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Author: David_Rourke, Contributing Editor
| Since 2004, I’ve been studying figure drawing and painting with Dennis Cheaney at the New England Realist Art Center in Boston. Dennis is a pupil of Ted Seth Jacobs, who has taught quite a number of realist artists, including Tony Ryder. Here I’d like to lay out some of what I’ve learned about how to observe and paint the human form.
None of these concepts are my own (all of this text, and any errors, are mine). You may want to look at Tony Ryder’s web site, and especially the painting demonstration: Tony Ryder Tony Ryder Demo Tony has written a book, “The Artist’s complete Guide to Figure Drawing,” in which he discusses many of these concepts in terms of drawing in graphite. He also has a recent article on painting in “The Artist’s Magazine.” It’s the April 2006 issue. Ted Seth Jacobs has written two books, now out of print, that are worth tracking down: “Light for the Artist” and “Drawing with an Open Mind.” Ted’s web site is here: Ted Seth Jacobs The New England Realist Art Center, and Dennis Cheaney, can be found here: New England Realist Art Center Dennis Cheaney This method lends itself best to painting from a live model, with the same pose being continued over several sessions. If that’s not possible and you need to use photo references, then try to get the best possible pictures to work with. |
| A FEW PRINCIPLES
Here are some basic principles of form that are worth looking for and attending to. When you make use of these principles in painting the figure, it will tend to look organic. When you don’t, the figure starts to look more stylized and less alive. That’s neither good nor bad, but if the goal of a painting is realism, then it is useful to look for and be able to capture organic, life-like form. Even if the goal is less realistic and more symbolic, it is helpful to understand how you are choosing to deviate from a realistic representation. Many figure and portrait artists have an intuitive understanding of these principles already, even if they don’t consciously articulate them. It helps, however, to push these ideas into the forefront of how you think about form, so that you can work more efficiently, analyzing and correcting the mistakes that we all make. Edges of forms are not parallel to each other. When you are drawing lines on the form, avoid making them parallel. If you find yourself drawing parallel lines, check the model; you’ll probably find that you have drawn them incorrectly and will need to change the angle of one or both lines. |
 | Curves are convex, not concave. Even if the model is very skinny, all curves are convex (pushing outward). The forms of the body are full, not hollow. Of course, there are many parts of the body where the largest forms go inward. Think of the web between the thumb and the first finger, for example. But if you look closely, the smaller curves that make up these larger forms are full; sometimes very subtly so. They are composed of convex curves smoothly joined together. If you draw these forms as concave (hollow), as they may at first appear, they will seem subtly incorrect. |
| Curves never have their high point in the middle. If you are drawing a curve (say, along the edge of a shoulder), the high point of the curve will never be at the center of the curve. It will always be closer to one end point than another.
Forms do not mirror each other. Think, for example, of a forearm. The curve of the outside of the forearm will never be a mirror image of the inside curve. Throughout the whole body, inside and outside curves are never the same. When you find such a mirrored curve in a drawing or painting, it will almost always be inaccurate. The upper eyelid is not a mirror of the lower eyelid. The left side of the calf is not a mirror of the right side. The shapes of the curves will be different; their high points will be in different places. The only exception is this: because the body is approximately symmetrical from left to right, you can sometimes find a form on the right side of the body that comes close to mirroring a form on the left side. But because we don’t normally stand or sit exactly vertically, it almost never works out that way, either. Forms merge into adjacent forms. Forms of the body are not discrete. Think about how the inside of the upper arm merges into the lower arm. The curve of the biceps anticipates the inside of the elbow as it approaches it. If you just draw the upper arm, then the lower arm, without observing how they merge together, the form will not look organic; it will look like a marionette. Smaller forms are packed within larger forms. Think of a large form, such as the thigh. Although you can approximate it with a sort of smooth tube shape, when you look closely you see that there are smaller forms along the whole length of the larger form. Nestled within those sub-forms are even smaller forms. In order to render the thigh in such a way that it looks organic, we need to carefully observe how those sub forms interact with the main form. This becomes especially important as we try to represent how light washes across a complex array of packed forms. Forms knit together. Think of the center of the breastbone. In that spot you can easily see where the left and right sides of the body were joined together as the body formed in the womb. The line of that joining isn’t straight; it meanders back and forth, suturing together. While the center line of the body is the easiest place to see this effect, it is also true across the whole body. The form of the wrist knits into the form of the hand. The form of the thigh is woven into the form of the hip. If we just render even gradations of light over a form, we’ll miss this interweaving and the form won’t look organic. All forms are curved. The body is composed of rounded forms. This principle is relatively easy to understand and make use of when you are drawing the outline of the body: all of the lines you draw are curves. But it also has a less obvious implication when you are using paint to depict three dimensional organic form: every point on a curve is receiving a different amount of light than any point next to it. That is to say, every part of the body is part of a value gradient. If you paint an area of flat color that does not change in value, it will look flat, not round, and therefore not organic. All forms on the body, large or small, must be painted as a gradient (however subtle) from one value to another in order to look organically rounded. |
| THE SHAPE OF THE LIGHT
Since the Renaissance, artists have generally choosen to portray scenes in which there is one strong light source, so that’s the kind of light I’ll be talking about here. In that situation, the interaction of light with the form provides a powerful set of cues about structure. This allows the illusion of three dimensional form to be much stronger than in other types of light, such as multiple weak lights or generalized diffuse light. Because the body is composed of rounded forms, I’ll focus here on how light interacts with those forms. The first thing to keep in mind is that light travels in a straight line. It doesn’t bend around the form. Therefore, with a single light source, all parts of the form are either being illuminated (i.e., within a direct line to the light source) or not. In other words, the form is divided into two zones: light and shadow. The light zone is illuminated by the light source, while the shadow zone is everywhere light doesn’t directly fall. There isn’t any part of the form that isn’t either in light or shadow. There is no such thing as a “half tone” in this way of thinking about light, because that would imply an area that is neither in light nor out of it. |
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