Jacqui the dancer

Jacqui was our model this week. She was a dancer in her past life, and her body is the typical ballet dancer - slim, not busty, fine boned and with beautiful hands. I guess ballet teaches one how to hold the hands elegantly. All of us in the class really appreciated Jacqui because she was willing to hold more difficult poses for a longer period. Also because she was a dancer, she struck the most elegant poses. Continuing our theme from last week, David wanted us to draw motion. This time, he asked Jacqui to hold 4 positions for 1 minute. Each position was a continuum in the movement. I attempted to draw all 4 in one spot, which resulted in a tangle of arms, legs, etc. Was not a good idea. Then, just to make things even more challenging, David asked her to repeat a series of movement for 4 minutes. At first, I was perplexed... how can one capture anything moving?? But then I realised that capturing her arms would be good and this time, draw the arms offset from each other. Then the legs. This is the results - which I'm pretty pleased with.


I think that I may have found a way to convey motion at long last! I've been attempting to capture flamenco dancers in action by pausing the video frame after frame, the results so far have been less than satisfactory. Another picture I was pleased about is this portrait, which tried to convey a mood. She appears pensive. I would have liked to have captured Jacqui's exquisite hands better, but ran out of time.


In the class, one other student was experimenting with different media. We both tried black paper today. The trick with black paper is that you have to highlight the bright bits and rub away the dark bits. It is sort of reverse of a normal charcoal drawing. Anyway, here is my attempt.