To capture movement art is something many of us artists aspire to do.

Attempting to make a two-dimensional painting (or sometimes 2.5D - I love my lumps and bumps) into something dynamic is not always easy.

When it works though, it brings vibrancy and energy to an artwork,  adding a spark of magic that wakes an artwork up and makes it dance before your eyes.

If we think about it, movement is THE key sign of life.   It’s what all our senses are on high alert to detect at all times, evolved as we are to respond to our environment and interact with the world around us.  

Movement is also characteristic of the elements at play, whether it’s the clouds drifting across the sky, the water racing around the fast bend of the river or the flicker of flames.  

These things are so fundamental to us it seems impossible to extract and scrutinise how movement itself impacts us, but we can certainly feel that power over us - just imagining our coffee cup slowly moving independently across the table or instead reflect on the strange wrongness of a wild creature sitting prostrate in the middle of our lawn.

Sky and Crow, Limited Edition Print

The art of performance, film, theatre, dance harnesses dynamics.  

Painting, like photography, is sometimes seen as capturing a scene or snapshot of life as if freezing it’s beauty forever - objects arranged are ‘Still life’ no less.

Often there is implied movement in the subject, for example, we know that the grass, clouds or the treetops might move in the breeze if we think about it, because these things do in real life, but some artists paint in a way that gives the impression that the grass is shifting, the clouds racing, the tree tops ruffling, showing us this aspect of a scene adds authenticity, the sense of weather and brings in the constant change that would be at play in a real scene.  These artists ‘unfreeze’ the scene, draw us in to inhabit it, add other levels of sense and experience to a picture.

Like many people I grew up reading comics and cartoons, and as a young teen I discovered anime, Manga, fantasy art and developed a love of beautiful book covers showing incredible, dramatic scenes.

I think this is where my love of a dynamic, heat of the action, artwork began, and although my art is often quite different in style, I still love these types of art and they continue to inspire me with their energy, excitement and storytelling.

Break, Limited Edition Rugby Fundraiser Print

If I had to give an unofficial guide to creating movement in art (I’ve had my own intuitive but varied art education) I’d probably give some tips on the following things…

1. Form

Choice of line, shape and composition, although obvious is so vital.  I often select the most dynamic options, and then see if I can make it any more dynamic, to add energy to my work.

2. Expression

It’s not just what you do, but how you do it.  Physical, fresh, instinctive mark making is expressed in the work as authentic, raw and honest reflections of the artist at work.  It comes across really powerfully and can be used as a tool to depict movement, energy and physicality in the work, I love this part of my painting now despite having been a much more detailed artist in the past.  If just for fun, give some expressive mark making a go and you’ll see what I mean.  

3.  Muscle

Muscles are the agents of movement, they create and react to it.  Studying human and animal muscle structure is a celebration of all things movement, and I could do it for days on end.  I study things moving, not just sitting down, I like to see what happens as they move, what shapes and interrelationships interest me.  I can really understand Masters like Leonardo Da Vinci becoming so obsessed with understanding anatomy for their art that they dissected cadavers.  The more you know the more fascinating it becomes.

4.  Air

Personally, I think it’s often underrated that air moves.  In lots of different directions.  I do love a bit of science and have looked in the past at air currents and thermals to help my work but even the smallest appreciation will add to the authenticity and energy of a work - no landscape is actually still, and any movement of a body or a thing, also moves the air.  

5. Cause and Effect

…which links nicely to cause and effect.  When we’re using a reference photo, painting from imagination or even outdoors en plein air it’s really helpful to think as well as to look (which much of our artistic life is structured around).  We have to use our imagination at times to predict what would be different about a scene if a fox had just walked through it, what would be the signs that there is a breeze in the air.  That cloud across the sun has cast shadows here, but in just a minute a hint of light will shine through here.  We make it more real by anticipating or accentuating the interrelationships between the subjects and the environment they are in is a great way to bring the experience of real life into paintings.

6. Time Bridges

My own term (thank you) linked to cause and effect, but this is about taking account of the past and future and artistically representing fragments of these alongside the present to help to portray movement.  Sounds a bit freaky, I know, but it’s quite simple in practice and really effective.  

Have you ever seen or heard of the first film ever made?  In 1878 Helios (or Eadweard Muybridge) released a series of photographs of a rider on a horse.  Sequential freeze-frames of ‘The Horse in Motion’ stands as a seminal event that took photography into the new world of filmmaking.  

Using a time bridge would be choosing a snapshot of the horse to paint, then using the previous slides and the following slides to see where the horses legs and body had been and was going to and adding flashes or indications to the painting you chose to give something of the actions that had been and/or are about to happen - voila.  Working really well alongside an expressive style, this is a great tool in the armoury for dynamic work. 

7.  Practice drawing moving things

This is the hard part, but it really helps you to connect with movement and sew all the things mentioned above naturally into your work.  Whether it’s sketching birds from your kitchen window, drawing sports players in your local park or working from life drawing classes where the model changes pose or moves around the room.  Become more confident and less tight with your mark making by trying to capture life on the go, the results are fun, haphazard but very exciting and will hugely improve the sense of movement in all your work.

The Owl hunts in Silence, Limited Edition Print

For me is movement, is vitality, and vitality is life.  

It’s so essential to the energy and engagement I’m looking for in my work that I try my best to celebrate it.  

I’m always looking for that spark of magic to get my art dancing off the canvas.

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Cover image: Fighting Crows, Limited Edition Print - for more info contact me here.

Thanks so much for reading x

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