Project 5 The moving figure
Below is a photo taken by Martine Franck – I love the movement and playfulness in this composition.
Idea to focus on the motion and the shape of the movement and not detail
Exercise 1 Single moving figure
drawing moving figures is challenging – It feels that getting the lines is in finding the movement as soon as possible – keep looking at the model.
Sketchbook drawing – a woman moving whilst sitting
Below: Dega’s dancers always capture movement to beautifully! I look at the loose drawing and feel inspired by it. With a recent visit to Barcelona and falling in love with the raw emotion of the Gypsy flamenco dance, I feel I should add more drawings.
The last drawing is the drawing on the left, I am satisfied with the movement I could capture here – I placed my charcoal flat on the paper and moved it around as in the movement of the dance – tried to find some lines to indicate the gesture and darkened areas of form. I have enjoyed this exercise and would like to explore this more in drawings – I can also see it being used in my rhino project.
Exercise 2 Groups of figures
We visited the Fountains at Dubai Mall – everyone around the area, whether they are there to watch this ‘show’, or eating at a nearby restaurant or just walking along the waterside looking at these fountains “dancing” to music were taking videos and photos and selfies with the smart phones – the looking is almost lost, and it is more about an experience shared via a smartphone.
I was on a short trip to Barcelona during November 2018 and the Flamenco dancers were so intriguing for me to watch how their bodies moved. Sitting in a packed little room in a show, convinced me to use the dancers for this part of the exercise. We were not allowed to use cameras and I had to make notes and follow up with Youtube video footage to find all these moving figures. Their clapping hands, way the fingers move in each dance, how they hold their heads, their arms and their body, and the way their legs and feet move was what I hoped to capture in this movement of a group of dances.
