The Moving Figure

This was a work in progress for about six weeks. With hindsight I should have started these earlier on in this part of the course, as I would most likely have more confidence for quick sketches than I have now. It was hard to get going with this – putting too many mental obstacles such as ‘I live in an isolated place’ in the way of just seizing the moment as often as possible when I’m out and about. However, once I’d got off the ground and into the habit of doing them I started to become aware of my improving confidence and actually enjoying the experience. For a while I felt frustrated with how incapable I was of even getting the pose of a person who would change position after only a few moments. Then I decided to focus only on the gesture, even reducing it a stick figure, and afterwards I was able to fill some of their bodies and clothing to help them appear more lifelike. Although I had to resign myself to be content in leaving some to remain unfinished.

If I saw a particularly interesting pose, for example a woman holding up and reading a newspaper in a newsagents shop and I couldn’t get the angle of the hand in on time I would make the rest up partly from memory, partly from imagination. To my relief using this method did appear to work out occasionally, but not on this one as her (added on) arm looks stiff and unreal.

Sitting and Waiting

Above and below -
Mallow Railway Station

At times I took advantage of TV and DVD, mostly when doing sitting and waiting exercise, and before long it began to dawn on me how interesting it actually is to sketch various poses and actions. Somehow by sketching scene in front of me made people's antics so much more visually fascinating than ever before. The source material on TV for future studies is endless, let alone actual live people out and about.

Mallow Library

DVD 

DVD - Still Game

A man demonstrating how to train a
 dog and another doing a press-up
 challenge on u tube

I can see how easy it would be to include many of these in a longer piece, or part of one. Photos, magazines and DVDs could be very useful for action poses, in particular in longer sketches or a finished piece and the model is required to stay still for quite a while. These could be something with a  storyline - a group of people chatting or walking along a street, someone getting off a train  or painting a door perhaps. Almost anything could be given a narrative with a bit of imagination and one or two props. 
Fleeting Moments
Props seem to make all the difference in making an activity appear more interesting, such as when I was out and about and sketched a line of rowers carrying a canoe or rowing along the river. It was a case of by chance, being in the right place at the right time and this didn't happen too often! But the more I got into the habit of regular people sketching the easier it was.

Rowers on the river and riverbank

A team of female rowers and a single male rower manoeuvring his canoe. 

Workers, walkers and rowers

Fleeting Moments

Airport - had a go at sketching the odd person in the café/s,  but I very soon became conscious that either they or a person with them may have twigged me watching, as they began looking over at me. This meant I had to try and get down what information I could in what seemed like only a minute or two, though it was probably longer. 

On the rail station platform (top right) yet again I think I was spotted by a couple of people who must have been wondering what I was up to observing them so intently. If I continue, as I intend to, I’m sure I will be confronted by someone sooner or later!

Men filling petrol and chatting

Man (left and woman (right) filling petrol

Young woman with hair piled up high, filling petrol

People at the petrol station. I found it a good place to observe gestures and differences in the way men and women go about things. The man (above left) is filling his vehicle with fuel but went about it in a more self assured manner than the young woman (left)


They are rough and very minimal looking but I’m sure that they were crucial to improving and speeding up my technique and observational skills and should help to give more expressiveness to my sketches and drawings - eventually.

Supermarket checkout and the playground

Supermarket checkout

Supermarket checkout - people queuing,

packing trolleys and bags.

Sketching people packing bags was easier to manage than the checkout, as people stayed around a while, not changing their stance as quickly.

Two or three looked quite distinctive in their appearance like the chubby man with the totally bald head with the thick set woman with long hair the and man with the thick moustache and eyebrows. 
The figures to the top right are in a playground. I did quite a few of adults pushing children on the swings. These actions seem to give a great sense of movement.

The others are of a man and a youth sitting on a bench with their backs to me. The man was a great unsuspecting model - he stayed there for quite a while and did a few different interesting poses.

Playground and posture

Playground and
people with bags

Research Point

I noticed a general difference in the way males and females do many things when out and about. Some things I hadn’t noticed before.

Men tend to stand with their hands in their pockets, hands on hips, leaning on one leg. Women are often holding a bag in at least one hand or over the shoulder and tend to stand more erect, with their weight evenly distributed. They look more graceful in their movements overall than men do.

At the petrol pumps (above) -

Women's movements and hair

 I noticed that men often use only one hand to hold the hose, mostly looking confident, whereas women tend to be more careful and use both hands and the odd one even appears to struggle, as with one particular young woman in my sketches, who was having difficulty stretching the hose round to the petrol cap on her vehicle. I saw a man doing the same thing but he looked so calm and self assured in comparison. Another young woman decided to move her car round to the side where the petrol cap was located, after parking first on the other side. I have to admit, these women would have been relatively inexperienced.  I’m sure there are plenty of men who don’t look so confident when filling petrol/diesel but I didn't see any.

Man in the library

Kevin varnishing

On the street and riverbank

 

I saw a few youths sitting on the back of benches around and about, but I didn’t see any females doing this. I guess all these differences aren’t surprising -as well as obvious differences from birth, social conditioning also has a lot to do with it.

In this little corner of the world I’ve noticed women’s hair is often longer than men’s, though not always, and their hairstyles tend to be more imaginative - sometimes wearing their hair up on top of their heads or plaited, for instance. I found this fascinating to observe, but again, I only did a few rough sketches of them. Men's bodies and

faces are often heavier and stronger than women’s, who have especially in the lower part of the face where men also have hair growth and upper bodies where men often have more body strength. Many men’s ears stick out more, being more noticeable because of their often shorter hair perhaps. Men are usually taller than women, but so many women wear high heels that it is often hard to tell. Obviously these are only generalizations and there a quite a number of exceptions. I do occasionally see weedy looking men or large strong looking women.

In the playground and park

In some of my sketches it is hard or impossible to tell what people are doing as they were done so fast and plenty were incomplete. Others I finished from memory – my early efforts doing this were quite pitiful but as with my sketching generally, I think this became a little more accurate through practice.

Check and Log

1. How well did you manage to create the sense of a fleeting moment rather than a pose? Many poses, like the more active ones, appear to have an ephemeral feel to them  and the rougher and sketchier ones add to this.  Perhaps this is only because I could see the figures were moving at the time, although some look restless such as the woman on the bench above. The best to me would be the children on the swings in the playground, rowers on the river and varnishing and tiling as they were obviously moving. The petrol station would be better if it was clearer on the sketches what the figures are doing. Occasionally I exaggerated the angle of the pose to try and give more movement, but more often I was too wrapped up in just trying to get something down on paper. 

2. How successful were your attempts to retain an image and draw later? The results were very unimpressive at times. Yet as I became more comfortable generally, with very rapid sketches – bearing in mind that this was all new to me – it started to become almost second nature. That’s not to say they were convincing or that there weren't a few exceptions - I had a few relapses. However I would say they did improve generally over time. This is definitely something needing an awful lot more practice and perseverance.

Tiling the floor

3. Were you able to keep to a few descriptive lines to suggest the person’s movement or were you tempted to keep introducing more elements into your work? For a while I was feeling constantly frustrated about people changing position every few moments, very often before I had even had the chance to include their arms, let alone lower bodies. So, I started to use just a few lines to describe the gesture, even reducing them to virtual stick figures. I could often then fill them out enough to look believable. Other occasions I felt it was enough to just give an impression of the gesture and movement. Any subject staying in one place for long enough often led me to add more and more detail, such as the people sitting at computers in the library. With the DVD on pause I tried only to include just enough detail to get an idea of what was going on, but it did give me the excuse to spend a longer time on them so I suppose some extra detail was inevitable. It did give me a chance to study certain more difficult poses in detail, such as a man doing press-up at a foreshortened angle.

Kevin tiling

In the bank and on the street

Anna and Ai