Work for Assessment - Assignment 5 - Figure skating - a study of movement on ice

Dance inspires some great lively drawings but figure skating (always the poor relation) doesn't inspire even though there is beauty and athleticism. I love the feeling of freedom and movement on ice and I understand what the moves feel like. This seems like a good starting point to draw from.

Inspiration;
Karolina Szymkiewicz carefully drawn but with a hint of movement from half drawn hair or feint movement lines. The dancers are perfectly proportioned but very slightly off balance so you know they will be moved by gravity a split second after the drawing the you see.
Marcus Gannuscio The sketches are way ahead of the finished pieces. Hatched lines and shading create energy and are read as movement lines. Figures are again slightly off balance.
Jane Waller Multiple lines overlaid. One figure drawn many times or multiple figures dancing and merging.
Laura Foote Particularly her drawings of the English National Ballet.
Keith Martin multicoloured gestural drawings where the movement is in the layering and depth of the mark but is as much about what is not drawn as what is. A sort of David Downton in motion, though maybe David Downton is already doing what I want to do but on models who move less than skaters.

To get a feeling of the actual mechanics of the movement I tried looking at online videos pressing the pause button to create fuzzy action shots for reference.

I started with dip pen and ink but it didn't move freely across the paper so I switched to felt tip then pencil. For the next session (below) I used a fine liner and tried different marks to suggest my figures.

 I tried coloured pencils but the drawings weren't great and they don't scan well Finally I mixed felt tip with a slightly dried out fineliner.

Reviewing the drawings there are a number which I think were reasonably successful and would benefit from further development. It's easy to loose the liveliness of the original drawing when it is repeated and "improved" as I have tried to do in the drawing below.


One of the limitations of my drawing practice is that I am too dependent on copying the scene I see in front of me. That's fine if I'm drawing something that stays put, but if I want to capture a fleeting moment I need to use my memory more and that means I need to use my imagination a bit to fill in the bits I either can't remember or couldn't see. With this in mind I changed tack on my moving skaters and tried conjure them out of my memory/imagination in my sketch book.

 I started by doodling with a blue fibre tipped pen

 Then changed to black biro.

 Then pencil and felt tip

 and ended up using a fine liner.

 I think that this sheet contains some of my more successful efforts. The process of hunting for the right line adds energy.

To try and build on the energy created by hunting for the right line I did some drawings with a dip pen and coloured ink. I intended to start with a light colour and add a darker colour once I'd sorted out where I wanted the line to be but I got carried away with trying to capture the right pose.

My daughter thought that the small blue figures were my most successful. Dip pens tend to blob occasionally and the ink bled through the cheap paper.....

 As I went on the figures became more static. I was trying to catch a point where the figure is unbalanced to see if this gave more of a feeling of movement.

 This picture is on an A3 sheet. I found it difficult to maintain the energy at this size but I did manage to use more than one colour. I like this paper but it gives off artefact's in my scanner.

semi dried up felt tipped pen

Ice rinks aren't beautiful places but one of my challenges which I have yet to face was to think more about the background. I was inspired by Laura Ferguson's prepared backgrounds to get my watercolours out.

I tried splodging ultramarine paint (for the coolness of the ice rink) and permanent rose for warmth and contrast. I also splattered a large sheet of paper and tilted it to get colour runs and lines.

This looks like the arms and body of a skater so I did a test drawing in my sketchbook.

 I wasn't initially sure which way her head should be hence the extra lines.

It doesn't show movement and I couldn't fit the legs in. My tutor has previously commented that I should leave more to the viewers imagination. I may have already done too many lines so I'm stopping here. Is that copping out?

I need to work on composition. This was one of a number of experiments including more of the rink background. Here I was trying to convey the contrast between the beauty of the skater and the shabbiness of the rink.

I tried to make the background more ugly and ended up adding some more figures which seems to have some potential 

A pencil study of the potential of this idea

Lead to this drawing in water soluble crayon on blue/grey sugar paper

This approach looks at the repetitiveness of practice and the movement towards performance (the crowd) Is it too self explanatory? I'm sure I've been subconsciously influenced by Cezanne here

The other approach was to look at the loneliness of the skater in front of the crowd and the role that other people play in their lives. With this drawing I wanted the viewer to question the role of the larger figure in the foreground. I used white conte and pastel on black sugar paper.

I explored scenarios and narratives but ultimately what interested me about this project was the feeling of movement and how it feels to be part of or inside that. Revisiting my sketchbook drawings I drew this sequence of movement which emphasises the repetitive nature of practice required to master a movement. I'm thinking of some of the busy groups of action figures in Ruben's paintings

This drawing was also influenced by Howard Brodie's pencil sketch of battle I redrew it in white pencil on denim paper from the Apsley Paper Trail

Then added some colour give it definition

This has a touch of Beryl Cook mixed with Tim Stoner
My reason for doing this course is to push myself to work differently and explore new ideas and I'm conscious that this drawing doesn't answer any of the challenges set by my tutor in my feedback. There is no narrative and the background is abstract and unreal. It is more an illustration than a drawing and lacks academic content.

This is a better response but although I'm reasonably happy with it I don't feel it is truly my drawing or expresses what I want to convey in this project. My challenge to myself was to better represent movement and was partly in response to the criticism of the static skateboarding figure in Assignment  three which I fully agree with. I think the challenge in doing a course like this is to take on new ideas and be responsive to external views and criticism without loosing your own personal style or viewpoint in the process. Following my external research I feel that many established artists and illustrators are employed or commissioned to translate what they see into their own predictable style almost like employing the services of an interpreter. If you order a Julian Opie you are expecting a simple computer generated cartoon style and you're not going to be very happy if he does something different (though his style does appear to be evolving) Well established artists such as Peter Blake seem to manage to work in a variety of styles but it doesn't appear to be the norm. Is "success" a recognisable style or the freedom to work in different ways and how much do you need to let go of your own preferred style and taste to learn and progress as an artist?

What worked best?

I'm still reasonably pleased with my watercolour drawing from my first submission

and I like the liveliness of this drawing even though it's not what my tutor was looking for.

If I'm trying to do what he wanted then I think these are the best drawings

Both probably fall into the illustration category, I think the drawing below is the better of the two.

Artists Statement

Using loose flowing lines to convey a frozen moment in the swirling performance of the figure skater. The focus is on the person, a human being working as a machine. The surroundings are a blur, an unimportant background. The figure is glimpsed and incomplete, small and alone in the vast rink.

I want to use drawings as a way to make time stand still so that the uniqueness and beauty of the moment can be captured to be examined and fully appreciated. To do this, for this project, I choose to use ice skaters as my subject because they move rapidly, but in a predictable pattern with repetition. I have had plenty of opportunities to closely observe how they move, and as an amateur ice skater I have myself experienced many of the movements that I have drawn so that I can include my own feelings of how the pose works as well as how it looks to an audience. 

My interest is in the beauty to be found in ugly places and the effort of people to achieve that beauty. My drawings are meant to be contemporary, not historical, I am in the here and now, this is what I am seeing and recording, I don't feel able to comment on the past or look into the future. I fluctuate between wanting to record and expose the rigours of practice which the public never sees or to comment on the loneliness of the performer in front of the crowd, maybe the resultant image is a bit of both. We the viewers look on from the stability and relative comfort of the sides outside the barriers which contain the ice. We could be supportive and encouraging or pushy and domineering. Because we are outside the ice we have only our single window view to try and understand the complexities of the relationship between the skater and the ice, a world we cannot enter unless we are prepared to embrace the unpredictable and step onto the ice.

Before I started I looked at videos of ice skating on YouTube to try and break down the elements of action, and made drawing based on what I saw however I found that I made better drawings by using my memory and imagination which was based on my earlier visual studies.

My work has been influenced by my research into other practitioners, Rubens, Tim Stoner,  the carefully executed dance drawings of Karolina Szymkiewicz and the multiple overlaid lines of Jane Waller. Also the paper preparation techniques of Laura Ferguson.

I have treated every drawing as an experiment so the drawings weren't planned but were allowed to evolve, sometimes successfully, sometimes into a dead end.  The liveliest drawings happened when there is evidence of my search for the best line and when I didn't know how the figure was going to take shape or what they would be doing.  A variety of media was tested and this experiment with different media is an ongoing theme in my work.