What is Foreshortening?

Contemporary, portrait, landscape, painting, best, top ten, paintings, oil, artist, artists, gallery, life, figure, graphite, sketch, Snowdonia, drawings, pencil, Art, geometry, composition, Master, Masterpiece, Welsh, Wales.

Firstly, what is foreshortening? If one takes the time to look up the word in a dictionary, the definition will be something along the lines of 'the visual effect or optical illusion that causes an object or distance to appear shorter than it actually is because it is angled towards the viewer".

In other words if an arm is outstretched and pointing towards the viewer it will appear to be short, (in that the viewer can't see all of the arm, as one can when the arm is outstretched along the same plane as the picture surface).

When written down it initially sounds complex, but in fact it just follows the normal rules of perspective.

And in practice, I usually prefer to forget the rules, and simply draw what I can see in front of me. 

So, when I'm doing life drawing, if a model's arm is pointing directly towards my eye, and I can only see the hand, (behind which is hidden the arm) then that is exactly what I would draw. 

Noting, of course that the hand, which appears to 'advance' (and looks as if it is coming out of the picture plane), will be seen as bigger than if the arm was outstretched along the picture plane. 

Or, alternatively, will be seen as much smaller if the arm is outstretched behind the figure, (and therefore 'recedes' into the picture plane).

Here is an example.

N.B., Click on images to zoom.

Reclining Male

Conte Crayon on Cartridge, A2, 1 Hour.

Here, the head and shoulders are 'advancing', towards the viewer, and are therefore seen (and drawn) as larger than 'normal'. The feet which are 'receding' away from the viewer, are therefore seen as smaller that 'normal'.


Notice also that I'm trying to be aware of tonal and contrast perspective, in that objects closer to the viewer tend to be darker toned, and also tend to show more contrast, than those objects that are further away. 

And if I was using colour I would also use colour perspective, (although this has to be done with some great subtlety in figure work, as it's only when the depth of field is great (like in a landscape painting) that more obvious colour perspective can be reasonably used).

Reclining Woman

Black Conte Crayon on Cartridge, A2, 10 mins.

This is a quick line drawing of a model lying down and receding rapidly away from me - her supporting 'bed' bends downwards at both ends, and so her head is falling down and can't be seen from my angle. 

The legs get bulkier as they advance towards me, and the torso gets increasingly smaller as it recedes into the picture.

Reclining Woman

Black Conte Crayon on Cartridge, A2, 60 mins.

This is a drawing of a similar pose but with a little more modelling. 

Unfortunately I don't think that I've made the feet and ankles big enough as they project towards me.


Here are a few more examples..........,

N.B., Click on images to zoom.

In this one (above) the protruding foot doesn't look big enough, I think because I haven't drawn it with sufficiently strong tonal contrast, (so that it tends to sit too much on the picture plane, rather than project outwards).

Reclining Female : Private Collection 

             quiz  quiz quiz  quiz  quiz       “details, details............”    quiz  quiz  quiz  quiz  quiz          

Who painted this, and in which painting?

(The answer will be in the next posting.)

And here's the answer from the last posting -

'Nighthawks'.  

by Edward Hopper, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1942.

             quiz  quiz quiz  quiz  quiz       “details, details............”    quiz  quiz  quiz  quiz  quiz          

"To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it." 

Leo Tolstoy

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. . . . and now, a Recommended Read . . . 

Breakfast at Sotheby's
An A-Z of the Art World
Phillip Hook

It is always amazing to listen to a description of a world that you think you know, by someone who has an entirely different 'take' on that world. Phillip Hook looks at the World of Art not as a painter, or even as an art lover/spectator, but as an auctioneer whose aim is quite simply to sell art. So the book has many fascinating insights, particularly for the artist, about what will sell and what are the priorities of those who market artworks. So, for example, here's a tiny taster - pictures which have a bit of red in them sell quicker that those that don't, (e.g., Mondrian's abstracts without a red bit will languish on the dealers walls much longer that those with a red rectangle or two, which will fly off the wall in no time). Here's another - when you, as an artist, stride confidently into into a gallery and suggest to the gallery owner that he could sell some of your work, the first thing that comes into the mind of the dealer is, '....get out of my gallery!' 
It's an entertaining eye-opener.

'How to nail the mad, bad, crazy contemporary art world in print? Sotheby's senior director Hook draws on 35 years' experience in this informal memoir. He unravels, with humour, piquancy and erudition, what drives the economics of taste' - Financial Times, Books of the Year. 

Published on Penguin 

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