Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Announcing My New Series - Drawings of Tap Dancers

I am very excited to announce this new series because it combines two of my loves – art and tap dancing. I mentioned my love of tap before, but at the time I was not dancing. I started dancing again about a year ago, and in the fall joined a class offered by the Tap Ties company.

Not long after joining I started thinking about combining art and tap. Since the ladies who make up Tap Ties are all incredibly nice, it didn’t take too much guts to ask them if they would mind allowing me to take reference photos during their practices. Lucky for me they said yes.

I now have over 300 reference photos and the ideas for drawings and painting are coming so fast I often find myself scribbling them down in my own strange short-hand. My biggest problem so far has been deciding which ones to start with because I want to start them all right away!

I have a lot more to say about this new series, but for now I want to share the first drawing.

I decided to start this project by focusing on the dancers feet. One of my goals is to convey motion, because so much of tap is about the movements the feet make to achieve the desired sounds.tap dancing feet

tap dancing feet
9” x 6” graphite drawing on Canson paper
Stacy L. Rowan

In this drawing you can see that the front foot is moving fast and probably making multiple sounds, while only the heel on the back foot is moving. I loved the interesting shape of the front foot combined with the realism of the back shoe.

I currently have two more drawings started and a third planned. So stay tuned!

11 comments:

FitFoodieMegha said...

Lovely work...:) The graphite use is very well...:) BTW I have started a new blog dedicated to my sketch work — Art on Sketchbook

Jennifer Rose said...

very interesting piece, great sense of movement :) always nice to see people combine their passions. Looking forward to more :)

Anonymous said...

Stacy, glad to see you started, it's looking good. Hope to see more this week end.
Love Dad

Rose Welty said...

Looks great Stacy! Drawing motion is no small feat...well done!

Rhonda Bartoe Tucker said...

Great goal and a great start! Love it!

Stacy said...

Thank you all for your support and kind comments. I am really excited about this project and can't wait to finish more drawings so I can share them here. :)

M J Muir said...

Stacy I posted yesterday but I must have done something wrong. So I will say again I LOVE your new idea. I can't wait to see you go on with this. I like especially the sense of movement you are bringing into your work.

Billie Crain said...

Wow, Stacy! This is fantastic! You really managed to capture the motion.:) Bravo!

Robyn Sinclair said...

I was about to say: Wow, Stacy! but I see Billie has beaten me to it :) You are on to something wonderful here. I love this first drawing, there's is such elegance in your graphite style. This is going to make a fresh and exciting series. Beautiful.

Stacy said...

Thank you ladies! I am loving this new series of work. So much so that I am finding it difficult to break away and take care of other things - like keeping my blog up to date! I've been getting good feedback as well from other tap dancers, other artists and people who don't fit into either catagory.

Anonymous said...

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!