Drawing with ink and brush has a fluidity that captures the energy of motion. The brush is sensitive to the slightest variations in pressure, rendering lines that have varying weight and dimension. I have long favored this medium for movement drawing, where there is no time to develop the image through shading, color and details. That spontaneous moving brush line is both expressive and efficient.
I’ve previously posted my sketches from Cross Pollination events at Green Space Studio in Queens here, as well as here and here. At these casual sessions, musicians, dancers and artists come together to inspire each other. Often, musicians and artists dance, dancers paint or play music. For an artist, there’s a lot of energy and rhythm to draw upon. For an artist with a figure drawing background, it’s challenging because there’s little stillness. My experimentation has led me to an approach that’s basically abstraction built on figurative forms and fragments.
February Cross Pollination #2, 2010, by Fred Hatt
The above sketch shows various elements of the scene: the long dreadlocks of the saxophonist Sabir, the seated flutist Lori, and Theresa with her sketchbook on her knees. Most of the other forms here are fragments of the moving dancers, glimpsed in a passing instant.
February Cross Pollination #3, 2010, by Fred Hatt
Here I went completely abstract with an octopoid shape. You can’t tell it, but the lines here are also based on the bodies and movements of the dancers and musicians.
February Cross Pollination #4, 2010, by Fred Hatt
Attitudes and bearing inform the one above.
February Cross Pollination #5, 2010, by Fred Hatt
And here the dancers get a little wilder and freer, driven by the saxophone and drum you can see at the center of the composition.
All of these drawings are 18″ x 24″ (46 x 61 cm), sumi ink on paper, using brushes.
Detail of the Lion Panel of Chauvet Cave, France, fig. 84 from "Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave" by Chauvet, Deschamps & Hillaire
These lions look so full of life they might at any moment pounce on their prey. This is a small detail from the “Lion Panel”, an expansive composition featuring dozens of animals, discovered in 1994 in a cave in southeastern France. Across a huge cave wall with a niche in the center, the lions appear to be stalking herds of rhinos, mammoths and bulls. The realism is classical, the scale and energy modern, yet radiocarbon dating has proven this magnificent work is approximately thirty thousand years old! The mastery displayed here makes a mockery of the concept of “primitive” art.
It has been barely a hundred years since scientists have agreed that the paintings in certain caves are the work of artists of the paleolithic or old stone age, the end of the last glacial period, when homo sapiens coexisted with Neanderthal people and the kind of herds we associate with the African veldt roamed Europe. In 1879 the nine year old daughter of amateur Spanish archaeologist Sautuola discovered the magnificent murals of Altamira cave, but it took over twenty years before the scholarly establishment accepted the prehistoric origin of the paintings.
Since then, academics have disputed about the meaning and motivation of these works. In The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, David Lewis-Williams, a scholar specializing in ancient rock art, argues that the paintings in the paleolithic caves are the product of shamanic vision quests. These are not the kind of caves some people lived in, but deep caverns requiring significant effort to penetrate. Inside these spaces there is no external light or sound. The paintings may record visions arising from ordeal and sensory deprivation. Ancient footprints found in the caves show that children accompanied adults into the caves, so the exhibition of the artwork by dim and flickering lamplight may have been a kind of initiation.
Most visual art associated with present-day hunting and gathering cultures is highly stylized, relying on abstract conventions that represent things conceptually rather than accurately following their appearance. In contrast, the paleolithic art is remarkable for its realism. Obviously those animals were not posing for the artists inside the caves, but the confident rendering of lifelike animal contours convinces me that these artists were well practiced in observational drawing. The caves may be significant not as the place of origin of art, but as the place of its preservation, as there must have been an abundance of art outside the caves that did not survive.
I’ll refrain from engaging the scholarly arguments here, and just share a few samples of visual art of the European Paleolithic that speak to me across the millennia, revealing the timeless qualities of great work. These images come from books in my personal library, and I hope the copyright holders will not mind my sharing them with you. Altamira, mentioned above, is the source of this exuberant galloping horse:
Galloping Horse, original painting in red, copied by Abbé Henri Breuil, fig. 130 from "Art in the Ice Age" by Maringer and Bandi
This painting has the lightness and simplicity of the loose brushwork of Asian painters grounded in calligraphy and taoism or zen.
This back-biting bison carving, from Trois-Frères Cave in France could be mistaken for a Picasso:
Bison sculpture in reindeer antler, from La Madeleine, France, fig. 44 from "Art in the Ice Age" by Maringer and Bandi
The Cave of Trois-Frères in France is famous for a human-animal hybrid image known as “The Sorcerer“. It also has a magnificent complex herd scene with at least forty-five animals, densely overlapping, all of them individually expressed in different lifelike positions. Is the figure on the right in the detail shown below a hunter disguised in a bison’s skin, a shamanic summoner of animal spirits, or a bison god?
Detail from a mural engraving at the Cave of Trois-Frères, France, copied by Abbé Henri Breuil, p. 135 from "La Peinture Prehistorique: Lascaux ou la Naissance de l'Art" by Georges Bataille
Here’s another detail from the same cave:
Bison, engraving at the Cave of Trois-Frères, France, copied by Abbé Henri Breuil, fig. 121a from "The Roots of Civilization" by Alexander Marshack
These vigorous drawings burst with vitality, conveying the power of the looming beasts and the fury of the hunt.
You may notice that I’ve chosen to show many of these works in copies made by the Abbé Breuil, one of the early 20th century’s foremost specialists in European cave art. His beautifully rendered copies clarify images that are often hard to read in photographs, painted or engraved on rough and mottled stone surfaces. It’s difficult for photographs to capture the qualities of cave art, which is not flat and not intended to be seen in harsh bright light. Many of the original paintings incorporate the bulges of the stone walls as the bulges of the animal bodies. In other places, paintings continue from walls up to vaulted ceilings, as in this image from the most famous painted cave of all, Lascaux:
Ceiling of the Axial Gallery, Lascaux Cave, p. 111 from "The Cave of Lascaux: The Final Photographs" by Mario Ruspoli
Depictions of animals are far more numerous, and usually more detailed, than depictions of the human form in paleolithic art, but the human figures can be strikingly sensual:
Reclining female figures from Cave of La Madeleine, France, relief carvings above with copy drawings below, fig. 111 from "The Way of the Animal Powers" by Joseph Campbell
Small paleolithic figurines, from left to right, vitreous rock from the Riviera, hematite from Moravia, mammoth ivory from Ukraine, and mammoth bone from Russia, figs. 121 thru 124 from "The Way of the Animal Powers" by Joseph Campbell
From a slightly later period, after the invention of the bow and arrow, we have silhouetted figures like this one, similar in style to South African rock art, but this is from Spain:
Archer with compound bow, rock painting in black from the Spanish Levant, fig. 177 from "Art in the Ice Age" by Maringer and Bandi
This is just a small sampling from an incredible wealth of prehistoric masterpieces.
New note added April 21, 2010: Get a great feeling for the art in context with the navigable CGI reproduction of the art in context in the cave of Lascaux.
A sense of rhythm is as central to the art of drawing as it is to music. It is the movement of the artist’s hand that gives a drawing its sense of movement and life. Strokes that are fluid and responsive imbue a sketch with vitality.
I run a session at Spring Studio in Manhattan, where beginners struggling to get the hang of drawing from life work alongside accomplished artists who have logged many thousands of hours at the drawing board. If you look at people at work, you’ll notice that most beginners draw tentatively. They measure a lot and try to use intellectual knowledge to figure out what they’re seeing before they make their marks. There is no rhythm or flow to their lines. The parts of the body are drawn separately and never quite seem to integrate into a lifelike figure. But watch a really good artist and you’ll see that the hand is in motion most of the time, moving with the sureness and lightness of a conductor’s baton.
Lounging Ryan, 2008, by Fred Hatt
The contours of the body are all curves of various kinds. In drawing, these curves are translated into movements of the hand. I allow my perception to flow along the contours like a skier gliding along the grooves and rises of a snow surface. The drawing hand moves at a fairly constant pace, and those contours become rhythmic gestures traced onto the paper.
Natural, 2010, by Fred Hatt
In quick drawing, I almost never do any kind of measurement to determine proportions. If the flow of movement is constant, proportions fall into place because of a sense of rhythm in the changes of direction. The movement of the hand continues even when the pencil or brush is lifted from the paper, so that every rounded form is carried through from the front to the back, or from one side to the other. Thus even an unshaded line drawing is given a sense of solidity and connection.
Arch, 2010, by Fred Hatt
In longer, more finished drawings, I do measure proportional and angular relationships and make corrections, but only after I’ve first captured the feeling of the pose through this rhythmic tracing of contours. Proportions rigidly applied can crush the life out of a sketch, while giving priority to the flow and connection of forms can make a drawing communicate living energy even if the proportions are pretty far off.
Clasped Hands on Hip, 2008, by Fred Hatt
Attitude, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Complex shapes like hands, or complex poses that are hard to analyze in terms of straight lines, become simpler when treated as a continuous flow of curved shapes.
Hands, 2010, by Fred Hatt
Writhe, 2009, by Fred Hatt
The following sketches were done at Cross Pollination at Green Space Studio, a monthly event that offers the opportunity to draw while dancers warm up and move freely in the studio. The dancers aren’t posing – even when they’re stretching or relaxing, they don’t stay in one position for more than a few seconds at a time. The strokes I make are rough gestures, more often responding to memories of fleeting perceptions rather than the simultaneous perceiving and drawing I do in a life drawing session with timed poses.
Dancers Stretching, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Three Moving Figures, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Three Resting Figures, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Improvised Movement, 2008, by Fred Hatt
And here are two large-scale drawings – the first is 30″ x 48″ (76 x 122 cm) and the second is 48″ x 60″ (122 x 152 cm) – that take rhythmic flowing contours beyond the simplicity of the quick sketch:
Nyx, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Star, 2008, by Fred Hatt
If you like the movement drawings from Cross Pollination, check out this post for more.
Escape Into Life, a blog that I recommend highly as a place to discover fresh and interesting artists and writers, has featured my drawings in their Artist Watch section. They made a nice selection, and I’m honored to be included there!
A typical traditional life drawing class starts with quick poses, one or two minutes each, and then proceeds to progressively longer poses. Some people call quick poses “warm-ups”, reflecting the idea that a drawing session is like a workout. For the artist, responding as quickly as possible limbers up the hand-eye coordination. For the model, stretching and twisting wakes up the body and gets the energy flowing, which helps in holding the longer poses to come. Some people call quick poses “action poses” or “gestures”, because both model and artist strive to project a feeling of movement or expression.
Crouch with Twist, 2009, by Fred Hatt
I love quick poses because they invite a sense of abandon in the models. Active poses reveal a personal essence in how a model projects energy, and how that energy is revealed through the particular forms of the body.
Begging, 2010, by Fred Hatt
When you only have a minute or two, you have to respond directly. There’s no time to waste dithering over corrections or using an analytical approach. Faces, hands and feet are “detail traps” so I usually indicate them with very simplified marks. The contours that reveal the expressiveness of a pose are all simple curves. Each curve that I discover can be rendered with a single stroke of pencil, pen or brush.
Preparing to Rise, 2009, by Fred Hatt
These simple curves can indicate considerable detail about the model’s anatomy as well as their pose. Drawable curves are not only the outlines of parts of the body, but may also be found in creases in the skin, the bulges of muscles or bones, or even the edges between areas of light and shadow.
Front and Back, 2009, by Fred Hatt
I try to keep one curve flowing directly into the next. And though I usually sketch using only lines, not shading, I am always aware of the shading, and I see every curve as indicating a three dimensional form that has depth and heft.
Stepping Up and Turning Head, 2010, by Fred Hatt
Skin folds and the features of underlying anatomical structures often give a sense of the swooping or thrusting direction of movement of a pose.
Twist on Knees, 2009, by Fred Hatt
I’ll continue by interspersing some quotes from Kimon Nicolaides’ brilliant book, The Natural Way to Draw (1941, Houghton Mifflin). This is the best approach to learning drawing that I’ve ever come across. Though I describe myself as self-taught since I never went to art school, in a real sense Nicolaides was my teacher, through this book. My sketches aren’t specific illustrations of the words that appear adjacent to them, they’re just interleaved to keep both eye and mind engaged.
Step and Reach, 2009, by Fred Hatt
“You should draw, not what the thing looks like, not even what it is, but what it is doing. Feel how the figure lifts or droops – pushes forward here – pulls back there – pushes out here – drops down easily there. Suppose that the model takes the pose of a fighter with fists clenched and jaw thrust forward angrily. Try to draw the actual thrust of the jaw, the clenching of the hand. A drawing of prize fighters should show the push, from foot to fist, behind their blows that makes them hurt.”
Crawling and Seeking, 2009, by Fred Hatt
“This thing we call gesture is as separate from the substance through which it acts as the wind is from the trees that it bends. Do not study first the shape of an arm or even the direction of it. That will come in other exercises. Become aware of the gesture, which is a thing in itself without substance.”
Upward and Downward, 2009, by Fred Hatt
“Gesture is intangible. It cannot be understood without feeling, and it need not be exactly the same thing for you as for someone else. To discover it there is required only practice and awareness on your part. You learn about it more from drawing than from anything I can say.”
Hands to Floor, 2009, by Fred Hatt
“By gesture we mean, not any one movement, but the completeness of the various movements of the whole figure. That is why in the beginning I told you to keep the whole thing going at once. The awareness of unity must be first and must be continuous.”
Head in Hands, 2009, by Fred Hatt
“The eye alone is not capable of seeing the whole gesture. It can only see parts at a time. That which puts these parts together in your consciousness is your appreciation of the impulse that created the gesture. If you make a conscious attempt merely to see the gesture, the impulse which caused it is lost to you. But if you use your whole consciousness to grasp the feeling – the impulse behind the immediate picture – you have a far better chance of seeing more truly the various parts. For the truth is that by themselves the parts have no significant identity. You should attempt to read first the meaning of the pose, and to do this properly you should constantly seek the impulse.”
Triangular Reach, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Nicolaides’ approach to learning drawing starts from two basic concepts, gesture and contour. Initially they seem like opposite ways of approaching the figure. Gesture drawing focuses on action and expression, while contour drawing focuses on form. In practice, at least in my own experience, the two approaches gradually merge through practice. Ultimately the energy of gesture imbues the tracing of contours, and the distinction between gesture and contour disappears.
Leaning Slope, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Forward, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Foot Thrust Back, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Most figurative artists have a natural inclination to prefer either quick poses or long poses. Many artists in a self-directed practice choose to work on only one or the other. I believe the best thing any artist can do to deepen their life drawing skills is to seriously tackle the type of pose they do not naturally relate to. The energy and efficiency developed through quick drawing practice can significantly enliven a long pose drawing. The sustained attention and notice of subtleties exercised in longer drawings hone the perception that is key to drawing quick poses.
Shoulder Stand, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Stepping Up, 2010, by Fred Hatt
Here are three more pages from my sketchbook, each one containing two sketches of action poses, subsequent poses by the same model from a quick pose set. Notice what different qualities of energy and feeling are expressed in the poses that share the page. This is the real heart of the study of life drawing: the amazing variety of expression of the human body.
Head Turning, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Stride and Crouch, 2010, by Fred Hatt
Sad and Proud, 2009, by Fred Hatt
Most of the sketches in this post are two-minute poses. They’re drawn with pencil or cartridge brush-pen in sketchbooks, sizes 11″ x 14″ (28 x 36 cm) or 14″ x 17″ (36 x 43 cm).
