Anatomy of anatomy
March 3, 2004
Drawing the human body is hard. Tackling a nude is the hardest of all. Foreshorten the body with its unfamiliar shapes and angles, all symbols distorted beyond recognition makes the degree of difficulty quite numbingly high.
It's not just that a body has so many angles and curves. It's how loaded it is with expectations and meaning. Humans know the human body intuitively and yet not consciously. We are able to spot our species from afar, to judge a fellow man from another among thousands. Have you ever scanned a huge crowd, at a football game or in a train station, and been able to find a familiar face though all you have to go on are tiny differences, the cant of a nose, the miniscule difference in eye size or the relationship between ear and cheekbones? Cut a person's hair, give them a beard, makeup, a hat, or glasses and, often, we will still manage to pick them out from across a crowded stadium. It's a life saving skill, finding your mother in a herd, and yet it's a lobster trap of sorts. We can spot Mom and yet we probably can't describe her accurately to a police officer with an Indentikit. We can't recall or reproduce those features which we can so accurately judge.
When drawing the human body, unclothed -- a sight we actually behold quite rarely in the flesh (and yet think about several times an hour) -- we have to ditch all our baggage and try to see clearly without judgment, breaking it down into components, lines, shadows, angles and curves. And yet the inaccuracies we might get away with when drawing an apple or a car or a building are completely unacceptable when drawing a person. The tiniest miscalculation in the angle of a nose turns Mary into Sue or possibly Bob. On the other hand, if we slow down too much, become too accurate, too calculated, we will never capture Mary's balance and weight, she will be a two dimensional cut-out instead of a body with mass and volume, with no sense of the bone, muscle, and fat that lie beneath the skin. And most challenging of all, we will fail to capture her humanity, her personality and character, her spark of life. She will be just a body, a slab of flesh, an animal, a cadaver, and not Mary.
Seeing humans is extraordinarily hard because it requires the usual cool, calm, objective sight that lets us draw still lifes and landscapes and yet a much healthier dollop of subjectivity. We can read Bridgman and learn all the tricks that make joints turn and proportions accurate, but we will end up with comic books heroes or mannequins. To be Degas or Rodin, we must work and work to internalize these principles so they become unconscious, second nature, so that we can suffuse them with feeling and response to the actual person before us, not a faceless hulk but a living breathing person whom we can lust for or pity, love or disdain. Investing that human feeling is at the core of all successful art, even when it's not depicting human anatomy. To draw a peach or a beach or a leach, and make the viewer feel something real about it, we must transcend technique and approach the truth about how we feel about peaches and leaches, about the world, about ourselves, a truth that is simultaneously intensely personal and completely universal.
Practice makes perfect. By mastering technique, anatomy, light, color, materials, we push them into the background and let our selves take the helm -- honest, open, caring, judgmental, flawed, true. Drawing humans is incredibly hard because to do it really well, we must let ourselves be a little naked too.
A record of my exploration into all aspects of drawing, illustrated journaling, creativity, and the inspiring aspects of art. By the author of "Everyday Matters," "The Creative License", and "An Illustrated Life" and other books.
Comments
Open life drawing sessions? How I envy you. When I was an art student, at an all-women Catholic college in the late 60s, our "life drawing" classes consisted of a person in a sweatshirt and shorts. Needless to say, the deck was stacked against the students from the start!
Posted by: k | March 3, 2004 08:20 AM
This is timely you should mention life drawing. In a neighboring city there's open session drawing, no instruction, for a very reasonable hourly fee. I've been thinking about checking it out. I usually work small - notebook sized. I wonder if it's any easier to draw on those big pads with conte crayon or soft pencil as so many anatomy students do.
Posted by: Karen Winters | March 3, 2004 10:24 AM
oh how I remember those life drawing classes in college...I struggled so hard to understand what was beneath the skin and not to assume I knew how the body looked. Really seeing the human body is a very difficult thing. Practice does make progress though - by the end of the semester I had improved.
We never had couples pose, that would be difficult. You look like you have a pretty great eye.
Posted by: becky | March 3, 2004 10:34 AM
Danny -
Something you or your readers might find of interest are "figure drawing meetups." Just what it sounds like - a bunch of folks in communities all over the world interested in figure drawing get together (1st Saturday of every month.) You can get more info @ figuredrawing.meetup.com. Enjoy! -Lisa
Posted by: Lisa | March 3, 2004 02:33 PM
yes. i find life drawing extremely exhausting and frustrating. but also so satisfying. i see so much progress over the past months and i feel it feeds my other work. it trains you to look more carefully.
anke.
http://livejournal.com/users/linotte
Posted by: anke | March 3, 2004 04:01 PM
I am currently in a life drawing class. I am amazed that two legs, hands, breasts, belly buttons, napes of necks, earlobes etc etc can be so completely different in everyone. Just when I think I've learned something a new gesture changes everything and brings me back to square one. Beautiful drawings! I will try pen & ink next time around.
Posted by: Kimberly | March 3, 2004 05:20 PM
Beautifully put.
It is good to have you back.
Posted by: Michael Nobbs | March 3, 2004 05:27 PM
Beautiful! I was surprised to see the "bum" with the pink reflection was a 5 minute pose! I like it. It's got great gesture and character. The other ones are great too!
I miss life drawing classes!! Figure drawing and portraiture are my passions. I've still got plenty to learn about the figure, but it was always something that I felt so "in-tune" with while really trying to see what I was drawing, rather than the symbolic way hands, feet, eyes, etc. looked.
Most of what I learned about the figure was from a beloved late teacher, Jack Henderson. He knew much about classical figure drawing. My favourite sketch from school is a head study in which he's drawn for me, in the corner, the way the muscles are composed in the lips.
If you find a great teacher, it makes all the difference!!
Posted by: Amy | March 3, 2004 07:03 PM
Danny!
Welcome to the world of figured drawing! Last night at my own class I groaned when the model did a super foreshortened pose, she laughed at me! :)
I love to read your struggle in trying to get the form correct, or even a few posts ago when you were down on yourself as an artist, I think creating art is a struggle to be embraced, worked through and moved in and out of, just like life!
Please check out last nights sewn figure!
Thanks Danny! Keep doing it.
Posted by: Melly | March 3, 2004 10:25 PM
How timely -- I had this same discussion with one of my students today -- actually, not one of MY students, but a debate student who came in to interview me for a source in her debate about nudity and art -- essentially, her questions were 'why do artists draw the nude figure?' == and my answers were right along with yours.
Posted by: Laurie | March 3, 2004 10:30 PM
I can barely draw water from a well but the processes intrigue me so this was fascinating to read & to look at.
Posted by: Dick Jones | March 4, 2004 07:46 AM
wonderfully inspiring as always. i too was amazed that that little butt and feet drawing was only 5 min!
one thing i discovered when i started drawing the naked form was how incredibly beautiful it is!! the curves which make up the body and the shadows and light on the skin are immensely beautiful.
i discovered as i drew others' bodies that i came to appreciate my own body with entirely new, and much more valid, eyes, than those used to comparing myself to all the glossy magazines in the supermarket and t.v. advertising, despite the conscious awareness of such unhealthy and unattainable images.
hm, yes, drawing the human body definitely provides the opportunity to love oneself more, and to relax in oneself without the usual masks, to practice meeting another without barriers, to know that we have more in common with people we encounter than we think, and challenges us to master the art of the truly expressive line, and to honor a person's form on all levels.
thanks for sharing your naked self here, and inspiring us to create naked as well :)
Posted by: vicki | March 4, 2004 10:50 AM
p.s. i love that they have multiple models, and i love the crosshatching you do!
are those watercolors, pencils or markers you used to color with?
Posted by: vicki | March 4, 2004 10:55 AM
Life drawing and anatomy is something I've been wanting to do - I know there are art colleges around here but they're hard to get to. I never had a chance to do anatomy lessons or anatomy drawings; myself in a mirror was about the closest thing I could get to! You're right - the human figure -is- darned difficult to get correct. I do like the drawings you've got though; they've got character. They look good to me!
Posted by: Shuku | March 4, 2004 10:58 AM
Looking for an anatomy drawing class in Columbus OHIO -- can anyone direct me to the right place (or places)? I appreciate any help. Thanks!
Posted by: Jilly | June 11, 2004 09:10 AM