Bodies in Motion for Teachers

A Bodies in Motion drawing session at Pixar

A Bodies in Motion drawing session

Bodies in Motion is an ever-expanding resource for drawing, learning, and studying the human figure in motion. We hope teachers will use the Bodies in Motion library in the classroom and start to integrate it into their curriculumn. If you are a teacher, a single PRO subscription can be used in front of the class to project or display images for drawing sessions. If you would like your students to have the ability to access the site as well, for study or assignments (in or out of class),  please get in touch and we can arrange either an educational site license or a group enrolment discount for your classroom.

IDEAS FOR TEACHING

If you have a projector or large screen, that is enough to get started with a Bodies in Motion drawing session. Quickdraw is an amazing way to get your class started with a varied playlist of dynamic poses.  From there uou can browse for inspiration and have them draw from any module: Motions, Expressions, Scans or the classic Muybridge library. All are a excellent, complementary adjuncts to life drawing, and give an insight to the dynamic figure that is difficult to get with life model.  There is a wide range of content to choose from, and you will no doubt have your favourites, but if you find yourself in a rut, select a module and sort by "Surprise Me". Then choose from the first results that come up!

When drawing from Motions/Expressions/Muybridge, there is a Timer at the bottom of the frame that is a great tool for automatically flipping through the images. It is set to near realtime playback by default, but pull the blue slider to the right and it will slow the playback down to 30sec, 1min, 2min, and 5 minute intervals (note: these same controllers are on the fullscreen view as well). A timed session with 5-10 frames is perfect for gesture study and giving students a sense of how the body moves fom pose to pose.

For Scans, Browse to select an interesting pose and open the Scan viewer.  Drag the figure to rotate to a good angle and start drawing. There are many angles to choose from and drawing a few views gives the artist a deeper understanding of the balance, gesture and volume of a pose. Consider having your students work through five different angles of a pose, maybe 2-5 minutes each, to really grasp it.  The lighting variations give another dimension to study from - silhouttes, bottom lighting, etc. Consider having your students do tone studies from the same pose but under different light. Each lighting variation highlights different planes and volumes of the figure.    

There are countless possibilities and more content is being added each month.  Our goal is to create the greatest study resource for aspiring artists on the internet, please join us and start sharing this resource with your students.