Drawing people while they dance is a challenge at keeping the motion alive in a static image. While drawing the images of performance done during the Bhaat Nyotna ceremony from images the challenge of live drawing was reduced as now I had motion frozen and just had to copy that frozen memory of dance in my style of drawing.

Motion in the body was most evident in hand movements, head tilts and flowing clothes. From the photos of the ceremony, I chose particular actions that people were making and the ways in which they were arranging themselves around each other. The way in which women wearing sarees adjusted their clothing to dance freely intrigued me a lot. Some tucked their pallu in their petticoat, and others used the pallu to cover their face.

Drawings were made using pencil, pen and oil pastels. Oil pastels as mediums were very helpful to draw out the body gestures without fussing over the smaller details of anatomy. The thickness of oil pastels lets me draw gestures effortlessly. Drawing with a pen demands me to draw clearly, although there are ways to do gesture drawing with a pen which I haven’t discovered yet for myself.