focus on the element that feels most important to you. Then, the trick is to find some views of others that support/challenge your verdict on the film; in the space of one review you can set up an argument between 2 points of view - which is why, we don't use 'I'.

    In terms of your drawings and your logic - yes, a snail is a tricky one because it doesn't have any bones. That said, perhaps the shell is only part formed; it doesn't have to be as literal as a 'humanoid slug with a shell on its back'. Who knows, maybe the hybridisation isn't neat and tidy at all. Perhaps you need to find out how the shell forms on a snail - what stages it goes through, and from what compounds it is created, and so work out how maybe your own bones could have been fused together to create a 'shell-like' protuberance? In terms of presentation your drawings, consider cropping off the spiral-binding; it's distracting, because it's bolder than your pencil lines. Also, simple choose a larger size for your images when you're embedding them into your blog template. I like the topmost drawing - it's pretty monstrous-looking (for a snail!) :D

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