Week 4: Foreshortening

This week we were looking at foreshortening, which is an area of perspective that is particularly difficult and I was looking forward to learning more about it and how to deal with it in drawings.

This was definitely the hardest week of life drawing so far. I struggled with all of the drawings, and while I know that making mistakes and learning is the process of improvement, it was hard not to get frustrated with the outcomes which I knew weren't my best work. Even so, there are positive elements within the images and I need to remain optimistic and see this as the beginning of better drawings!

For the first pose, the model was sitting sideways to us, so there wasn't really any foreshortening. This meant it was quite nice warm up, and I was able to re-practice techniques we'd learnt in previous weeks, such as measuring and sizing. I think the piece turned out okay. There are a few proportion issues, and the lines are a bit sketchy without much tone or boldness, but on the whole the composition sits nicely on the page and I think the sizing of the figure isn't too bad. I think with more development and re-measuring this would have turned out to be a good piece.

45 MINS / 6B PENCIL

Pose 2 was a huge change, as my angle went from no foreshortening to being directly faced by the model. As she was lying down, the entire body was foreshortened, and so it took me almost all of the 45 minutes to measure and draw the outline. You can see on the page that I had to rub out many times, although I'm not too worried about these lines being visible as it's interesting to look back and see mistakes and improvements. I'm still not very happy with the drawing, because I don't feel like I achieved an accurate perspective despite spending so much time working on it, which is frustrating. The sizing seems okay, with the head clearly 'closer' to the viewer than the bum and feet, but the whole position looks a bit off. I think what would have helped is some tonal shading to add depth, as well as if I'd had time to draw in some of the background, so she was actually lying on something. This would have shown the background also receding from the viewer, helping to give the same illusion to the body.

45 MINS / 6B PENCIL

The studies were all pretty intense with each lasting for 45 minutes straight, and as I found them harder my focus and motivation began to slip, which is clear in drawing number 3. I think what didn't help is that I had another really difficult pose directly after number 2 which was also very hard. I had never drawn the body from this angle before so had to rely directly on my eyes, and found it tough not to get carried away by my brain telling me to draw what it thought the body should look like. The composition also isn't great, and the leg appears a little squashed on the page which doesn't help with the already compacted pose. Trying to look at positive areas, I am pleased with the arm tucked behind the back, where I think I achieved the position of the fingers quite well. The head and shoulders do definitely appear smaller than the hips and legs, so I think my sizing is improving as I go, but I think it's just the angles and perspective that are letting me down. I have begun to add a bit of background context, however, which helps a little.

45 MINS / 2B PENCIL

Drawing 4 surprisingly is my favourite of the 4, despite me being tired and irritated with myself by this point. The pose was much easier to draw; although there was still lots of foreshortening the pose was more open and elongated, so I could see the angles and perspective that I needed to draw a lot more clearly. I used more background context here so the composition is stronger due to the eyes being drawn backwards into the image along with the figure. The proportions are still not perfect, but you can clearly see the figure is meant to be reclining. The one thing that I'm upset with about this drawing is that I attempted to add facial detail. Looking back this was not a good choice but the model had such an interesting and distorted expression from this angle that I was inclined to capture it. I don't think I achieved it very well and it doesn't work well with the rest of the drawing. Because I used a dark pencil, the face still shows after being erased, so this bothers me in what would otherwise be a mostly successful piece!

30 MINS / 6B PENCIL

SAME 30 MIN STUDY WITH TAPE COVERING FACE - IMAGE BECOMES STRONGER

I have lots to come away with and think about from this session. I think that after having some time to accept my mistakes and see the positives in them, I will feel happier about practising this again!