Challenge 8 - You've Got To Move It, Move it!

Hello again....it's week 8 of our Mission Grove Virtual Art Club and things are going to get a bit lively this week! After the quiet art of last week's Still Life challenge, this week we are going to focus on movement, specifically movement of figures.

Look at these pieces of art below. How are they showing movement?

This type of art is called FUTURISM and it was created over a 100 years ago, when people were first seeing the power and speed of new vehicles and technology so artists wanted to reflect this in their paintings. 
One of the most famous futurist artists was Umberto Boccioni.

They often created their art by overlapping figures or using strong lines and swirls to show the direction of movement.

Rose has drawn a ballerina using pastels. 
How has she shown movement?

Keith Haring was a famous artist in the 1980's. His pictures are very different to Rose's one, but like her he is showing movement in a similar way. Can you see how?

Both Keith Haring and Rose use simple lines around their figures to show movement. Rose's are gentle and swirling to show the ballerina spinning, but Keith Haring uses bolder, more cartoon-like lines to show movement in his art.

So your challenge this week is to create a piece of art, showing some kind of movement.

You can create anything you want, anyway you want, but it has to show MOVEMENT.

• You could draw your favourite sport.
• An active hobby - swimming, ballet.
• Are you going to draw a person or an object moving?
• How are you going to show movement? 
• What are you going to use for your piece of art?

Below are some ideas if you are stuck, based on the work of The Futurists, Keith Haring and Roses pictures we looked at above. These ideas are just to do with figures.

This week we're going to start off with some ideas for our older clubbers, so scroll all the way through the post and see if any of these ideas inspire you.

To help you might want to download and print off this mannequin template (don't worry if you can't print it out, you can make your own at home.) If some of you still have your old sketchbooks, you may already have a split pin mannequin you made at school in there. If not you don't need split pins - just small bits of blu-tac, plasticine or rolled up sellotape to attach the different parts so you can still move them.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1focbyb4egTPDTPB_k65u1-hwVKx-E7F4/view?usp=sharing

Now put your mannequin, or your own cut out figure on your paper and lightly draw around it.

In this one the figure is going to do a cartwheel (sort of!!) So move it over to position 2 and draw around it again. Keep going until you have moved it across the page as you choose. (3 to 5 times should be enough - we've done 5, which looks a bit too busy!)

Now find some colouring pencils, felt pens or oil pastels and outline each of your figures. Take your time as lines may be difficult to see. You could do it as you went along if that's easier.

We want to show movement, using some lines in areas that don't overlap other figures.

Then start adding some curved 'energy lines' in the direction that the figure is moving.

When you are happy, shade in the background area using a different colour. Our one isn't finished yet.

Here is another one we started with the figure just jumping to the side.

 Here is a further completed example we found online:

Here are some further examples adapting the idea slightly. You could draw and cut out a template figure, then just cut off the one arm or leg, moving just those and drawing around them.

In the ones below, you could just draw, cut out and move a single figure across your page.

All these ideas above are in the style of the futurists.

For our younger art clubbers we are going to stick to Keith Haring and Rose style pictures.

To start here is a game you can play - we often did this as a warm to an art lesson in school. 
Get a dice, roll it and first draw whatever head the number on the dice shows. Throw the dice again, adding your arms and keep going until you have completed your figure adding any extra Keith Haring lines and items.

Try drawing simple Keith Haring figures - he doesn't usually show a neck and there is little detail. They are just simple body outlines.

Once you are confident, draw a simple Keith Haring figure free hand on your paper. In school we drew ours with white chalk on black paper, but it will work equally well on white paper with a pencil.

Now with a colouring pencil, oil or soft pastel or felt pens start going round your figure/s using in and out spiky movements all the way around. We used oil pastels.

Move onto another colour if you have room and keep going until you reach the edge of your page. 
Finally add some Keith Haring style movement lines.

On white paper:

Here's some we did in school a few years ago.

This next idea, is a little bit of a futurist/ Keith Haring mash up!

Here are some in progress and some of our finished ones from a few years ago.

For something a little spicier you could adapt the idea into something like this, featuring your favourite sport:

You could also create your own Keith Haring style moveable figure. Draw a simple Keith Haring figure. Cut it out. Cut off the legs, arms (and head if you like). Re-attach them using blu-tac, plasticine, a small piece of rolled up sellotape (like the mannequin above), so that you can move the arms, legs and head into different positions.

Draw them one way, then another. Out line in black and colour in brightly, adding your movement lines. Alternatively you can do all of this freehand drawing different characters in the simple style of Keith Haring to show movement.

Further Keith Haring inspired ideas:

Lots of figures

One giant life size (or as large as you can!) figure!

Good luck with the challenge. 

Please send a photograph of your finished work to MGartclub@missiongrove.org.uk by Friday 15th May.

PS: Miss Jennings has said that if you need paper for your art work (particularly bigger pieces), an adult can pop into the reception and they will give you some!