Life Drawing- Movement (Week 4)

This was fourth week within life drawing and were are coming closer to the end of our studies. This week we were focusing on the movement that can be created by our models and how the body changes and looks upon each pose and just how beautiful and elegant the body can look even during simple movements such as walking and standing. Upon witnessing a simple, moving body you realise all the moving muscles and changes in muscles tension and weight distribution that is constantly moving within us as humans. Changing as we shift our weight to one foot from another and holding our body up and falling naturally as we relax our body weight.

During the lecture which we had gotten from Sarah when she was discussing and explaining what we were going to be drawing in the next upcoming lesson, the way she showed with her own body and when explaining the movement of ones body with something so simple such as walking and how every person has a different walk and shifts their body differently and is unique within themselves, was really fascinating. She showed as she walked across the front of the class that walking is not just a structured and repetitive movement of a characters legs a arms and that each character will show their different personalities within their walk. They may swing their arms erratically or keep them close to their side, they may be a very straight postured person and walk with large steps, tall and proud or they could be hunched and walk with a shuffle or uneven stepping. Also another thing that seems so obvious but something that escaped from my head when I’m stressing to create a perfect walking animation for a character, is that when we walk we lift almost our entire body up, crash down and go lower while we bend our knee for the fall and to prepare ourselves for the next step we then again elevate ourselves. When we are drawing a movement such as walking we must be aware in how we move our entire body for the process and not just a couple of repetitive swing movements of arms and legs like a unrealistic stick man drawing.

The first drawings we were set to do with our models was a continuous line drawing of the male models continuous sequence of him slowly walking around in a circle. The idea of this drawing was not to focus so much on the details of the model, but more of the way he relaxed and moved his body, paying attention to how his arms, legs and head moved in harmony with his body and how his muscles and weight distributed on his body. Although I had drawn this type off art before, were a continuous line follows the models slow moving and posing body. I was a bit out of practice and struggled to keep up and draw any form of structure within the model. The model had walked around in a circle a number of times so I decided upon the method of simply drawing a line of movement for where the model moved his body, arms and feet and with the more time that went on I added onto his detail and then added more for a accurate representation of his body. I enjoyed the quickness of this pose and how it felt freeing to draw something that ended up looking really funky and artistic.

This drawing was an exact same walking cycle as the first task, however this time the model walked at a much faster and erratic pace. As I had already had a quick practice of how to draw the sequence of movements, I was already more aware of the techniques and methods which I would need in order to successfully document this model and get the most out of the fast movements. As the model began to walk around in a fast pace circle, I first drew straight lines in the places were the model almost stood still for a second or was a chance that would be easy for me to draw in more detail. I then immediately after my first drawing of still lines focused on their line of movement and drew this out in simple form and then added more details onto were the model leaned in with his weight and how his body was moving naturally. This fast pace movement was much easier than the first one for catching a line of movement, only because I got to practice with the first one and developed my skills and methods before I begun.

The next two studies were ten minutes each and were still poses which the male model had done throughout his walking sequence. The idea of the task was to focus your interest and drawing on how the line within the body is moving even when it is still, how each part of the model moves and were their weight is focused. For my two drawings the poses which I had gotten were quite similar as the models leg and most of their weight was rested within their front leg, on top of a wooden box and then the rest of their body was relaxed. However the two angles of this pose were vastly different from one another, as for the left pose I was in a straight view of the side angle and for the right drawing I was at the same angle but with more of a tilt to the left. It was interesting to draw the same drawing but just at different angles. I preferred the right drawing as the front straight side view was too basic for me and almost became harder to draw with such little movement.

The last set of drawings which we had to do were simple standing poses, with a slight tilt in their movement. The left drawing was almost a side preview of the model where her arm was resting upon her back and her face in the opposite direction. I had drawn another pose before very similar to this and had met with the same difficulties which I had done before. I found it difficult to correctly draw the woman’s back, in correct proportion to her arm, but I found that maybe as I was more aware of it having drawn it before, then I had a better understanding of what steps I may take in order to draw the model more correctly.

The second drawing was the same view of the model but was with a almost flipped viewing. This pose was one were I was far too focused on trying to correctly draw the proportions of the woman, as well as including all the correct amount of detail and hadn’t been able to complete it. This was a lesson for me, as I need to first draw the movement of the model which is what the task was and then focus on her correct proportions and details once I had gotten a rough idea of her body.