Michelangelo's dictum, movement equals emotion, is one of the most important theories in visual art. Creating a sense of movement is a technical problem, made more fascinating since drawings and paintings don't move. So how does an artist create movement in what is essentially a still medium?

The key is to re-create the physiological visual sense of movement by atmospheric spatial depth. In other words, give the viewer a sense of zooming through space.

The biggest challenge to creating zoom in a drawing is that it is not an automatic translation from three-dimensional reality to a two-dimensional page. The artist has to conceptualize the spatial depths of the person or thing, and really go overboard to accent spatial distance. For instance, in the drawing below, her foot in the foreground and hand behind her.

Newberry, Olivia, 2009, charcoal on paper, 9 x 11 inches

When I am drawing I tend to look at the figure as a vast landscape, like a 20-mile valley in the Swiss Alps. So what is an inch in real life I try to stretch out to feel like a mile in the drawing. I find that doing this helps the drawing from becoming flat and lifeless.

Diagram

In the diagram above, I show that the darker the mark on a white surface the closer that mark appears to us. This illustrates atmospheric perspective; it almost gives a sense that the lines are receding through a haze of light.

Newberry, Hand, 2009, graphite on paper, 5 x 7 inches

In the five-minute drawing above, her hands were closest to me and I opted to "pop" them forward by focusing on the dark shadow around them. If I had chosen to accent her back right foot instead, I would have flattened out the drawing like a pancake.

This answers one of the most common queries I hear from students about seeing dark areas in the back. They think that if they draw it as they see it in real life, somehow the right forms will appear. Unfortunately, "popping" objects in the background with dark marks will kill any hope of creating a form in space.

Newberry, Melissa, 2009, black ink on paper, 9 x 11 inches

Above is a 15-minute drawing in which there is a good sense of a sweep of her volumes from her back right hand, around her shoulders and breasts, to zoom along her forearm and thigh towards us. With only 15 minutes I was focused on that one sweep. With more time I would have given, with an insanely delicate touch, more detail to her right back hand. Then, with a strong marks, I would have detailed her right front foot.

I hope you enjoyed seeing how drawings can zoom.

Michael Newberry
Santa Monica, February 2010