“I’d like to paint children playing on beaches, but they are always moving about. How should I tackle this subject?”
Jackie Simmonds has the answers here.
Everyone enjoys watching children at play, their bodies falling into uncontrived, fluid poses.
'With their natural curiosity and uninhibited close communication, they offer lovely subjects for sketching and painting, although since they rarely remain still, it is no easy task to capture on paper what you observe in action!
Remember to only sketch, paint or photograph your own children or grandchildren or with the explicit permission of the parents.
The value of drawing practice
I found it heartening to read the words of David Curtis, in his book The Landscape in Watercolour, “even quite competent painters have trouble with figures.”
But he goes on to say, usefully, that if you haven’t reached a stage of great fluency in drawing yet, you should consider photographing moving figures, and then “bring in a figure from a photograph”.
However, he recommends that you also use a small sketch pad so that you sketch people and children whenever you can.
Although a camera is extremely useful, it really helps to spend time sketching just for the sake of it, even if the results are unfinished. The value of looking hard and trying to get a few well-observed lines down in your sketchbook cannot be overestimated.
If you back up that sketching session with a photograph or two, when you come to work on the painting your memory of the scene will be supplemented by the photograph.
Sketchbook page
Above are very rough, quick sketches, mostly unfinished as the children moved away, and in some cases quite tentative, as in the little sketch bottom right.
The girl in the centre isn’t sitting in a tent: I indicated the general shape of the pose before putting her in, and began with the curve of the spine.
The sketches are in pen and ink; working with a pen forces you to avoid the use of an eraser!
Notice how the few lines used to indicate sea and horizon on the sketch bottom left, help to locate the children in space and scale.
Useful tips for drawing children:
- When you draw children, it is useful to remember that their heads are larger in proportion to their bodies than those of adults. If you make the heads too small, they cease to look like children, but become instead more like small adults.
- Try to capture the overall pose which attracted you, as quickly as possible, by squinting so that you see the whole body as a simple, large shape.
- Draw in the curve of the spine first, and possibly the angle of the shoulders, and then block in the shape of the body.
- Where children are playing close together, their bodies overlapping, squint even harder, to see the shape that they make together.
Rockpool Trio, pastel on paper. 16” x 21”
Although together these girls in the painting above seem to form an oval shape floating in the centre of the rectangle, they are actually anchored to the bottom and sides of the rectangle by the colours in the puddle, and by their shadows.
This wasn’t immediately apparent in the scene – I had to emphasise these elements to make a stronger composition.
Top tips
Don’t worry too much about proportions in your rough sketches: you can sort those out more carefully when you look at your photographs.
Also, don’t worry about hands, feet and features in your quick sketches – you can solve the problem of facial features by looking for children with their heads down, or facing away from you.
Setting the scene
Curiosity, pastel on paper. 18” x 24”
I borrowed the surroundings for these two girls, in Curiosity (above), from another scene, as I originally saw them on a rather featureless area of sand, playing in a small puddle.
Painting them that way would have isolated them in the middle of the picture. As it is, the shapes of the rocks and water echo and link with the crouching figures, and with the edges of the rectangle.
If it is sunny, indicate the direction of the light falling on the figures – this will help with the subsequent placement of shadows.
If you use outlines round the body, allow the line to be lighter, or broken, on sunlit edges.
If you have time, block in the shadow as part of the figure.
Boys with Buckets, pastel on paper. 13” x 10”
In the scene above, and in my photograph, these boys were facing away from each other.
Determined to use them somehow, I turned one of them around in a thumbnail sketch and there it was – the ideal composition to express the mood I wanted.
I deliberately used bright simple colours for their clothes, and buckets, which, I felt, emphasised the innocence and joy of youth. Also their clothing style sets them perfectly in a timescale.
If time allows, try to indicate some of the surroundings in your sketches. This will help, in particular, with the relative sizes of the children to their surroundings.
Draw the breakwater or the rocks, for instance – and then quickly indicate where the children’s heads and feet are in relation to the static objects.
Once you have established these points, you might feel confident enough to add the children.
Painting children at play
If you paint on the spot, you will be able to observe the colours in the subject properly.
Working from a photograph is very different. A photo will sometimes flatten colours and tones: a camera can never be as observant as the naked eye – and it is certainly not as creative as the human brain!
It is worth making notes about any interesting nuances of colour.
For instance, light bouncing up from a puddle might subtly warm and illuminate skin tones which, in the shade, are predominantly cool.
Brightly coloured objects such as plastic buckets might throw colours into areas of skin, or on to the surroundings.
The Red Swimsuit, pastel on paper. 16” x 21”
In the painting above, the bright colours of the girls’ clothing, and the gaily coloured stripes of the windbreaks, are a lovely foil for the blue-grey rocks and simple areas of sand.
In my photograph there was an ugly breakwater behind the rocks. I left it out, and introduced more rocks, and suggestions of windbreaks and people, to take the eye back into the picture.
I ensured that the head of the child sitting on the large rock overlapped the background rocks: this links foreground with background nicely.
I couldn’t have produced this picture without a thumbnail sketch.
If you like to work on the spot, but are nervous about including the figures, you could begin your picture in situ, working on the main elements in the scene, with small dots to indicate where heads and feet relate to the landscape.
You might also be able to indicate the shapes of the figures. If they sit still long enough! Then you can finish the figures at home, after studying detail and proportions from your photographs if you need to.
On the other hand, at home, working from your sketches and photos, you will have more time to think carefully about the composition of your painting.
Thumbnail sketches
I always make a few thumbnail sketches before embarking on a final painting.
In these thumbnail sketches, consider the underlying ‘geometry’ of the picture.
Bring in elements from different photos to improve a composition if necessary.
Simplify, remove, or change things. You could even trace over certain figures, and try reversing them, as I did in Boys with Buckets (above).
See where you can use the principle of ‘lost-and-found’ – emphasising some edges and ‘losing’ others which will help to link the figures with their surroundings.
I work in a very traditional way, trying to recreate three-dimensional form, but you might prefer to simplify your figures into simple areas of bold, flat colour.
How you paint your picture, the technique you use, is a very personal matter, and there are many different approaches, from the very realistic to the highly imaginative.
Using photography as a tool
The photographs above were used for the painting The Red Swimsuit.
I didn’t like any of them individually, but managed to put together elements from each in a thumbnail sketch, to create a far nicer scene, with an interesting pictorial composition.
Notice, too, how I have adjusted the colours in the scene, warming the sand, and putting far more colour into the rocks.
Faithfully, copying the colourless darks and lights would have been far less effective.
Many artists feel that working from photographs is cheating, but remember that many fine artists have done just this in the past – artists such as Degas, Sickert, Manet, Paul Nash and David Hockney, to mention a few.
The golden rule – if ever there is such a thing in painting – is not to copy mindlessly.
You must use, together with your photos, two further important ingredients: your intelligence and creativity.
I have seen many pictures in art society critiques which were obviously painted from photographs and contained strange shapes or passages of colour. When questioned about such elements, the artist will say defensively “Well, it was there”. But if you can’t identify it, don’t use it.
Trying to capture children at play has given me enormous pleasure, and I am sure you will enjoy it too. Have a go!
LEARN HOW TO PAINT WOODLAND SCENES WITH JACKIE
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This article was originally published in the August 1999 issue of The Artist
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