I've had this drawing for months and finally decided to post it since at the moment, all I have are pieces in various stages of finish. This drawing was a lot of fun to do - just scribbling gestures all over the paper with smaller scribbles on the bottom. I used an Itoya Calligraphy pen, along with fine point Sharpies.
I was lucky to be at a jitterbug exhibition where it would have been
so awkward to pull out my pencil and paper, plus it was really dark where we were sitting. And anyway, I've decided that in these instances, memory is better, even if you can only remember one bit of the dance. (The reason for that approach is that when you're drawing - unless you're doing a blind gesture - you'll miss lots of the actual dancing because it goes so fast.)
So when I returned to the studio, I streamed some oldies jitterbug music like "Tutti Frutti","Whole Lot of Shakin Goin On", "Rock Around the Clock" - great jive music. And, using the fine point pen, drew just a bit of what I remembered from the dancers' movements and then keeping my pen on one part of the gesture, began another drawing of the same subject in a slightly different position. I
love that layered look for drawings! And having the jitterbug music on is kind of an inspiration and helps me to remember more of what happened on the dance floor. It reminds me not to get tight and to just let the lines flow.
Worked my way across the page - only drew a couple of gestures before the main drawing, but sometimes I do a lot more of the fine line gestures - and then end up doing a bolder line drawing. I added a few smudges of charcoal in the center. The little gestures on the bottom are there because I was just fooling around while listening to the music - I never meant to post this - it's just a stream of consciousness kind of thing. This drawing is on 16 x 20" Canson board. Thanks for stopping by!
