PART FOUR: DRAWING FIGURES: Project:The moving figure

I've been working on the moving figure project here and there throughout Part 4 - there have been good days and bad. My local park is a good source for people, it being a popular park and also thankfully the summer holidays at the moment but saying that, children are really hard to draw because they just don't stop! I took my little sketchbook to WOMAD festival and managed a few quick sketches there - lots of interesting people to watch, much stiller than children in the park, and crowds gathered together becoming a mass as opposed to individuals. I tried to draw from people off the TV one morning but had trouble with that - I think not being able to see their body as a whole moving this way and that made it quite tricky to make a decent imitation of their movements. Cafes are good places to draw I found - people sat at tables chatting away or walking by in their own worlds.

The main challenge in drawing people as they move so swiftly is trying to gain an idea of their actions and gestures in as few strokes as possible. In some drawings I managed this well, in others not so well. I did quite a few drawings of people on or pushing their bicycles, and just indicating the bike itself by drawing the round shape of a wheel helped to indicate what the individual was doing. I'm always tempted to introduce more elements into these drawings, as opposed to keeping it simple with a few descriptive lines, and this can be a problem with such little time. I always found that I'd start with the person's top half of the body, usually the head, and by the time I'd got to their legs or feet, they'd moved on, walked past or the angle had completely changed, so this produced some pretty hilarious looking legs! Or no legs at all. I seem to want to encapsulate something about that person, not just the movement they're making, for example the way they hang their head, their glasses or the fact they're rummaging around in their bag, or on the phone. Catching the moment is clearly something that is important to me, and focusing on that helps to explain the narrative. It's a fun past time even if it doesn't produce any amazing drawings.