life size drawing

Drawings completed with paper on the floor, laid out in the same cofiguration as the model / skeleton - paper did not need to have parallel edges. 

The scale dictated drawing implements used at the end of bamboo canes, the drawing distance allowing for a keener view of the subject and distance from the paper surface too.

Drawings done quickly. Mark making energetic and loose.

Display on the wall at the session's end highlighted the monumental 'other' of such large figure work.

animated movement: National Media Museum

On now at Bradford's Media Museum:

A video installaion by Quayola and Memo Akten. The work is called Forms and is part of the In the Blink of an Eye: Media and Movement exhibition. It runs from 9 March to 2 September 2012 and explores the “capture and synthesis of movement”.

figure, scale, environment

Most figure based drawing begins with the model. Here the environment was mapped out first. 

The model posed in several places - sometimes near, sometimes far, sometimes in frame, sometimes not. 

The important thing was to locate the figure against markers within the environment. 

Using this method, one figure inhabits a space many times, at different scales and quite often overlapping itself. 

The drawings often suggest depth, with large objects in the foreground and smaller ones receding towards the background.

The process helps to clarify how Degas may have constructed his work:

tone and tape

Tonal charcoal drawings - no line.

The drawing area was edged with masking tape.

Tones from black to white were noted and shadows drawn in - the white paper itself making the highlights.

Equal attention was paid to the figure and its background. Both need to be observed / recorded if the drawing is going to seem 3D ie allude to form on a 2D surface.

At the end of the session the tape was carefully peeled off giving the tonal work a much more defined finish

Handy hint - if using this method, take some of the tackiness from the tape first. Putting it on fabric and quickly pulling it off will do this