Visual Language: Rhythm is a Dancer

When we were given this brief I was really looking forward to it, as I love life drawing and I feel that it is something I will always benefit from practicing. Life drawing and drawing from observation is something that I have been practicing within my general sketchbooks that was set as the first task of the visual language brief, so I was feeling confident that I would be able to get at least a few sequences that captured and reflected the movement of the model in front of me.

However, I wasn't expecting it to be so difficult when I first started it. I knew that I'd only be focusing upon the lines of the shapes made by the body rather than the detail, but this still didn't make it any easier to produce an accurate reflection in only 10 seconds.

The first sequence I attempted didn't go all that well. I did managed to capture the movement of the body and I did manage to keep up with the pace of movement whilst doing the task, but my lines aren't confident at all and it's all just a bit too messy. However, I do feel that the pencils were a good choice of medium, as it is easy to distinguish between the two colours, which made it easy for me to focus on which movement I was doing and then look back and see exactly what I had done, which made the movement of the model clear. 

The second sequence went only slightly better than the first. My lines were more confident in this set of drawings and were less scratchy. There was also a more definite shape to the model I was drawing and I even started to think about body shape a little more. I feel that these drawings are a lot more consistent than the last set above, as the scale appears to stay fixed. I also feel that the movement within this sequence has been captured a lot better and there is a stronger sense of movement within this sequence than in the previous one. I found it a lot easier to keep up with the pace of the task whilst drawing out this sequence and I felt more confident doing this sequence. 

Overall, I feel that this sequence went a lot better than the first two I attempted. My line work has improved greatly as I have worked through this sequence and the movement is very clear. I also feel that the scale works really well within this sequence and I really like the body detail I have been able to add, whilst I was okay with the sequences being just lines, I feel that the added body shape helps to make the figure look more substantial and the movement look more realistic. I am really pleased with how quickly my drawings have improved and I am more confident in myself and my own drawing skills. 

This was the final sequence I did for the day and I feel that it is the best one I did out of the four. Not only can you see the clear improvement and increased confidence within my line work, but the positioning of my drawings also works really well and helps to demonstrate the movement of the model. I also feel that I was able to maintain a much better standard of scale than before, however, this is still something that I need to work on, as there were a few poses that were slightly put of scale to the rest of them that I drew for this sequence. 

The day after I really wanted to try drawing a fifth movement sequence to see how much my drawing skills had improved overall, since doing a full day of drawing the day before. My scale throughout the sequence is way off, there's no consistency within it at all. So consistency of scale is something I need to work on considerably throughout this study task and other projects. I also noticed that the confidence in my line work that I was seeing towards the end of the previous day had dropped and my lines were more scratchy, however they were more confident than the lines I had started with at the start of the previous day. Whilst it has improved this is another thing I need to keep working on in order to improve it some more. 

Overall, I am really pleased with my attempts so far and I feel as though I have produced some good responses.