Week 4 - Foreshortening and extreme angles

In week four we continued a long the same subject of still life but we looked closely at the more tricky aspect of still life which is foreshortening and extreme angles. This is very difficult to get right and takes a lot of practise so we focused on drawing something complex like these skeletons, so that we could practise getting all the angles and foreshortening of the body correct. The first sketch was a very quick three minuet sketch which was to see how much information could be captured in this space of time. It was also a practise in trying to improve our ability to draw extreme angles and the foreshortened parts of this object.

As you can see in this sketch I started off making mistakes and the perspective and proportion is way off in this sketch but it did give me some foundations to work on and you can see in the sketch that their is some foreshortening and extreme angles but they are not accurate. This sketch does shows clearly how the angles of the bones in the skeleton are mainly oblique angles, this sketch also helps to show the perspective of how the skeleton was laid on the floor and the shapes that can be seen by the bones and the negative space they create.

The next sketch was a whole fifty minute sketch which was a focus on capturing the whole of the skeleton and focusing on the perspective of the sketch, detail in the skeleton, extreme angles of the bones and the foreshortening of the limbs and lower body. As you can see in this sketch a lot of detail is included you can see most of the bones and how they are connected also how the spine runs behind the rib cage and connects to the head and down to pelvise.

The perspective is good in this sketch as you can see that the skeleton is laid down and you are looking at it from a slightly higher angle looking down on it. I've managed to capture the extreme angles of the bones and also of how each limb is positioned really well. Foreshortening can be seen at the back where the lower back bones, pelvise and legs join together. Overall this is a very well observed sketch and is highly detailed.