Movement and Motion 

The Super Bowl will be hosted here in less than a month. Wow, the Super Bowl. Here, in Santa Clara, 10 minutes from the studio. No doubt an important moment in the Bay Area's history which is usually only in the news when Apple is launching a new iPhone version. 

While I, myself am not really a football fan, I know nothing about the game, and I'm going to spend the Super Bowl weekend skiing, I thought this is a significant enough event and a great opportunity to talk about depicting movement in art. And who shall we watch and discuss if not the greatest observer of the human movement - Edgar Degas.

Ballet dancers are not football players, but Degas's constant studying  of their poses and movement were a good starting point for us. 

Dancers Practicing at the Barre - Edgar Degas

We observed a few artworks of Degas and noticed the dancers' habitat. The group of students that I've done this lesson with are in grades 2 and 3. They are still battling the concept of depicting space in a way that is not a strip of blue sky on top and line that marks the floor on the bottom. When they draw something that happens outside, and I ask them about what should be where they left the paper blank, they answer "nothing, this is just air" and the same goes for indoors. The work above really shows clearly how the dancers stand on the floor, behind them there is a wall and the line between the floor and the wall stretches just a bit above their feet.

Then we discussed for a few moments sports or physical activities they each like to do (or to watch, or they simply just like...). I had lots of cut out pictures from magazines and catalogues that they could browse through for inspiration and for a reference or they could use their memory to recall a certain movement.

So we started with sketching out the background on a big piece of paper (15x20)

and then we used acrylic paints to paint it. I instructed them to try and fill up the entire paper with paint. Even if the scene took place in the snowy mountain they should paint the snow white rather the leaving it merely blank. After they finished (I'm sorry that I didn't take pictures of this step) they took one of the two options of jointer figure  - side or front view - 

This one was taken from pinterest. 

They cut out the pieces and assembled them in the pose of their choice. They had great discoveries while doing that and most of them would not have noticed how each of our limbs has 3 different joints that can move separately and form a different kind of movement or action.

 

Yogi by Alma, Age 6

Skier by Yuval, age 8

Once they figured out the pose, they had to glue it onto the painted background (which was dry by then) and add color and details on top of the cut out joint figure, like face and hair, uniform and props (ball, skis etc).

Rock climber by Hayden, age 7

At the end of the process, the kids not only figured out how to show different movement, they also had to deal with space depicting skills. 

I think it was an incredibly successful project as the kids were very interested in the subject matter; a lot of it came from their own world and they felt connected to it. They also learned a lot in the process and of course, last but not least, had fun! 

Here are a few more:

Ballet dancer by Shachar, age 8

Goali by Amit, Age 8

Baseball player by Liron, age 7

Basketballl player by Ofer, age 7

Baseball player by Gilad, Age 7