Principles of Depth

PRINCIPLES OF DEPTH

3. Foreshortening

This six-part guide from Figure Drawing author JAKE SPICER helps create a greater sense of space in your work. Here he shares useful strategies for drawing at awkward angles

Beloved by some and frustrating to others, foreshortening describes the principles of diminution applied to a single subject. Whether you are drawing a log in a landscape or a figure in repose, the part of the subject that is closest to you will appear larger than an equivalent part of the subject that is further away.

Despite knowing that the cylindrical body of a wine bottle has a consistent diameter, its cylindrical form appears to taper into a cone when you are drawing it from one end. From our singular perspective, we should just be able to simply draw it as we see it, but our rational mind interrupts our observation so that we see and draw the subject as we think it should look, rather than how it actually appears.

While extreme foreshortening presents a common challenge for beginners, most experienced artists also fall foul of the brain’s subjective challenge to the eye’s objectivity, so in this third instalment of our series,

I want to introduce four simple ways to improve how you deal with foreshortening in your drawings.

ABOVE A foreshortened subject viewed across your line of sight [above] will appear compacted when it is seen along your line of sight [below].

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Tip 1: Crating

Note the top, bottom, left and right limits of the subject before you begin Slide your thumb along your pencil to measure the horizontal width of the subject and turn your pencil vertically to compare that width to the height. Imagine that those limits are the walls of a crate, tightly fitting around your subject – is that crate a square, a landscape-format rectangle, or a portrait-format rectangle?

Tip 2: Space

Draw the negative spaces around the subject to help you to see it more objectively This is an old lesson that bears repeating – you will bring fewer pre-conceptions to the abstract shapes that surround the subject, so focusing on those negative spaces will help you to make a more accurate study of your subject.

Tip 3: Overlaps

Use overlaps to divide your subject into separate receding sections Form and perspective are inextricably linked; both speak about the volume of a subject. In a life drawing, for example, notice how the sections of the model that would present a continuous surface in an upright pose are separated by contours when you look along the foreshortened body. Isolating those sections will help you to draw each overlapping unit as its own discrete shape, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. 2

EXERCISE

Shifting Perspective

Diminution – and, by extension, foreshortening – will affect any subject you draw. The challenge is to recognise the extremity of the foreshortening you are seeing so that you can pre-empt any issues and remind yourself to exercise more checking strategies as you draw.

The extremity of the foreshortening you see is the result of your relative position to the subject, so changing your position will change the foreshortening. While we all know that is true, there is no better way to fix the idea in your mind than to experience it through drawing.

In this exercise, I want you to make three drawings that will help you to think about how your own viewing position affects the foreshortening you see in your subject, helping you to anticipate the extremity of distortion you might expect to see.

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Tip 4: Extremities

Check the size of the furthest extremity against the size of the nearest extremity No matter how diligent your observation, you are likely to draw the distant parts of a subject slightly larger than you see them and the nearer parts slightly too small, subconsciously attempting to raise a foreshortened subject to the expected vertical plane.

As your drawing develops, keep checking the size of the most distant section of your subject against the nearest section. If you notice your drawing is deviating from your observations, adjust it as you go and avoid putting detail into the extremes until the later stages.

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You should make the three figure drawings from a single reclining pose – you can perhaps try this with a model at a life-drawing class, a family member on a sofa, or a friend sunbathing on the beach. Alternatively, you could try it with a mannequin or a long still life object.

Before you begin, get as low down as possible and look hard at your subject. Without taking your eyes from them, slowly stand, noticing how parts of them are revealed by the angle of your view and how the difference in scale between their extremities reduces as you raise yourself up.

1Head on For the first part of this exercise, get as low as possible so that you are end-on with your subject, the nearest part almost obscuring the more distant parts. Make a 15-minute

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study from this angle, noticing the abstract and strange nature of what you are seeing.

These angles are often the easiest to correctly proportion – they are so extremely foreshortened and deviate so significantly from your expectations of how a figure should look that they are often easier to view without preconceptions.

2Looking across Now sit on a chair so that you look along your subject’s body. Try to perceive them more as a “landscape” than a figure with overlapping internal forms obscuring some of the expected shapes of the truncated body. Make sure you measure the height of the pose against its width – you will often be surprised that a pose which seems to be in a portrait orientation is actually square or even fits within a landscape-format crate. 3 Over head For this final drawing in the exercise, you need to get even higher than before, perhaps standing at an easel to draw. If the setup allows, get closer to the subject so that you are looking down on them.

From this elevated perspective, you’ll notice that while the pose seems much less foreshortened than the previous two drawings, there is still an element of foreshortening present. These subtle distortions of the expected proportions of the figure can be some of the most challenging to represent.

You will see fewer overlapping sections and will need to make particular use of the negative spaces surrounding the figure in order to draw your subject well. Next month: Jake continues the series with a look at linear perspective. www.jakespicerart.co.uk

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