Tuesday, January 1, 2008

seen from above


Of course when you are drawing a plastic horse, you are quite at your leisure to observe it from any angle that you wish. This is one of the benefits of drawing from models, and then if you have the chance of drawing a real horse -- even the opportunity of observing one from above, the odds of your being able to seize the moment are much better than if you never drew from a plastic model.
Artists like Degas, artists like the Renaissance old masters (for whom equestrian moments were not unusual events), all made use of statuary to learn the animals forms. Degas made sculptures as well as drawings, so as not only to have static models from which to draw, but to be shaping those models himself, to learn the forms very physically in the act of giving them tangible shape.
The grid of intersecting lines in this drawing comes from my loose inclusion of the tiles from the bathroom floor where the model horse was situated. While I didn't attempt it in this drawing, it introduces another potential framework: using the perspective of the floor to help master the complicated foreshortening from the angle of vision.

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