January 9, 2008

The Foot, and all it means



Like hands, feet have this reputation for being hard to draw, and like hands I think it's because we focus to quickly on the parts - the wiggly toes - before looking at the overall form. We want to find the interesting wedge shape - roughly highest at the ankle, sloping towards the front - and then carve out the smaller parts. I find it helpful to think of the big toe as a unit with the bulk of the foot, and then the other four toes coming off at an angle, as the interesting plan view I copied from Dürer shows (note my scribbled note of Dürer's dates next to the drawing, and note how I had to correct them when discovered I was off by three years for both his birth and death).

I must say I never got a real handle on drawing feet until I saw Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Figure Drawing from which some of these sketches are copied, or freely adapted. I particularly was struck by his way of showing the ankle form grasping the foot like a wrench.

As for the ankles, note how the two bony protrusions on either side are not level - the ankle is distinctly higher on the inside of the foot than the outside. This is part of the fascinating series of alternating rhythms through the leg, the back and forth action of muscles and balance.


We end with a drawing by Dürer himself, a study on blue-gray paper for the feet of a praying apostle.

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