Rather than jump straight into the design section of this chapter I felt I needed some warming up 'off piste' exercises as I hadn't done any figurative work for a long time.
I started off using a simple walking figure and different techniques - paint (koh-i-noor), wax resist, brush pen and graphite aquarelles (these were rather special), MM215 - 218.
These warm-up exercises led to a piece of work at a Cas Holmes workshop - Images and Narrative for Mixed Media Work and Textiles, Restructured Book/Bookpages-Maps. My piece was a 'Walk to Peel via Contrary Head', inspired by the Manx traditional song 'The King of the Sea' about herring fishing. It's a mixed media piece with hand and machine stitch, MM219 and the back, MM220. It was meant to be inserted in a roll and I made a cover, MM221, but I wasn't keen on this and will just hang the piece it as it is.
Still warming-up (building up courage to start) I drew a wooden IKEA dummy with a graphite stick, MM222, and and then another version, this time with my brush pen and paint, MM223.
And I familiarised myself a dimensional stick man just to be sure of proportions, MM224.
I decided to use ballet figures randomly picked from the internet so I could just get on with this part of the chapter. I went for ballet figures initially and used a 0.5mm drawing pen. I knew speed was of the essence but I still felt my figures were static and poor, MM225.
MM241 I felt I had separated the black paper a tad too much and my dancer was looking too chubby.
MM245 to me has lost it as I fell you need the black triangle top right to delineate the presence of arm. MM246, 247 and 248 were also lacking.
When I did my research for this chapter I looked at Kandinsky and his Dance Curves (link about Kandinsky's Dance Curves). The thing that interested me was that he only allowed his students 10 seconds to draw each figure. Armed with my Pentel brush pen, the timer on my phone and lots of copy paper I decided to go for the 10 second rule and see if it would free me up, additionally drawing the same position multiple times to see if I improved - MM226 to MM235.
By this time I was beginning to feel more confident and decided to look at street dancers, perhaps giving myself a few more seconds (but not too many) so that the result would still appear spontaneous.
MM236 seemed rather restricting on design possibilities so I decided to go with MM237.
TRANSLATING YOUR DRAWING INTO A SERIES OF DESIGN DEVELOPMENTS
I tweaked the arms slightly so the top of the head and the 'wrist' were at the top of the paper.
MM241 I felt I had separated the black paper a tad too much and my dancer was looking too chubby.
In figures 242 - 253 I digitally removed elements of the design using Photoshop Elements to see the effect on the ability to interpret the design and retain the feeling of movement.
MM245 to me has lost it as I fell you need the black triangle top right to delineate the presence of arm. MM246, 247 and 248 were also lacking.
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