Moving figure: Single moving figure

a. First I chose to do some sketches of my dance teacher explaining waltz movements, done from a video I took in one of my lessons.

It’s quite interesting recalling that he keeps telling me that my arms should be firm and shouldn’t move – that all the movement should come from my body and my legs, and that is exactly what I can see in my sketches, as his arms are always up. I’m happy with these sketches - I think the proportions are accurate and have some sense of three-dimensionality and movement, and they do actually look like my teacher.

b. I did further studies at the Coffee Morning at the Mall Gallery in London sketching dancers from the Central School of Ballet Dancing. I used pastel pencil on A4 pastel paper and found it quite difficult to sketch the dancers when they were performing as even though they moved slowly, they were constantly moving and I never felt I had enough time. I therefore decided to concentrate on poses they would repeat, and waited until they repeated the pose to add more detail each time to my sketches