This is a 30-minute sketch. Parts of it came out OK, but the feathers are a challenge. I'l leave it to you readers to figure out where I got the proportion wrong.. Chuck Munsion
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I can explain how to set up a frontal view with the feet and legs in seemingly correct proporition, but rendered in extreme forshortening. In fact I'd love to, so indulge me.
First position the figure on the page as a total generalized shape and work all around the figure setting the head, chest, torso, hips and thight masses into the composition. Since the figure is sitting, remember to position the masses following the geometric planes that hold the figure up. The point is so you don't want to run out of room on the page.
Then work on the series of cross contour planes that intersect the bottom of the shoes, and then the major joints: ankles, knees, hips. Since the figure is sitting on a couch with her legs point out, position the body masses in relation to the seated support geometry and try to get these masses and their cross contours in the correct proporitional relation in their extreme foreshortening. The trick here is to notice that each section of the leg is a slightly different contoured shape. Foreshortening is accomplished by overlapping these changing contours, stacking them up so to speak. For instances the upper thights sitting down take on a rounded trapizoid that tapers into a more rounded squared circle like shape as the contours move down toward the knee joint. Notice also that the femur starts at the far outside at the hip joint and curves slightly inward toward the mass of the knee. In the foreshortened view the femur is almost an S-curve. The shape of the knee joint is critical to get correctly contoured and placed because it tells the viewer how the leg is positioned and what direction it will follow. Likewise with angkle joint.
Don't draw the shoe, draw the foot inside and then build the shoe shape around it.
The guys who were absolute masters of forshortened figures were Rubens and Caravaggio. The web is a lousey place for art illustration, so you'll have to go to the library and get some of those coffee table size books to figure out what I am trying to describe.
The other way to learn this is to take a photo of the figure in this position, project it onto the page and trace it. This sets up the first and most difficult problem of getting the figure in the correct position. You will discover that the tracing looks out of proporition. So you have to go back over it using cross-contours to build up the illusion of proporition. For example you will probably have to make the feet bigger and the head slightly smaller to get a correct looking figure.
One of the things to remember is that we actually see with stereoscopic vision, which is technically a two-point perspective. This means that figure drawing has to somehow blend these two points of view into a shape that can be seen as if it were in 3-d. The human eye (or mind) is very forgiving of curved shapes as long as they follow the expected contour lines.
One of the ways to accomplish this illusion is through the use of light and shadow. Intutitively we see things that are light as closer to us and things that are dark as further away. Esther exploited this to the max. But the reality is much more complex. To step back into the picture plane, you can start say with the shoes and make their soles dark, with the foot up to the ankle joint light, make most of the lower leg dark, then just behind the shadowed contour of the knee, make the thight light, and then follow with the pelvis dark. This technique sets up a light, dark, light dark pattern that assists the forthened contours in making believe the viewer is seeing the figure in 3-d.
The combination of overlapping contour planes, coupled with a light and dark step pattern creates an extremely active pictorial space. This is why the Baroque masters developed these techniques, that is to make the space alive, dramatic, vast, energetic, etc. Degas studied a lot of those paintings in order to create his own methods to make his ballet dancers seem alive and dancing. I think he used to sit on a ladder and draw looking down on the practicing dancers.
Here are some of my efforts to figure out this Baroque use of space:
http://www.rawbw.com/~cgrimes/Drawing/draw.html
The figure studies were all done in a figure drawing class I took in the late-90s. It was the cheapest way to get a live model, 35 bucks for almost twenty weeks at Visit CC in Berkeley. The longest poses were twenty to thirty minutes, with shortest going about ten minutes. The portraits on this page were done from photographs I had and took about two hours each.
Unforttunately the drawing instructor for the class wasn't very good with the students and most of them didn't like her. So the class, as a class sucked. I wasn't there for that part. I just wanted the model. But it gave me pause on how you can turn off students in a hurry. I don't exactly know what this teacher did, but she managed to kill the spirit of the students. Too bad.
Speaking of which, it might be fun to set up a figure drawing class at the Info Crossroads bookstore a couple times a week at night with a live model and a door charge to cover the model fee. There are all kinds of people who would love to learn to draw the figure. Might make for a good draw from the community into the bookstore.
I wrote the above before I visited Dr. Sketchy's Speakeasy KCMO. Is this you Munsion?:
http://flickr.com/photos/manuelfocus/1469288518/in/pool-drsketchyskcmo/
If you already have something like that going, well all the better. In my mind, art is a great way into a political view of life---it just seems automatically to lead to some kind of progressive view of the world. I can't explain how, but I think I can `feel' how. It's something about creating the world in the imagination that does it.
I have to say, it was great looking through your bookstore photos. It gives me hope that good shit can be done, is being done. I would have said so before, and I even wrote a long post on printing presses, books and the enlightenment in Spinoza's Amsterdam, but there were plenty of others adding e-mail support.
Getting back to art here is exactly what I was trying to describe:
http://flickr.com/photos/9878550@N04/761936450/in/pool-drsketchyskcmo/
I realize now that Chuck Munsion knows all about the stuff I wrote above, so consider this post for the non-art major introduction series.
Anyway doing feathers is like doing leaves on trees, the same sorts of techniques work in both. Very careful rendering of the outside contour with many detailed shapes and spikes create the impression of what the interior detail should look like and most viewers will almost fill in the blank areas with their mind. To really get down to the detail, you have to create a series of patterned shapes like the outside contour and then suggest it while following the 3-d interior masses. The late Baroque or early Rococo masters like Fragonard were were particularly good at doing this in their inkwash landscapes. Also look at Rembrandt's sketches for the `how to'. Once again you can see that the patterns of light and dark do most of the work, while the line quality suggests the detail. Line quality here means making the line thick and then thin, depending on the contour. You thicken the line to suggest weight, mass, heaviness, and then thin it out to suggest the opposites, dissovlving into a light background, or to suggest the closeness of two masses pressing together, well like butt cheeks for example, or tits in a tight bra, etc.
Learning to draw breasts with a pencil is a great exercise in how to press hard to get a thick line at the under belly of the breast and then lighten up on the pencil and barely touch the paper to suggest the tapering upward and thinning of mass as it connects to upper sternum. This is somewhat counter-intutive, but what makes it work is the idea that the breast is actually hanging off the upper ribs and then pressing on the bone chest support below in an outward throw. What's funny to watch is a fat model who lays down and her breast starts to fall into her armpit.
Anyway using a burlesque dancer as a model is a great idea. Also of course any dancers for their intitutive knowledge of expression and motion. A lot of commercial models in my class were rather dreary, so it took a lot of work to make them look alive. Probably part of what made the class so bad for most of the students.
And, yes Berkeley is feeling a little empty these days. Cody's on Tele of course closed sometime summer before last I think, but just recently the big Barnes & Noble on Shattuck also closed. Must be some of effect of internet booking shopping...
Keep up the great work
CG