Circomedia & Drawing Circus Performers

Trying to capture movement.

This time last week I was in Bristol, staying with my daughter, and it was the eve before an amazing drawing workshop lead by Sara Easby from the Bristol Drawing School. The drawing day was held at Circomedia - the centre for contemporary circus and physical theatre - in St. Paul's Church, Portland Square. The church was saved from dilapidation and converted in 2004 and now houses the UK's largest indoor trapeze rig and aerial facilities. Visit www.circomedia.com for more information.

Circomedia, St. Paul's Church, Portland Square, Bristol.

The day dawned bright but chilly and we arrived at the venue in good time. We had come with sketchbooks (size not specified so I kitted us out with A3 as capturing moving figures suggested to me bigger gestural strokes), pencils, charcoal, Neocolour crayons and water brush pens in case we had time to brush pigment out into a wash.

Sara started by introducing simple ways to tackle figures in constant movement - from a single sweeping line of action to 'pin men' and suggested that we keep in mind where the weight was distributed. Basically we would be trying to capture first impressions, no detail, and just explore how to best describe the evolving configurations of the circus performers (our models) as they practised their skills!

To give you an idea of what we were up against I offer this brief video clip taken on my phone:

A small selection of my A3 sketchbook pages...

Acrobatics, in pencil, A3 sketchbook.

Acrobatics, pencil, A3 sketchbook.

 

Acrobatics, pencil to capture first movements
and superimposed with charcoal
as sequence of positions changed.

Things got a bit more scribbly and manic as I tried to get the essence of our 'models'  doing some juggling with first the diablo then balls/skittles. Can you make head or tail of these?

Juggling, pencil, A3 sketchbook.

Juggling, pencil, A3 sketchbook.

Juggling, pencil/charcoal pencil, A3 sketchbook.

All of this was before lunch! Three quarters of an hour later, back into the fray, with a variety of circus skills on offer. Our next models warmed up...

Circus performer warming up on the floor...

Warming up...

... before they both took to the air on the trapeze!

Two performers on the trapeze.

Two performers on the trapeze, Neocolour crayon.

Two performers on the trapeze.

After the trapeze came Poppy creating beautiful shapes with the Hoop...

Performing with the aerial Hoop
(apologies for the blue tinge - the paper is white).

... and Johnno working with the long drape of red fabric...

Aerial performer with suspended fabric.

Amazing shapes of aerial performer with suspended fabric,
Neocolour crayon, A3 sketchbook.
(Apologies for blue tinge).

By this time everyone was beginning to flag from the intensity of the looking and rapid mark making trying to get the gist of 'poses'. I have done a fair bit of 'blind contour drawing' in the past whereby the drawing is created whilst the eyes are focused solely on the subject matter and not on the page at all - a strategy that proved very useful at times. Then just when we thought we had seen it all the final performer took to the sky - well, the curved swing suspended high up near the ceiling. What a finale!

By this time many people on the workshop had called it a day with the drawing, either from tiredness or shear awe at the difficult task of capturing anything of this last performance. But I was determined to give it a try...

Holly on the curved swing, Neocolour crayon, A3 sketchbook.

The whole day was fantastic. I had treated not only myself, but my daughter (who also likes to draw when she gets the time) as a birthday gift to her, to spend such an extended period of time grappling with this near impossible task of capturing something meaningful of these incredibly hard-working, skilled specialists of the floor and air. Thank you Sara, and the talented circus performers of Circomedia for such an incredible experience.

If you are interested in finding out more about the courses run by Bristol Drawing School visit www.drawingschool.org.uk.

I will leave you with another short clip of Holly on the curved swing.