During October I had the opportunity to draw the dancer and performer Aimee Williamson. Aimee created some challenging and vibrant poses for us, drawn from her recent performances of “Pendle Witch” a dance piece exploring the ordinary and misunderstood women behind the Pendle Witch trials. Watch the excellent trailer for the performance HERE. (And the more observant among you may see my husband and I clapping along in the audience!)

We started the evening’s drawing with several very short, energetic poses including several 1 minute poses and three 5 minute rotating poses. To help me make sense of my drawings I used several different coloured pencils to capture these drawings as I layered them on top of each other to reflect the sense of movement and motion.

Later in the session we moved on to some longer poses where Aimee used a broom as a prop. The lighting was very dramatic during this session due to trying out a new lighting rig, which created positives and challenges to the drawing process.

For the last pose of the session I decided to use water colour and to focus more on the negative space to create a dramatic picture- the back lighting made the model’s details difficult to see from my position so I used this as an opportunity to try a different take.

When I returned home I incorporated some of the sessions drawings into my sketchbook, layering the pieces on top of abstract backgrounds I had created previously. This has been a process I have been enjoying experimenting with this year- incorporating and integrating my life drawings into my sketchbook experiments with print, abstraction and collage.