Hand stencils, Santa Cruz Cueva Manos, Argentina, circa 7370 BCE (postcard image for "Synapse" exhibition)

SYNAPSE, a group exhibition curated by Anthony Troncale

2/20 Gallery

220 West 16^th Street

New York, NY 10011

212-807-8348

September 2 – 16,  2010.

Opening reception: Thurs., Sept. 2, 6:00 – 9:00pm

rsvp:  atroncale@yahoo.com

Artists included in the exhibition:

Dan Leo

David Schafer

Eric Olson

Marilyn McLaren

Michelle Beshaw

Josh Gura

Anthony Troncale

Bill Eldred, Jr.

Fred Hatt

Yuri Lev

If you’re in town come and meet me and Anthony and the other artists in the show.  Here’s one of two pieces I’m showing in Synapse:

Creature, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Space Between (Anna), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

In the late 1990′s, an important focus of my drawing practice was capturing the energy of moving figures through expressive line.  This week’s post is a selection of drawings from 1997 through 1999.  All of these feature multiple renderings of the same pose in different positions.  It was my attempt to introduce the dimension of time into the two-dimensional world of the sketch.

Nested (Ignacio), c.1998, by Fred Hatt

In the drawing above, the transition of the figure from upright to fetal forms a natural nested composition, with different colored lines used to keep the phases of the movement separate.  The drawing below is more like a stroboscopic sequence moving across the frame, reminiscent of this kind of photograph I remembered seeing as a kid.

Stage Cross (Arthur), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

Here’s a beautifully simple study of the movement of the spine:

Spinal Movement (Francisca), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

In drawing from a model in motion, it is often impossible to capture the entire figure.  The composition below arises from the bony contours of ribs and arms, shoulderblades and collarbones:

Bony (Francisco), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

A model who is an expressive dancer can convey feeling even in quick movement sketches:

Emotion (Anna), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

Here are two figures, with two phases each:

Turns (Heather), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

Here, the arm of the forward bending figure becomes the leg of the standing figure:

Unfolding (Caitlin), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

Ink drawing with a brush has the spontaneity of dance:

Motion 4, c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

Here, the soft colors seem to be separating from the hard colors:

Stepping Out of Oneself (Miha), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

There are five fragmentary figures here, two drawn softly, in white, using the edge of the crayon, and three drawn crisply, in dark blue, using the point.  The differing techniques make the white and the blue drawings appear to be on different planes:

Circularity (Corinna), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

The cool softness above is contrasted by the hot energy below:

Lunge (Claudia), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

At times, the overlapping lines of the figures cease being figures and become abstract patterns:

Grass (Anna), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

In drawing from moving models, I often focused on one part of the body.  Here, it is the movement of the legs:

Legwork (Joe), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

The simplicity of the ink drawing below makes it possible to see many forms, not just figures, suggested in the flowing brushstrokes.

Motion 3, c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

When the models movements suggest power and vigor, those qualities come through in the drawing:

Explode (Toby), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

A softer style of movement makes a softer drawing:

Shimmy (Nyonnoweh), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

The model for the next two drawings was a dancer whose movements all seemed to flow from a supple spine:

Spinal Flexure (Donna), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

Leap & Turn (Donna), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

In the one below, the model must have been holding the poses for at least a minute, as there are relatively complete figures, kept mostly separated on the page:

Angst (Joe), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

Here two phases of the model’s changing states find expression in the drawing.  The face, like a placid moon, looks down upon the thrusting figures below it:

Serene Vigor (Julie), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

I believe the drawing below arose from a model moving very slowly.  As the upper body gradually changed position, I kept sketching the contours.  In this case slow movement produced a sketch with a lot of energy:

Twist and Reach (Lea), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

Many of these drawings look like they should be painted on the walls of a cave.  They have the roughness and vitality of stone age painting.

Stone (Claudia), c. 1998, by Fred Hatt

All of these drawings were done between the years, 1997 and 1999, mostly at the movement drawing sessions I used to run at Spring Studio in New York.  The color drawings are done with aquarelle crayons and sometimes ink, and are about 18″ x 24″.  Some of the ink drawings here may be as small as 10″ x 10″.  The digital images used in this post were made in the same era as the drawings, by photographing the drawings on 35mm film and scanning the prints, so they’re not quite up to the artwork photography standards I try to maintain today.

Note:  The “Claudia” that is credited as the model in two of the drawings in this post is not the same Claudia that many of my readers know as the blogger of Museworthy.

My portfolio site from this era is still online, and features a selection of movement drawings.

This week I’ll be teaching workshops and doing body painting and other fun things at the Brushwood Folklore Center in Sherman, NY.  I won’t have access to a computer, so forgive me if I don’t reply to your comments right away, or if the next post takes a little more than a week to appear here.

February Cross Pollination #1, 2010, by Fred Hatt

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.

Modern Dance, 2008, by Fred Hatt

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.

Hand Over Eyes, 2010, by Fred Hatt

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).