How to Create a Multimedia Movement Drawing

hi i'm julia at reynolda house and today i'm here with another pop-up studio to inspire you to be creative and make art at home and today we have a guest teacher with us dakin is a college student and he is learning and working at the museum this semester as an intern he's inspired by a work of art in our collection by abraham wakowitz and abraham wakowitz made a drawing about the dancer isadora duncan and he made hundreds of these in his time he was really inspired by the movement of this dancer so i'm going to turn this over to dakin to show you what you need to complete this project and how to do it thank you julia as you said my name is dakin moore and today i'm going to be showing you the steps and materials necessary to create a drawing like this inspired by the great abraham walkowitz so without further ado let's get started

to begin i'm going to go over the materials you will need first a piece of printer paper or any paper for that matter then something to color with in this case i have crayons and colored pencils

if they are available to you i suggest using watercolors and markers but if you don't have them that's totally fine
next you're going to need a pen and a pencil and if your pencil doesn't have one you'll need an eraser
finally you'll need a reference photo for this i chose to do a dancer but you can really do anything that conveys movement if you want to do a dance like i did i linked some archives on the reynolda website where you can find reference photos of dancers to get us started you'll need your pencil and eraser your reference photo and a piece of paper our first step is to draw a very basic outline of your figure
our first step is to draw a very basic outline of your figure for me it's a dancer so i want to capture her head arms and legs right now it can be as rough as you like because we'll fill it in and make it better later
this next step is where your figure will come to life trace around the outline you made in the previous step pay attention to where the body is narrower and thicker on your image this can still be fairly rough because we're going to clean it up later but try to get the basic shapes of the body down

this next step is where movement will be added to your piece in this case my dancer is wearing a flowy dress so i'm going to want to capture the very basic shapes and elements of this dress to convey the idea of movement this can be as rough as the previous steps because we're all going to fix it in the next step if your figure has hair this would also be a good time to add

that now we will be going in and adding detail take your pen and trace around the outlines you have made try to use continuous lines not break them up or interrupt them keep your pen against the paper this can still be fairly rough abraham walker with drawings were not completely detailed but try to use smooth lines when you get to hands or feet they don't have to be too detailed if you can see here i just use simple lines for my hands do

if you want to you can get more detail you can add lines of the hair or ruffles to the dresses just have fun with it

this step is fairly simple just wipe away all the pencil marks you've made in the previous steps to reveal the simple ink outline

the next few steps are where you can really get creative i chose to color the background blue because blue is my favorite color and i chose the crown because i thought it'd be fun to color with it whatever you do make it fun you can use multiple colors or multiple mediums

the next step is to color the dress or whatever piece of clothing your figure is wearing when approaching this i would suggest using a contrasting color to your background choice if you use multiple colors use multiple contrasting colors in the dress whatever you use you want to make it pop and i would also recommend using a different medium if you have it for example i colored the background with a crown so i'm going to want to color the dress with a colored pencil it's a slight contrast but i think it adds a lot to the piece

our next step is to color the skin and hair of your figure i had watercolors available so i used those but if you don't have another medium you can use one of the previous two you already used for the colors in the skin and hair i stay true to form i use normal skin tones and just brown hair

once you've completed your skin tones and hair you're pretty much done you can add whatever you like from this point you could add more color to the background try out different mediums but in this case i just drew a foreground and signed my name

once you've added your final touches you're all done for ways to continue this activity look on the reynolda website thank you everyone for having me and have a good day

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