Leaning Ahead, 2012, by Fred Hatt

For any artist, I think, regularity of work is essential.  For an artist like me who does other work to make a living, it can be very difficult to keep the creative practice vital and central.  I hold my life drawing practice as a constant.  Sometimes in my life I’m working on special creative projects, and sometimes I’m not.  Sometimes I’m spending huge amounts of time doing jobs to pay the bills, or dealing with family responsibilities, or whatever.  No matter what, I get to my life drawing sessions faithfully.  There are two three-hour classes I attend nearly every week, one a long pose class and another one featuring shorter poses.  I may miss the occasional session due to work schedule, travel, or other unavoidable disruptions, but I will not miss a session because I’m tired or not in the mood or not feeling confident.  The structure of the session solves all my potential “blocks”.  The model gives me a focus that takes me out of my own head.  The model is an active stimulus to which I can respond, without having to come up with any ideas.  The timed poses give me a sense of urgency – there is never quite enough time, so I have to get right into it, no dithering.  The critical eye can only be indulged fleetingly – it can’t be allowed to take over from the direct action of drawing.

I don’t allow the practice to become just a hobby, doing the same things over and over again because they please me.  It must be a constant struggle, a quest to see more, understand more, capture more.  There is no end to the study.  There is always something new I can understand about the structure or the expressiveness of the body, something new I can learn about light or about how eye and mind interact, some new bit of technique or material I can explore, some new challenge of spontaneity or carefulness that I can undertake as I draw.

Last year I had begun to feel that I was getting a bit too comfortable in my technique of drawing with aquarelle crayons on gray or black paper, and I decided to start working with watercolors at my life drawing sessions.  If you have been following Drawing Life over the last several months you’ve seen my struggles with the unforgiving medium.  In recent weeks I’ve been trying different papers, including gray paper, and returning sometimes to crayons or using the crayons in conjunction with the paints.  In this post I’ll share some of that work.  All of these pieces were made in the past month.  If you’re not a painter the discussion may be a bit technical, so feel free to just enjoy the pictures.

Knee L, 2012, by Fred Hatt

The wet brush makes more expressive strokes than dry media.  In part this is because it is less controllable, or to be more precise it is controlled more by physics and less by the artist’s hand.  An oil painter may use as much underdrawing and overpainting as necessary to master the painted image, but watercolors are transparent, so all the work shows through.  The unruly nature of the brush is understood in East Asian calligraphy as a virtue.  To make a spontaneous stroke that conveys energy, movement and feeling, using a big floppy wet brush, is a taoist exercise par excellence – going with the flow, dancing on the wind, trusting the chaos of nature to impart its ineffable beauty to your human gesture.

Iridescence of Skin, 2012, by Fred Hatt

The sketches above and below are done with the aquarelle crayons I’ve used for so much of my work over the years.  The crayons have several special qualities.  They can easily be used either sideways, to smear out areas of color, or on point, to make lines.  Hues can be blended by layering on the paper, without mixing and muddying the pigments, perfect for an additive approach to color.  On dark paper, the lighter crayons have a special luminosity, effectively rendering subtle effects of light.  I like to draw by looking at light before anything else, and usually this means drawing highlights before shadows and edges of things – an approach that is impossible when using transparent paints on a white ground.

Touch of Light, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Recently I’ve been using white gouache (opaque watercolor) combined with transparent colors on gray paper, trying for those glowing highlights.  At this point I’m not good enough with the paint to get anything like the color complexity I can get with the crayons.  The crayon drawing above and the gouache/watercolor sketch below are both twenty-minute studies.  With paint, it takes longer to get the light and dark, so there’s less time for color, and since the white gouache is the only paint lighter than the gray background, color in the highlights is a two-stage process, not a one-stage process as with the crayons.

Torso, 2012, by Fred Hatt

The long-pose class gives a longer time to work at subtleties of color and tone.  It’s a three-hour class, and when the warm-up poses and the breaks are subtracted, there’s about two solid hours of studying a single pose.

Akimbo, 2012, by Fred Hatt

The long pose studies above and below are painted in watercolor on white bristol vellum, with some white gouache used for highlight detailing and corrections.  The white gouache never cleanly covers anything.  Any color that is underneath bleeds into it, and it can quickly become dull and dirty-looking.  I’m still trying to use my additive color approach, not mixing paints on the palette, but using straight colors in proximity to each other, so they mix in the eye to give the impression of smooth transitions.  It’s very hard to get this to work as well as it does with the crayons.  The crayons can be applied lightly on the side, introducing a subtle tone to an area.  My best approximation of that with the paint is to use a fan brush with a rather dry load of paint to put down some thin subtle lines of color.  Wherever the white paper shows through, though, it dominates, as it is obviously the brightest and strongest color of them all.

Inward Look, 2012, by Fred Hatt

I finally found a kind of gray paper that takes the watercolor and gouache paints well, without too much friction and without sucking all the water out of the brush or puckering at the wetness.  As you can see in the long-pose example below, this allows me to use white as a highlight, so I can work with paint both lighter and darker than the ground, but it doesn’t do much to make the color mixing easier.  In the background of this one, I’ve used crayons on edge to get soft area coloration, but the colors in the figure are all paint.

Reader of Proust, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Below is a crayon drawing on black paper, 20-minute pose.  Working on black paper offers its own special challenges – as with white paper, I can only go in one direction with the values.  But I think in twenty minutes with crayons I’ve been able to get as much color variance as I was able to do in six times the time in those long pose studies with paint.

Side and Back, 2012, by Fred Hatt

The next three pictures are all 20-minute foreshortened reclining poses.  The first one is done with watercolor and gouache, on a medium gray paper that works well with the crayons.  With the paint, it’s resistant.  The paint doesn’t flow smoothly on this paper, and you may be able to see the scratchy quality of the brushstrokes.  But the middle gray is perfect for bringing out the bold contrast between the black and white paint, and the vividness of the colors against the neutral ground.

Head End Reclining Figure, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Below is a similar pose, painted on the lighter gray paper that handles the wet media more smoothly.  Here I was able to abstract the strokes in a more deliberate way, especially in the face.

Dune, 2012, by Fred Hatt

I used the same paper for the one below.  I used a red crayon to sketch out the figure, then used white gouache and black watercolor to render highlights, edges, and shadows in a relatively realistic style.  The odd angle nevertheless gives this figure a mildly cubist aspect.

Sleeping Weightlifter, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Portraits are the most challenging mode of all, and I’ll conclude this post with four paintings of faces.  The first one is a quick watercolor sketch on bristol vellum, with rough, brushy color.

Knee Kiss, 2012, by Fred Hatt

This one’s on the brush-resistant medium gray paper.  I love the way the gouache-painted highlights look on this darker ground.  The paint becomes light itself.

Heavenward, 2012, by Fred Hatt

These last two are both painted on the lighter gray paper (though the photographs make the background color look quite different.  It’s a little too warm in the first one and definitely too cool in the second one).  I have to say I’ve always loved working on gray paper.  I can paint the highlights and the shadows, and let the paper provide the tones in between.

Mike in Profile, 2012, by Fred Hatt

The neutrality of the gray ground also has the effect of calming the mind.  For the purposes of drawing, it is a perfect nothingness.  White shines all over and all you can do is try to knock it down a bit.  Black always stays in the background, making anything that  is lighter than itself glow, but its main quality is to suck up and extinguish as much light as it can.  Gray is the synthesis of black and white.  It is serene and unassertive.  It glows, but gently.  It absorbs, but just a bit.  Gray contains all the colors, dark and light, somber and wild, in balance.  Put a red next to it, and you will see the coolness of the gray.  Put a blue next to it, and evoke gray’s warmth.  Gray possesses the underappreciated magic of moderation!

Alley, 2012, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Sizes of the works shown in this post are as follows:

On white paper:  19″ x 24″ (48.3 x 61 cm)

On black paper:  27.5″ x 19.75″ (50 x 70 cm)

On medium gray paper:  18.5″ x 24.5″ (47 x 62 cm)

On light gray paper:  18″ x 24″ (46 x 60 cm)

Shoulderblade Contact, 2012, by Fred Hatt

In an open life drawing session, the givens are simple:  There is a live nude model, who will take a pose and hold still for a designated period of time.  Using the materials of visual art, we must draw what we can from the model during the interval allowed.  Over a series of sessions, we can expect to see a great variety of models, and if we want to, we can try out many different materials and techniques, but for a given class, we take the model we get and use the materials we’ve brought.  If it’s a big class, we will probably have little or no say about the poses, and may not be able to move from the viewing position we have taken up in advance.  But in the moment the model takes the pose and the timer begins counting down, we still have many options, and must make choices instinctively or deliberately.

How shall we scale the figure?  Do we want to include the whole figure, or just part?  Do we focus our energies on trying to capture a likeness, or a feeling of structure, or what?  Do we isolate the figure, or include background elements?  What details should we include, and what can we omit?  Do we start with light and shadows, or with contours?  Shall we try to keep our hand as loose as possible, or as precise as possible?  These choices face us, in a way limited by our skill, even in a one- or two-minute pose.  If the pose is twenty minutes, or three hours, the options proliferate!  In an instructed class, the teacher may make many of these choices for us, but in an open practice session they are up to us, and the richness of the practice is greatly enhanced by not always making the same choices.

That’s a general observation, the sort of thing I’m always harping on, and would perhaps be best illustrated by work from over the years, specifically selected to highlight the various choices involved.  But what I have to share with you now is a few of my recent watercolor paintings and crayon drawings of the figure.  I’ve arranged them to bring out similarities and differences, and the theme of choices will perhaps provide a lens with which to view them.

Slim, 2012, by Fred Hatt

The first three illustrations are all 10- or 20-minute watercolor sketches of figures with crossed arms.  All of these have a loose, casual feel, but the scribbly strokes are anchored by contour lines that are carefully drawn.  The first two are standing poses, with the faces roughly indicated, and framed to include most of the body but not the feet.  The one below is a seated pose, framed closer, with more attention to the facial expression and the hands.

Arms Folded, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Lines of color on the face give a sense of color and shading, but also convey some quality of emotion or energy.  Below I’ve used a similar approach in a longer drawing – I think this one was about an hour.  I had started out sketching a full figure, but as I went on with it I found that what really interested me about this model was her face, and I couldn’t get the details of the face in a full-figure painting.

Thinking Back, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Including the chest as well as the face allows me to get plenty of expressive detail but also show something of how the head is carried upon the body.  In the watercolor sketches above and below, I’m using two of my favorite pigments, cadmium red and ultramarine blue.  The red shows where the blood flows near the surface, and the blue shows where the light is absorbed.

Relief, 2012, by Fred Hatt

In the long-pose watercolor portrait below, I tried optical color mixing to give a sense of flesh tones.  By cross-hatching using fan brushes with cadmium red and green oxide, with some lamp black and phthalocyanine turquoise, I’m trying to get the glow of life.  Adding bluer tones to the background also emphasizes the warmth of the figure.

Chuck, 2012, by Fred Hatt

The portrait below is drawn with white and reddish-brown aquarelle crayon on warm gray paper, with the darks filled in with black watercolor.  A wet brush was used to blend some of the white aquarelle crayon.

A.Z., 2012, by Fred Hatt

The model below, Julie,  has an inner happiness and confidence that I can’t help but express in my drawings of her.  Plump females may get no respect in the media culture, but they’re very popular as figure drawing models, because their rounded forms are beautiful on paper, and they’re a lot easier to draw than wiry, angular models.  Something about this pose just makes me want to dance, and I had to get the whole figure on the paper, from head to feet, in this 20-minute watercolor sketch.

Coquette, 2012, by Fred Hatt

The body leans to one side, and that violation of balance makes a still pose seem active.  In the long pose watercolor below, I chose to develop rectangular elements in the background to contrast the inclined body.

Piet, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Every Monday morning at Spring Studio I am the monitor for the 3-hour long pose session.  We do a set of 2-minute warm-up poses and then, subtracting the breaks, we have about two hours to study a single pose.  Once in a while, we have two models at once.  Two models isn’t just twice the work, it multiplies the geometrical relationships of elements and reveals every feature of the face and body by contrast to a very different face and body.  The intensity of observation required usually sends me into a more realist mode than I might otherwise pursue.

Two Women, 2012, by Fred Hatt

The realist mode of painting is obsessive, and when I really get into it, every detail of texture or color becomes achingly beautiful – even the way cellulite refracts light.

Center of Power, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Sometimes in a session you get an angle on a pose that, on first glance, doesn’t seem to offer much.  A back view, flat lighting, not much visible anatomical detail – not much to work with, right?  No, this is an opportunity to notice subtleties, and to find how simple details – the arrangement of the fingers, the way a scarf is tied around the head – can make the boring pose dynamic.

Back with Headscarf, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Here’s another example of a pose that at first seemed a bad viewpoint.  But look at how the angular joints stack up!  Look at how the light pulls everything up and to the right, while the shadows and the black hair give the figure gravity.

Listening, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Contrast the skinny body above with the corpulent body below.  The range of variation of the human form is a wondrous thing to contemplate.

An artist working with a model in his or her own studio would be unlikely to choose either of these sideways/backwards views of a pose, but in a class or an open session you get what you get, and what do you know, this is a great angle to reveal the energy of the body!

Column, 2012, by Fred Hatt

When I work with a model in my own studio, I can do experiments with angles and lighting that wouldn’t work in a class or open session.  The next two figures were drawn (in aquarelle crayon) by looking through a mirror set on the floor with the model standing above.  This gives a foreshortened view with a standing pose.  In this way, I’m looking up by looking down, while drawing on the floor.  The figure in the mirror is seen upside-down, and these drawings were made that way, with the head at the bottom of the page.  One of the pleasures of the foreshortened view of the figure is unusual juxtapositions of body parts.  Notice below how one elbow aligns with the head, and another with the cleft between buttock and thigh.  That’s something you will never see with the normal straight-on view of a standing pose.

Atlas 2, 2012, by Fred Hatt

My inspiration for these figures was ceiling frescoes, which often show cherubs and mythological characters as though one is looking up at bodies floating in the sky.  The figure towering above has a godlike quality.  This is how adults are seen by babies!

Atlas 1, 2012, by Fred Hatt

This pose was done lying face down on the floor, but it naturally conveys the feel of flying.  I was sorry to lose that left hand, but just couldn’t shrink the figure down enough to fit the entire thing on the page!

Soar, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Here’s a reclining foreshortened view from the head end of the body, with the light coming from behind.  This is a sketch painted with white gouache on black paper.  I love unusual, foreshortened views of the body.  In drawing them, I find it very helpful to think of the eyes as organs of touch from a distance.  The fingertips that are touching this body are rays of light, and it is that touch that the eyes receive and translate into drawing.

Morning Light, 2012, by Fred Hatt

All the pieces in this post are around 18″ x 24″, in watercolor, sometimes with white gouache, and/or in aquarelle crayon on paper.

EVENT THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday, at Soundance Studio in Brooklyn, I’m showing an experimental video I made last year with dancer Kristin Hatleberg.  Kristin improvised movement at Ringing Rocks Park in Eastern Pennsylvania, a unique landscape with boulders that ring like steel when struck.  Filmmaker Yuko Takebe and I both shot video of Kristin in this environment, and then each of us made our own edits of the combined footage.  It’s fascinating to see how two different sensibilities transform the same raw material.  We’ll be showing both versions of the Ringing Rocks video at an event also featuring other video and live dance work at Soundance Studio in Williamsburg, Broooklyn, this Saturday.  Here are details:

• • Saturday
  • 8:00pm

• 281 N. 7th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

• Free Admission! Reservation required! 2 Excerpts From Generations: A Dance and Film Collaboration Conceived and Directed by Janet Aisawa with choreography by Emily Winkler-Morey and Judith Grodowitz Ringing Rocks Remember: Companion Films by Yuko Takebe and Fred Hatt, with dancer Kristin Hatleberg Additional Videos by Vanessa Paige & Dalienne Majors’ Video of Sarah Skaggs’ 9/11

Still from the film "2001: A Space Odyssey", 1968, directed by Stanley Kubrick

1. This week, on March 15, Drawing Life turns three years old.

2. Minerva Durham’s Spring Studio, New York’s busy basement of figure drawing and one of the forges of my creative life, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this month.

3. On the 12th, my brother Frank Hatt is celebrating another one of those decade birthdays.

Please indulge me as I share a few images and video clips to trumpet this triumvirate of things that matter to me.  (Note to email subscribers: embedded video and audio clips don’t work on the email versions of posts, so you’ll need to click the links or visit the blog on the web to see the things I’m talking about.)

Honestly, each of these three anniversaries merits its own post.  I’ll blame my jamming them together on cosmic conjunction.

Let’s start with Frank.  Long-time readers of Drawing Life may recall seeing some videos I made that featured Frank: “Subway Sax“, “The Silo“, and “Glossolalia + Katharsis“, all from twenty or more years ago.  Well, Frank’s still around, and still plays a sweet alto saxophone.  In January of this year, we filmed some of his improvisations on an animal farm/petting zoo in the Catskills – thanks to my great friend Alex for taking us to this beautiful place.

“Sax Stream” – saxophone solo by Frank Hatt, video by Fred Hatt

Frank has long been fascinated with “extended vocal techniques” such as overtone singing and vocalizing on the inbreath, both of which you’ll see in the clip below, as well as toy instruments and noisemakers.  Frank’s approach is playful, often frenetic, sometimes downright wacky.  Here his voice blends with those of chickens, geese, ducks, turkeys, and emus.

“Down on the Farm” – vocals and noisemakers by Frank Hatt, video by Fred Hatt

Maybe the best moment we got where Frank really seems to be vocally interacting with the birds is this brief improvisation on sax mouthpiece, without the rest of the instrument.  This one is presented as an audio-only file, as the visuals didn’t add much.

FrankHatt_mouth-piece128

In the 1990′s I was mostly known for body painting, and Minerva thought body painting would be an effective way to demonstrate anatomy, so I shared a few pointers on materials and techniques, and Minerva took off with it.  Here she is painting the muscular system on the renowned dancer, model, and choreographer Arthur Aviles, a former dancer in the Bill T. Jones company and one of the founders of the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD).

Minerva Durham paints muscles on Arthur Aviles at Spring Studio, 1998, photo by Fred Hatt

Spring Studio also hosts art exhibitions, and I had a show there in 1998.  At the opening I did a couple of body art performances, including a blacklight body painting performance with Sue Doe, with whom I’d developed a nightclub act that we were then presenting regularly at the Blue Angel Cabaret.  Here’s a condensed version of that performance.

Art Underground from Fred Hatt on Vimeo.

This month, the walls of Spring Studio are filled with hundreds of drawings and paintings made in the studio by the many artists that pursue their practice there.  I love Spring Studio’s annual anniversary exhibitions, which reveal the incredible diversity of styles and approaches that flourish in such an environment.  The work of seasoned professional artists is hung cheek-by-jowl with the work of beginners, and somehow the juxtaposition makes both look better!  This kind of show also highlights the talents of Spring Studio’s great models, especially when you notice multiple artists’ interpretations of the same pose.

Next Sunday, March 18, starting at 6:30, Spring Studio will host an anniversary party with performances.  Here are the details:

Andrew Bolotowsky, flute,  and Mary Hurlbut, voice, Leon Axel’s compositions for flute and voice, 6:30 pm

We will paint muscles on Arthur Aviles, 7:00 with a backdrop of Andrew Bolotowsky’s flute, then Aviles will dance.

Dance, 8:00 pm: Kuan, Leticia and Esteban, Jason Durivou, Linda Diamond, Raj Kapoor, Nepali folk tune with Sherry Onna, and Anna Schrage painting a canvas to music played by Godfrey Daniel. Open Mike: Elizabeth Hellman, Flo Reines,  Nina Kovolenko, George Spencer, Susie Amato, Trevor Todd, Others. 

I’ll note that Kuan’s dance will be based on some of the poses she’s developed for modeling at Spring Studio, and that she’s using my drawings of her as choreographic source material, so I’m excited to see that.  You’ll notice too that Minerva is still painting on Arthur, and Arthur’s an incredible performer, not to be missed.  So if you’re in NYC next weekend, it would be a pretty interesting time to check out the studio!

[Late addition to this post, now that Spring Studio's 20th Anniversary Party is past - a video I shot of Kuan's dance based on her poses from Spring Studio:]

All right, so now I’ve gone on and on and bombarded you with pictures and videos and information about Frank Hatt and Spring Studio, and this post is also serving as Drawing Life‘s anniversary post.  In the first and second year anniversary posts, I highlighted the top articles, the ones that got the most page views.  This time, I’d like to thank my most regular commenters.  I know from the site stats that quite a few people alight upon these pages every day, but most probably don’t read much of what I write.  I’m sure there are some who read these posts regularly, but don’t comment.  There are also those who comment only by email or on Facebook.  I appreciate all of that, but I have a special affection for those who follow Drawing Life and join in the conversation with thoughtful responses, right here on the site.  Thank you, star commenters!

Jennifer, from the UK, a devoted student of figurative art

Andrew, author of the highly recommended “Art Model’s Handbook”

Jim in Alaska, always has great observations or reminiscences

Claudia (Museworthy blogger and star model)

Daniel Maidman (fellow blogger and master painter)

David Finkelstein (experimental filmmaker and performer)

I love you all, and the less frequent commenters as well.  Feedback is good, and when my writing threatens to dissolve into pompous monologue, you save it by making it a conversation!

Art Seeds performance drawing #4, 30 seconds, 2012, by Fred Hatt

A drawing or painting is an object, an arrangement of marks on a surface, inert and mute.  So what do we mean when we speak of a picture having dynamism or tension, energy or lyricism?  There could be multiple factors.  Movement may be pictorially implied.  Shapes and colors may be arranged in ways that suggest rhythmic repetition or create tensions of weight or light that, like certain chords in music, predict a resolving change.

For me, the most direct path to capturing energy in pictorial visual art is simply to approach drawing or painting as an art of movement.  The brush strokes or pencil marks are tracings of the movement of the artist’s hand.  The hand dances what the eyes see or what the spirit feels.  Movement is the most direct way of expressing grace or violence, serenity or frolic.  A drawing doesn’t move, but it is a product of movement.  The kinetics of its making affect the quality of its marks in a way that viewers can feel.

Direct gestural expression is something drawing and painting have that still photography generally lacks.  For me, that’s a compelling reason to focus on that aspect of art, in this age glutted with mechanically reproduced images.

A longstanding exercise for me is sketching dancers as they move.  It’s one of those things that’s almost impossible to do, like getting a sweet sound out of a violin, and for that reason a great thing to practice, practice, practice.  In this post I’ll share a few recent examples of the rough and spontaneous results of this pursuit.

The thirty-second ink-brush drawing that heads this post was made during a recent performance organized by my friend the dancer Kayoko Nakajima.  She and Carly Czach performed improvised dance in timed intervals, interspersed with similarly timed intervals in which several artists made drawings in response to the movement they’d just witnessed.  Kayoko’s blog for the project shows the resulting drawings of four artists (including me), and the following video by Charles Dennis shows excerpts from the performance, so you can get an idea what the dance was like and how the audiences watched the drawing as well as the dance.

The form of dance that Carly and Kayoko are doing here is called Contact Improvisation.  Notice how the dancers pull or push each other.  Each dancer is feeling her weight in dynamic relation to the other.  The principles of Contact Improv are closely related to the martial art Aikido.  One dancer may push into the other, and the other may respond by redirecting a straight move into a curved one.  One may feel the other’s weight and roll under or push upward.  There’s a constant give-and-take, a shifting flow in which every movement is a transformation of the movement that feeds into it.  Although my drawing hand is dancing solo, not pushing against another hand, I try to capture this feeling of each movement of the brush arising out of the preceding movement.

Art Seeds performance drawing #6, 8 minutes, 2012, by Fred Hatt

In this performance, periods of drawing alternated with periods of dancing, so the drawings are not made during direct observation of the movement.  Thus they capture a memory of motion, not a response in the moment.  The figurative elements in the drawing above also reflect memories rather than direct perceptions.  The brush flows following the aftertaste of a spinal curve, and that curve shifts into the helical analogue of a remembered rotation.

Kayoko’s post features several drawings each by Felipe Galindo, Ivana Basic, Michael Imlay, and myself.  It’s interesting to compare the different ways each of us instinctively channeled the dance into our drawings.  Felipe, an illustrator, focuses on relationships and indicates the directions of movement with arrows and arcs.  In Ivana‘s drawings, the contours of bodies merge with the contours of looping movement, and the bodies don’t just contact, but merge and interpenetrate.  Michael takes the sinuous quality of the dance and projects it imaginatively in biomorphic shapes and suggestions of musical structure.

The night before Kayoko’s performance, I got myself warmed up for it at Cross Pollination, an occasional event at Green Space Studio in Queens where artists draw, dancers move, and musicians play in a freeform interactive space.  These drawings are made in direct observation of dancers, not by memory, though the movement is generally quick enough that once an impression travels from eye to hand to paper it’s a memory anyway.  The next two watercolor sketches are from Cross Pollination.

Tensegrity, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Expressing energy with brush or pencil is not so much about putting the maximum amount of energy into the effort.  In a recent life drawing class I noticed one of the artists scratching away madly, his face screwed up with tension.  But when I looked at his drawing it was scribbly and diffuse.  It expressed something of the physical effort of the artist, but nothing of the quality or presence of the model.  The key to capturing that more subtle energy is the clear focus of the artist’s movement in the work.  It’s like the difference between the flailing of a drunkard and the efficient punch of a martial artist.  The first may expend more raw frenzy, but it’s the second that will knock you out.

Stances of Rest, 2012, by Fred Hatt

I try to be immersed in the experience of perceiving the bodies, feeling the flow of movement and of form.  The way a muscle curls around from the shoulder blade to the top of the arm bone is not so different, when you follow it smoothly, from the way one person reaches out and draws another into an embrace.  Because my brush is moving in a state of grace, I experience everything as a unified current.  It’s obvious that movement is something that flows, but when my mind and hand are dancing, I understand that form is also something that flows.

I try to bring that kind of perception to my practice of life drawing.  The body is a dynamic structure, not a static one.  Every part exists in a relationship of tension or balance with other parts of the body and of its environment.  When the drawing brush freely explores how one part connects with another through movement, the drawings capture some of the sense of the life force that we perceive in a living being.

Chuck, eight quick poses, grid of four watercolor sketches, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Chuck, above, and Kuan, below, are models that give their all in the quick (1-2 minute) poses.  Chuck is an artist whose own paintings show a wonderful sense of movement, sometimes soaring, sometimes tangled.  Kuan is a dancer and choreographer.  She moves with great clarity and takes still poses that look like frozen instants of explosive action.  Their quick poses are wondrous things to see.  But they are so fleeting!  Only by following the flow of the form with the movement of my brush can I capture some impression of the energy they share with us.

Kuan, sixteen quick poses, grid of watercolor sketches, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Sunset and Twilight, 2006, photos by Fred Hatt

Photographers and Cinematographers sometimes use the term “magic hour” to refer to times of day when natural daylight takes on special qualities that beautify nearly any setting and imbue it with drama and grandeur.  Unfortunately the phrase is used inconsistently to refer to times just before or just after sunup or sundown.  I prefer the terms “golden hour” for those times when the sun is just above the horizon, and “blue hour” for the time of twilight, when the sun is below the horizon but the sky carries a hint of its glow.  Of course, “hour” is also imprecise, as the duration of the times of magical light depends on season and latitude.  The tropics may have warm weather all year round, but there the setting of the sun is abrupt.  In St. Petersburg or in Patagonia, on the other hand, the  sky can be numinously luminous all day long.

At the golden hour, the sun comes nearly sideways through the atmosphere, passing through significantly more air than when it comes from overhead.  This softens and diffuses the light, and absorbs many of the short (blue) wavelengths, giving it a warm golden or reddish tone.  The landscape is illuminated laterally, with raking shadows revealing the texture of surfaces and things.

Autumn Sundown, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Side lighting is particularly flattering to human subjects.  In stage lighting, illumination from the sides is usual for dance, as it emphasizes the shapes of the body.  The warm tone of late afternoon or early morning light has its own glamorizing effect, reducing harshness and making blemishes and wrinkles less visible.  The softer light doesn’t make people squint as harsh midday light does, nor does it cast dark shadows under their eyebrows and noses.

Photographer, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

When the light comes from behind through translucent things like leaves, grass, or hair, those objects glow with transmitted light, overpowering the ordinary reflected light by which we see opaque things.

Roebling Tea Room, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

When low in the sky, the sun casts shadows laterally, sometimes outlining the shapes of trees and people and things upright on walls, rather than beneath them on the ground or floor.

Studio Window, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt

Direct lateral sunlight exposes textural contours in a reddish light, while the overhead blue light diffused through the sky provides a second, softer source of light.  At a particular time these two light sources, red from the side and blue from overhead, may be almost perfectly balanced.

White Brick, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt

A golden glint and long shadows turn the plainest structures into glittering metallic facets.

Gilt Edge, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Buildings are shadowed by other buildings, and the red glow of the setting or rising sun selectively ignites the gridlike structures.

Tinged Red, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt

Just as the sun drops below the horizon, the level of daylight comes into balance with the level of artificial lights.  Buildings are illuminated both from without and from within.

Foggy Evening, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt

At certain times, from certain angles of view, reflected light is more powerful than any direct light, outlining softly illuminated subjects against a sharp antipodal sheen.

Shiny Paint, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Once the sun drops below the horizon, the sky retains a diffuse ultramarine glow for some time before darkness completely overtakes the celestial vault.  Artificial lights are now dominant, but the twilight glow pervades the shadows.  Now it is is the blue hour.

Blue & White, 2008, photo by Fred Hatt

The remaining light in the sky gives every unlit thing a blue glow, while interiors and places with artificial lighting shine in warmer tones.

Pay Phones, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

The sky is blue, sodium vapor streetlamps are reddish, incandescent bulbs yellowish, fluorescent lights greenish.

Manhattan Bridge Anchorage, 2009, photo by Fred Hatt

The photo below is taken while there was a twilight blue glow in the sky.  Fifteen minutes later, and the women would have been silhouettes against the artificially lit background.

Smoothies - Salads, 2012, photo by Fred Hatt

Wet streets reflect the sky, so the blue glow comes from below as well as above.

Rain & Steam, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

As night descends, the overarching dome of light that is the sky gives way to the many separate sources of light that rule the urban night – headlights, streetlights, working lights, signal lights, display lights.

Roadway Composition, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt

When the level of the long wavelength street lighting matches the level of the short wavelength twilight sky, red runs through blue like rivulets of blood in icy water.

Red Feather, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt

Pomona Fountain, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt

Through reflection, the golden light of incandescence penetrates the deep blue of the gloaming.

Chelsea Blue, 2011, photo by Fred Hatt

Golden Estuary, 2009, photo by Fred Hatt

The last phase of twilight is an indigo glow that barely rises above black, a memory of light, a faint resonance, a lingering echo.

Park Road, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Central Park at Dark, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt