To Human Is To Dance (plus videos)

I have had a lot of fun lately with a challenge from Bob Burridge (www.robertburridge.com). Bob is a painter who works in acrylic and has a very engaging and fun way of encouraging you to loosen up. Many of his techniques are able to be modified for pastel.

He has issued a challenge for people to post any work they do involving dance. This caught my fancy, and so I began. I once was a dance mom (I guess once a dance mom always a dance mom!), and so I’m often enticed by dance videos on YouTube–before the challenge began, it was hula videos. So naturally I began with a hula dancer.

PAT ME ON THE BACK: If you look at past paintings, you will notice very few human figures in my work. This is the first time I’ve really ventured into figures as the main component of a painting! Go, me! Figures have been scary to me up until this point. It just seemed natural to try with this challenge (Bob makes you feel like you can do anything.)

I created process videos for the hula dancer and the hindi dancer. I didn’t do one for the ballet dancer: sometimes I just want to paint.

The videos are separated into parts because otherwise they would be so long. Here is part 1 of each of them.

Impressionistic Dancer (Hula Dancer)

Energetic Dancer (Hindi Dancer)