Seven Inch Figures

How big should you make your figure drawings? When I was in art school they told us to buy 18 x 24 inch paper, and the figures were supposed to be about 21 inches tall, enough to fill the vertical page.


British academic painter Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830-1896) made the case for drawing them about one third that size.

“In drawing a whole figure from nature we should be three times its length from it, to oversee it properly. If we draw normally, we must draw on the scale on which we should trace, if our sheet of paper were a sheet of glass held up, and if, instead of pencil, we traced with a diamond on this interposed pane you will find that a five-foot figure then comes about seven inches high on your glass, or its substitute, your paper.

On this scale the comparison is direct and not proportional. On this scale, and, largely, in accordance with this law, are drawn all studies from nature by masters of all periods. Of course, I am not speaking of cartoons. The studies I speak of could be squared up and enlarged to cartoons on any scale required for decoration in fresco, or on canvases.

Now, if Rubens and Longhi and Watteau and Fragonard and Ingres and Millet and Puvis and Keene, and all the company of the blessed drew on that scale, they probably knew what they were about.”

---As recalled by Walter Sickert, quoted from The Study of Drawing, 1910, reprinted in Apollo Magazine, 1996, page 47

More on Leighton at Art Renewal Center, link.
In reference to the distance to sit from the model, see previous GJ post: "Pyramid of Vision."

Note: "Cartoons" is used by Leighton in the sense of full size preliminary line drawings, not in the sense we use the word to describe small humorous drawings.
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Addendum: Blog reader Godo, who doesn't have an account for comments, sent an email with the sketch above, as well as the following interesting discussion:

Since several weeks I am reading your blog, a real interesting publication.
Maybe you are interested in what I wanted to say, so here is my contribution:

This is a problem of elementary geometry. The intercept theorem explains the relationship between the size of the figure (A), the distance of the painter from the figure (B) and the distance of the drawing paper or canvas from the painter’s eye (D) (see picture).

Sometimes I heard my students say: I cannot draw something different from what I see. What does it mean I wondered? In fact it was the case what Erik stated above: it is natural and the easiest way to draw. Sometimes you cannot approach a subject as you want. When I asked to “zoom” the picture they felt uncomfortable as they had to draw bigger than they “saw”.

“In drawing a whole figure from nature we should be three times its length from it, to oversee it properly. …..you will find that a five-foot figure then comes about seven inches high on your glass, or its substitute, your paper.

From this statement we can easily calculate, that the painter held his drawing paper at a distance (D) of about 21 inches (54 cm); this is approximately the length of the stretched arm.
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Thanks, Godo!

Life Before Facebook

Seventy years ago, during the last economic mega-downturn, smart young couples made friends by inviting over their neighbors to play cards.



Advertisers in 1938 pushed products with photo-comics. They didn’t mind harping on our insecurities. They still use the same psychology, but they’re not as obvious about it.
I'll be looking for that fresh, clean pack of Congress Playing Cards under the Christmas Tree.

Gate into Fes, Morocco

The gate into Fes, Morocco, known as Bab Boujeloud, was covered in scaffolding when I sat down to sketch the scene from a nearby café. The first thing I did was delete the construction clutter. The busy tilework would give me enough of a headache.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Donkeys ducked into the arch, carrying loads of of animal hides bound for the tanneries. Red taxis disgorged tourists, but no cars ventured past the portal. Beyond the gate is one of the largest medieval pedestrian cities in the world.



The ornate blue tile work was too finicky to paint with a brush, so I scribbled a suggestion of the detail with a blue colored pencil. I’m no purist in watercolor. I mix in pencils or gouache or coffee stains whenever they serve to capture the something about the scene that doesn’t yield to traditional means.

Guess the Foreign Editions

Here are five new foreign editions of Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara. Can you guess which languages they're translated into?

The first person to guess correctly will receive a free bookplate and a signed dinosaur sketch by James Gurney. One guess per person, please. Employees of Dinotopia publishers not eligible.
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ADDENDUM. The answers are: 1. Romanian, 2. French, 3. Bulgarian, 4. Czech, and 5. Hungarian.

Thanks everyone. Vertumno was the winner. As I understand it, Bulgarian and Russian share the Cyrillic alphabet, so a lot of people, including Ruuhkis made a completely reasonable guess right away. Erin McGuire was right, but just a little late.

The publisher of the Romanian, Bulgarian, Czech, and Hungarian editions is Eastone Books, and the publisher of the French edition is Editions Fleurus.

Port of Tangier

The old city or medina of Tangier, Morocco looks like white crystals growing on the northernmost hill of the city, overlooking the modern port facility.

The ferry terminal building looks like a space station in the foreground of the scene. The view is from the rear deck of the ferry. Since the ferry took a long time to load, I had lots of time to do a watercolor painting.



Here's a pan across the scene and down to the sketchbook in my lap, with the sound of the public address system.



All those white mullions in the windows were a bit of a chore to paint around. You can see me fumbling around with the sable round. It would have been bettter to have a small chisel tipped flat brush for those square shapes.

Autophobia

In his new book Autophobia, Brian Ladd examines the history of our hostility to automobiles, balanced against the long history of the undeniable triumph of cars, from the Model T to the SUV.

Cars are the scourge of civilization, responsible for everything from suburban sprawl and urban decay to environmental devastation and rampant climate change—not to mention our slavish dependence on foreign oil from dubious sources abroad. Add the astonishing price in human lives that we pay for our automobility—they kill the equivalent of a dozen jumbo-jet crashes every day—plus the countless number of hours we waste in gridlock traffic commuting to work, running errands, picking up our kids, and searching for parking, and we can't help but ask: Haven't we had enough already? After a century behind the wheel, could we be reaching the end of the automotive age?

Do we hate cars more than we love them? Here's a test: Next time you go on a gallery crawl, count the number of car-free paintings you have to walk by before you see a canvas that features an automobile.
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NY Times book review of Autophobia, link

The Arab Guard

Portrayals of Arab guards are a staple of Orientalist painting. Kristian Davies, author of The Orientalists, wrote, “a theme grew within Orientalism of depicting guards and sentries dressed in the traditional medieval regalia of the Islamic warrior.”

Austrian painter Ludwig Deutsch (1855-1935) painted A Palace Guard in 1892.

The archetype still exists today, though modern guards lack the colorful garb. Deep in the labyrinth of the medina of Fes, Morocco, I met a man named Hassan whose job was to stand watch over the doorway of an antique store.

He patiently posed for me while I drew his features in brown and black water-soluble colored pencils. (Photo ADF)
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More on Ludwig Deutsch, at Art Renewal Center, and a Ludwig Deutsch blog by Enzie Shahmiri, who has commented on this blog.