(SEMESTER TWO) Week 6: Movement

I found this week one of the most challenging of the semester, due to the speed in which we had to draw poses and the continuous movement of the model! It was easy to get frustrated if I felt that my work wasn't working and I couldn't seem to do the tasks very well; however, looking back I can see that some of the attempts have real potential, and pushing myself to try new things is how I will improve.

Warm-up exercises - charcoal:
 Top right - 15 secs
Middle left - 30 secs
Bottom left - 1 min
Bottom right - 2 mins
Middle right - 3 mins
Top middle - 4 mins
Top left - 5 mins

The warm-up exercises were good for getting back into the swing of things and approaching the form with the quick, gestural strokes that we would be needing for this session on movement. As usual, my longer drawings look overworked and stylised, while the quickest ones are my most successful ones. I need to work on bringing these successful elements into my longer drawings

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15 minutes - Yoga Poses - 3B pencil

Mel began moving between three poses and we had to draw each pose in the sequence. This was massively challenging! Jaime told us it was a good idea not to approach each pose separately, but to draw part of each pose every time it came around. This meant we were using our time effectively rather than waiting for each pose. While this made things easier, it was still so hard to be constantly changing focus and following both the model and your pencil! Having found the task so hard, I don't think my attempt turned out too bad - although it is rather loose and suggestive rather than 100% accurate, the sense of movement and sequence has been captured. (The top left drawing is a repeat of the crouched pose, when I didn't feel I had drawn it properly the first time).

15 minutes - 3 main poses and inbetweens - oil pastel and charcoal

This exercise required us to draw the 3 main poses in one medium and then fill in the spaces with 'inbetweens', using a different medium/colour. This was both harder and easier than the previous activity - on the one hand, it was even more information to be taking in and transferring to paper, but on the other hand it helped you visualise how the body was moving and how the poses worked together as a sequence. Ironically it is probably the seated pose that is my least successful here, as it is quite inaccurate! I think the other figures capture movement quite well, and the green is effective against the stronger black lines. I am also happy with the composition, which carries the motion across the page nicely.

5 minutes - charcoal and brown chalk

This exercise gave us such a short amount of time to work with that every second counted! Decisions had to be made very quickly, leading to fast, directional marks and only the brief suggestion of a figure. I was very surprised to find this my most effective drawing of the session, as I was really struggling with it during the time! Looking back later though, I could see how well the simple and rushed mark making had caught the motion of the figure. It works especially well since the motion itself was very fast, so the subject matter matches the technique and brings the image to life.

30 minutes - continuous line (180 degree view) - Micron fineliner 08

For the final activity we could choose a technique we wanted to revisit, and it was a static pose instead of movement. I really enjoyed the 'line for a walk' 180 degree view of the room last week, and since my second attempt last week hadn't gone too well, I wanted to try again. I am really happy with this outcome, and am glad I chose to use a pen here because I haven't used pen in life drawing for a good few weeks. Often this is because I'm worried of making a mistake but I wanted to be confident and see what happened, and it led to a bold and detailed result which I like a lot. I very much enjoyed capturing the body language and expressions of my fellow students as well as the model, and seeing as the students were all moving while drawing, this brought some of today's movement practice into play! I think the drawing has a real sense of character and story to it.

5 minutes - continuous line - Micron fineliner 08

I had 5 minutes to spare at the end so instead of overworking my larger drawing I filled the space at the bottom with a close-up study of Mel's foot. I couldn't quite get it right so I made a few attempts. The bottom left is probably the most accurate one, although it still could be improved. I think with this technique though, accuracy is not quite as important, as it's more about the quality of line and how the object is drawn rather than having a perfect final outcome.