Rather than drawing myself…. I watched a TV programme on BBC Four on Tuesday 4th Feb 2020 called Life Drawing, which was exactly what it said on the tin – they had live models in different poses for varied lengths of time, and audience was encouraged to join in – so I did (also bullied by husband into having a go, he really enjoyed it).
One of the poses was a bearded man lying flat out on the stage in a cruciform position, covered by a cloth, and the TV camera view was straight on, i.e. feet first. It was an extremely strange angle to draw from; nothing looked like anything (apart from the feet) and I found it very difficult, getting the chest too long, which made the shoulders wrong which meant the arms didn’t join on properly…..but it really brought home to me the absolute need to NOT make ANY assumptions, but to measure properly.
Andrea Mantegna’s 1480 painting The Lamentation of Christ, tempera, Pinacoteca di Brera, which shows the dead Christ laid out in a marble slab in a pose very similar to that of the gentleman depicted above looks equally weird, and John William Waterhouse’s Saint Eulalia, exhibited 1885, Tate, does a similar thing, except in this painting the lady is depicted head-on.
I watched an interesting little video on https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/approaches-to-art-history/the-language-of-art-history/v/what-is-foreshortening which takes a look in detail at Raphael’s 1510-11 painting, The School of Athens, Vatican and considers how the painter has achieved the illusion of depth by careful placement of light and shadow.
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