Sketch Book for the Artist

THE

BODY

Measurement and Foreshortening

FORESHORTENING IS AN ASPECT of perspective. In the life class

it is the mechanism for ensuring that a drawn figure lies

correctly in pictorial space - limbs happily receding, or

coming forward, without taking off, plummeting, or shrivelling

at odd, unfathomable angles. It is not so hard; patience,

persistence, and a few measured comparisons are key. How

to make and apply these is explained below and opposite.

We also look at another very interesting branch called

accelerated (or anamorphic) perspective. This is chiefly a

correcting device by which figurative painters and sculptors

have for centuries countered the effects of our viewing their

work from far below or on the curvature of a vault. Imagine

Michelangelo's murals in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, with

dramatic illusions of figures painted in normal proportion.

But if we could take a scaffold and climb up to the work,

we would arrive to find many of the same figures strangely

distorted, elongated as if stretched across the plaster. Up close

on the scaffold we would witness Michelangelo's subtle

application of accelerated perspective, which is imperceptible

from below. Smaller, more extreme examples have been made

for court entertainment, to be translated by mirrors or seen

from only one point in the room; for example, the skull in

Holbein's The Ambassadors (The National Gallery, London).

Accelerated perspective plays a great role in much art. It

can also be a little demon in the life room, when beginners

prop their board in their lap and look down at too steep an

angle. To avoid its effects ensure you always look flat onto

the surface of your page.

MEASURING

This is a simple method of making measured comparisons for relating the true

size of one part to another This is a tool to assist observation and thinking. It is

not complicated, and measurements do not have to be carried to the paper

and slavishly drawn the same size they appear on your pencil.

1

Hold your arm straight. Lock your

shoulder; elbow, and wrist joints. If your

arm is not straight, you will make inconsistent

and unrelated comparisons. Return to this

posture every time.

2

Hold your pencil upright. Align the top

with a point on your subject. Close one

eye. Move the tip of your thumb down to a

second chosen point. The length of exposed

pencil is your measurement.

3

Keep your pencil perpendicular Measure

and compare at any angle. Spend time

making comparisons before you draw. There is

no need to mark them all down on paper; just

making them helps you see.

"Simple measured comparisons reveal surprising

truths about proportion, helping us to see more

clearly, and to draw what we see, rather that what

we believe we know from experience."