Hi, my name is Karl Gnass. We’re about ready to do stage 2 of the 3-stage process that
I described to you. Just as a reminder, stage 1 is gesture or “tell me a story.” Stage
2 is really about formulation. We’re dealing with form and measurement and the rest of it.
Formulation is the development of the visual concepts and ideas that help support
the stage 1 idea. So, let’s begin.

The 2nd stage is formulation. So, let’s just review that for a moment. Stage 1 is
story. Stage 2 is formulation, which is really structure. It’s the structure of the whole
thing. Stage 3 is anatomy. So, let’s look at it this way now: Stage 2 is essentially
a cerebral enterprise. You remember that when we talked about stage 1 that we said it’s
more or less from the gut. You need to be empathetic to the subject. If you’re not
you’re really not feeling the subject. In stage 2 we’re really talking about coming
up into the conceptual mind, the mind that can formulate, as we said, take measure.
Very cerebral stuff.
So, when you look at an object or a form, we’re actually looking at how we can conceive
it in simple way, take a rib cage for instance. A rib cage is very complex. It’s got lots
of ribs and bones. How to begin that? Well, we’re thinking about what it might be in
the largest possible sense. I have come to take an egg with a pointed side up. You truncate
it at the top sort of like a T-shirt low in front and high in the back like a soft-boiled
egg. You’re cutting it. Low in the front where the manubrium is of the sternum and
in the back where you have the separation between C7 and T1. Cervical vertebrae #7 and
thoracic vertebrae #1. Right there is how the neck fits into that egg-like shape.
So, what we’re doing is we’re taking something that’s rather complex with a lot of parts.
We’re trying to think of it in a very simple way. That’s kind of the upper torso. The
first iteration might be that you think of the upper torso as including the shoulders.
We think of the broad view. But now we’re paying more attention to what happens at the
joints. We’re being more articulate. We’re saying really the upper torso is this form
that’s like an egg. That formulation by the way is not an absolute. It is a surrogate
form. It holds the place of the further development. Once we have the egg then what happened to
these things? Well, they’re really part of the joint system, and they are independent
of the upper torso itself. In other words, they can move by themselves without this having
any motion at all. It’s part of the arm system. It’s the shoulder girdle. Sometimes
it will take and pull the upper body with it, but it doesn’t have to do that.
It works independently.
We want to take a look at those things in this stage. Notice these things all require
some thinking, and that comes first from this kind of a question we ask. The questions we
ask are our way of analyzing the complex forms and making them into simple ideas. In the
very beginning, a formulation then is about measurement and conceptualization. It obviously
involves analysis. For me, it’s also the development of simple thoughts and ideas.
We’ll go into that in a moment. Simple ideas are kind of a level one understanding. We’ll
talk about some level one, level two understandings of these ideas.
The further developments into higher levels of understanding will have to involve stage
3 thinking. Stage 3 thinking is a little different. It’s understanding anatomy with the overview
of the ideas of stage 2. In other words, I’m thinking about anatomy and how to simplify
it into a visual context. It’s not anatomy that one needs to learn. It’s visual concepts
that we need to learn. Then, if you bring into it a certain amount of knowledge from
the study of vocabulary, meaning the study of anatomy, we’re folding that back into
stage 2, formulation. When we move to stage 2 it’s more cerebral. So, you’re actually
saying this equals 1.5 times of something else. That kind of measurement will eventually
blend into one’s whole way of working with the thing and ultimately will find its way
back into future gestures where you’re beginning anew. So, we begin anew, but we have more
understanding that we bring to the moment.
If, for instance, stage 2 simply takes care of its own without paying attention to what
stage 1 suggests in terms of what the story is, there is a tendency for your forms to
be independent from one another. It just becomes a kind of junkyard of parts. It can become
very wooden because you’re working with geometric concepts and ideas, which I will
express in a moment. These geometric ideas are a simplification, and they are important.
But, they’re surrogate visual notes on paper. You don’t need to inscribe them deeply.
They’re simply there as a suggestion for the next iteration, the next movement of thought,
which is to become more articulate by bringing in the anatomical considerations.
Okay, with that in mind, let’s go to stage 2 and formulation and talk a little bit about
the different kinds of things we will find there. Analysis, concept, measurement are
the major considerations. One of the first things that I’m concerned with once we move
out of the gestural aspect into the structural aspect is a thing called shape/volume.
I put them together with a slash between them, shape/volume, because
I think they need to be considered together. Now, for the most part I find that people
gravitate towards shape much faster and more easily than they do volume. Volume almost
needs to be—well, it needs to be perceived. One doesn’t always see it just off the bat.
One needs to perceive the three-dimensional value of what one is looking at. That takes
thinking in concept. One can suddenly, through thinking in concept, snap to and suddenly
see what one ordinarily sees as shapes as a three-dimensional environment. When that
happens, the whole field of vision opens up from a flat plane into a deep space plane.
I’ll try to demonstrate that with a very, very simple idea here in a moment.
I have a tendency, therefore, to concentrate more on the volume aspect of shape/volume
because people generally come in with more experience about shape than they do volume.
So, what we want to do is bring our understanding of volume up to the same level. Once that’s
done, we can see that volume has shape. In a certain sense, it’s a higher dimension
than shape. Shape is two-dimensional. Volume is three-dimensional. Shape does not have
to have volume in order to exist. If you go to volume first, then you are dealing with
another dimension. How something exists in space. When you look at something you’re
aware that it has a side that the eye does not see. Now I see. Now I don’t see. But,
I’m aware of it, and so I’m thinking about it while I’m drawing it.
When that happens another interesting thing occurs, too. I become aware of axis. So, if
my subject is tipped back suddenly going around the axis is, well, from your point of view
towards me it would be elliptical. If I’m perpendicular to your line of sight then it
would look like a line even though it’s going around. If I tip forward the ellipse
would be a different way. You’re seeing this but not this. You understand that with
your mind’s eye, not the literal eye. Suddenly, you’re not longer copying what you’re
seeing. You’re thinking about it and you’re bringing in to your drawing components that
occur from choice, not just from what the eye sees.
So, let’s take the first though here. If I come up here and I draw—let’s just do
this with this. Those are two shapes next to one another. They are rectangles. There
is a tendency for us to look at that and say, yes, those are two objects. We have a tendency
to look at it and say positive, negative. From my point of view, it’s up for grabs.
It depends on the context. These could just as easily be windows, so suddenly the positive
is on the outside and the negative is on the inside. You see how we can take shapes and
do something like that with it. We can switch our positioning. In a way you’re calibrating
differently as a result of that switch. So I have a tendency to say not negative or positive
shapes, simply shapes.
But the moment we move into, say, something like this…right, something like that, this
becomes very definitely the solid. There is also because one is moving out this way and
the other is moving out this way. We have a sense of axis. In this case—I’ll do
the arrows on the bottom—it’s doing this. In this case, it’s doing this. Notice that
they’re still parallel on a two-dimensional level. They’re doing the same thing this
is doing, but suddenly because we have a sense of going around it we feel the space open up.
Space has its own properties. For instance, suddenly we feel that space has torque. For
instance, when I look at this, there are no real properties between this and this. When
we look at this one, however, we can feel the torque between these two bas they move
against one another. We actually feel the property of being sucked in or pushed back
this way in that spatial area. What it does is it compels the eye not to just move up
and down and from side to side, X against Y, but it compels us to move with a Z direction
as well, in and out. If we can apply this thoughts or these ideas to the drawing, the
gesture that we’re going to develop, then suddenly the properties of the form are not
just shape, but they invite us into the spaces around the forms, and they also give us a
sense of those forms.
One might even begin to feel a sense of density or weight when looking at this. There is no
sense of that here. This idea developed a little bit. We might say, well, I can take
that and I can get from here to here like this. Okay, so that’s kind of an interesting
shape. Another shape that’s like that is this one. Notice that this is an egg-like
volume. This has similar properties. What’s similar about them is distance from here to
here has a curve or a bend in it that’s closer to one edge than the other. You’ll
notice that the same is true with an egg, right? Like that. That makes it a really useful
shape/volume that can be used to describe the figure. Even though there is lot of symmetries
you get this interesting thing which gives it qualities that are much more interesting
than if you build a figure out of just cylinders.
There are a lot of forms in the body that have this shape/volume. It’s referred to
as an ovoid, and you’ll find that, for instance, if I just kind of build a body here—let’s
do this. Let’s put a leg here. Here’s an ovoid. Here’s the front. Here is an ovoid
here. If I bring this leg down, another one. See it? Here, let’s bring this leg down,
another one. Coming up, let’s just bring the shoulder and arm up so we have another
one and possibly another one here, another one here, another one here. Right? Let’s
do another one. Let’s bring this arm down, you see, like that, and maybe this one is
coming across. Another one, right there. And then, of course, we could come up to the head
itself. We have another one.
The only things that we said were not quite like that were the feet, the hand, the upper
torso, the lower torso, the neck. Everything else lend itself nicely to that idea. Let’s
just say that before I did this, or we can do this more interesting, relax that hand
if it’s going to be up in this position. We can also go in here and say that the—because
I spoke about this—that the rib cage in here is like an egg. Remember that? From the
front, anyway. We said we could cut this away and drop the neck into it. Low in front, high
in the back. Sternum, thoracic arch. Alright, notice that doesn’t include the shoulders.
Now, if I include the shoulders, we would more commonly call that component of parts
the scapula and the clavicle, the shoulder girdle.
I’m going to draw a top view just for a moment of the rib cage. Here’s the neck.
There’s the sternum. Out here will be the shoulders, okay? The spine is back here. The
clavicle, which we’ve got right here, and one is actually going up now, is going to
go—well, it kind of heads in this direction towards the middle of the neck. It’s heading
back this way. It doesn’t just come straight out to the side. That would throw my shoulders
forward. No, it’s back here like this. We’re bringing the shoulders back. That means from
this point to this point is an angle back, and that’s what I’m describing. It just
has a slight bow in it. Notice that it bows out and then bows back but very subtly. It’s
the same here. It bows slightly this way.
By the way, that’s from stage 3: Investigation. In other words, I checked it out. I looked
at a skeleton. I paid attention. I said, oh, that’s what’s going on with the clavicle.
This is something that you need to do in your investigations. You need to look at these
things in a way how to visually think about them. And so that’s what we’re doing here.
We’re doing this. Now, the scapula back here, the spine of the scapula goes something
like this. The scapula looks something like this. There is the spine of it. It’s on
an angle. This is like this. This is where the arm would be. It comes down this way and
like this. This is the spine and then there is a little turn. It’s called the acromion
process. That’s where the clavicle articulates with it. The shoulder attaches or originates,
that is the deltoid, the posterior part, the medial part, the anterior part like that.
If we draw this one here then we’ve got this.
Alright, so what we’re talking about then is when the clavicle raises up. It’s bringing
the scapula with it into this new position. I’m just going to go ahead a little bit
here and show you—okay, here’s something else from stage 3, a thinking or investigation.
We find out that the pectoral muscles have three parts. One starts up here and it pulls
across and attaches to the bone underneath the deltoid. It pulls across this way from
the clavicle. Then there is a part that starts from the sternum and a lower part that starts
here. They cross over one another kind of like a fan. Now, when that happens it’s
attaching over here, but when I raise my arm now they’re on the outside. That pulls all
these muscles up and over. We can begin to see this pull up and over under the deltoid.
Keep this as a cylinder. We’re pulling down this way.
Let’s just say that I was thinking of the gesture and then I brought these simple forms
in, and now I’m developing these ideas with anatomical considerations that have been simplified
into notions like this. For instance, the upper arm is more or less cylindrical. The
rib cage is in here. I could come around here and find the belt line, and along the belt
line when you come around here are the two points of the iliac crest of the pelvis. They’ll
be here and here. They cut down and you find the pubic bone. When we find that, it’s
very easy to bring another muscle in and tie it in here. The obliques.
These ideas are really you giving consideration to how to conceptualize complex things into
simple ideas that will help articulate your drawing. Center lines, symmetry. From here
to here we find the center line. Notice that the belly goes around a little bit. We’re
seeing more of this side, so we’re seeing less here, from there to there, than we are
from here to here. Those belly muscles tie in down here and so on. Knee is coming across.
Back here is a muscle coming off the back called the latissimus. Here we’ll find the
bone. What we’re seeing here is the elbow, and it’s going to the wrist on the little
finger side. You remember this simple volume here to the bone relaxed.
So, you see, really what we’re—I want to remind you that we broke the drawing process
down into three stages, but the point is that these three stages will help you find where
you’re having your most difficulty. As I’ve said before, you might find that you’re
really good at the gesture. You might find that you really know your anatomy, but you
might not be very good at this part. And so when it comes to articulating your ideas about
anatomy in this gesture, things fall apart because you have no skill for drawing the
shape/volume, say for instance.
In this case, we’re trying to bring attention to the complete development of these ideas.
This was a direction, and we developed this simple notion about it. Then we could come
in to the anatomical, come over and say, okay, there’s the patella here, the knee. Over
here there is the muscle that pulls in like this. There is another muscle that pulls across
this way and separates this group from the inner thigh muscle. This ties in so that we
can become more articulate. At the same time, I’m saying this is going this way and as
simple as possible. I’m looking for the organic equivalents that will help me keep
this statement clear. That’s really important. Otherwise, you’re just drawing a bunch of
bits and pieces, but they won’t necessarily say what you want to say if you’re not clear
about the choices you make to say it. If you simply copy everything you see it’s not
telling your story clearly. When you tell your story you’re editing. You’re saying
this helps. Something else might not. If I had a shadow that came across here from this
arm, and it happened from your perspective to be a straight line, that would kill form.
Let’s take a look at that over here. If this is what you’re trying to say, and you
draw a shadow across it like that, you’ve just killed the form. What would you do about
that? Well, you have to remember the story you’re trying to tell. Stage one. If you’re
clear about that, then you should allow your intent about being clear to not be clouded
by every detail that you see, but to keep in mind the way you want to shape the story
so we experience it clearly. That could be turned into this, which would still show us
where the shadow starts, but it also helps describe the form and doesn’t destroy the
form.
There are other form destroyers. For instance, if I do this and that’s what I want to say,
we need to be careful of things that do this or this or this. Any one of those things can
destroy this form. You want to make sure that whatever it is you’re trying to say helps
describe the form that it’s on.
Let me just show you. Let’s just say that we have an upper torso that’s leaning away
from us. We’ll take a simple idea. Shoulders are back here. Maybe the head is back. Shoulders
are here. But, we need to navigate around this upper torso like this. Let’s say we’ve
come in and we found the rib cage and the sternum is here, and we might feel the sternum
light that, and we’re feeling the pecs pulling out this way. We see the clavicle and maybe
a little bit of the trapezius, little bit of the neck muscles coming down. Now, the
breasts. If we just throw the breasts in like this it may not tell us enough about this
upper torso. Let’s get the latissimus in here. Come down, come down. So, what we’re
looking for then is something that helps us feel the breasts on this larger form. Maybe
it hits this form and does this, so that it respects the underlying form. Now, that’s
a way of making a choice that helps us support the volumes that we’re dealing with. If
we don’t, there is a tendency for what we do weaken the sense of form or flatten the
sense of form. Everything then becomes a choice. In stage 2 everything becomes the kind of
choice that helps us stay on track with our original intent.
Okay, the trapezius is here. It might be slightly rounded, whereas this one might be more relaxed.
If this lifts up, it might affect this and so on. So you see, we’re actually talking
about the body and what happens to it under certain circumstances. We can’t draw that
unless we have a certain idea about the mechanism of the body, how it works as a machine as
well as how to draw its shapes and volumes and have a continued stronger and stronger
sense for the right proportions.

Transcription not available.

Now I’m just going to simply draw a simple leg here like this. Slightly wider. Here we
get a little bit of the inner thigh. The muscles that run along the back of the leg, I’m
going to just refer to them as the hamstring muscles. They attach to that point. Remember,
I said that it comes—if you’ve got the pubic bone, it’s the width of these two
knuckles, then they spread out and down, we could say that they’re coming in this way
and this way into these two points. Those two points of the ischium are called the sitz
bones. Sometimes yoga instructors will sometimes refer to them as the sit bones, which is correct,
but it’s sitz. At that point you get these muscles that pull down here and here.
They're kind of divided. They’re called the hamstring muscles. They give it that basic H look in
the back of the leg because the calves attach up to the upper portion of the back of the
femur, the condyles. They’re doing this and then they pull down to the heel and so on.
We said that where the knee is somewhere in here, we’ve got from this point to this
point two heads and two more to the bottom.
So, like I said, I’m not going to give you everything. But you begin to find these things
and articulate them. Up here, eventually I might say, well, there is the olecranon and
it’s pulling down to the wrist. We see these two prongs that come from the humerus down
like this. They’re all three kind of together. We’re rounding out. We see this bone clearly
here into flatter and then into the wrist. We’ve got the full length of the elbow down
the wrist. We’ve got the full length of the ulna, and so on.
We can articulate these muscles or we can leave the simple idea. Another muscle which
might be important to note is one that ties in to the armpit from the back and pulls down
this way. As it does this, we’re seeing a little bit of this on the outside. This
is the obliques here and here. This is the latissimus dorsi coming up and around.
We do have some muscles in here. We’ve got the rhomboid muscles that pull this way. See,
the rhomboid muscle is really relaxed at this point. It might be involved on this side at
pulling the arm back a little bit. But, in this case it’s not allowing the arm to go.
It’s not interfering. It’s relaxed as this pulls up and out.
Some of those muscles that pull the arm up and around are in here. I’m just giving
you an idea. They are called the serratus muscles. They are underneath the pecs, which
I said attach out here. We see the deltoid. There is a little bit of space right here.
I’ll just tone it in so that we see and experience—right there we’re experiencing
a bit of the articulation of the clavicle. When this goes up this way, we lose it. This
becomes rounded. The pecs are pulling up and over, and they sort of merge with the deltoid
coming around. The scapula has pulled out into this new position so we see it here.
Then we see the latissimus pulling down this way and some of the serratus muscles here
as they come out from underneath the pecs. Right?
You’ve got the abdominal muscles, which are pulling down here. There are six above
the navel, I guess referred to as the 6-pack. It then continues down and ties in here at
the pubic bone. Genitalia below that. Okay, so we’re pulling up. Again, I can take this
simple cylinder and then I can go into the description of how these muscles on this cylinder
tie in. For instance, there is a bone here that is actually on the subscapularis region
called the coracoid process. These muscles attach to it underneath.
You’ve got the biceps which attach there. You’ve got the coracobrachialis which ties
there, and you actually have some internal pec muscles which attach there, internal meaning
essentially they’re underneath the pecs major. We’ve been drawing the pecs major
her, attaching to the outside of the humerus.
So, you’ll notice that perhaps here we’ll see a little bit of this latissimus dorsi
that we see here, right? Pulling around into the oblique. In this case, the oblique is
referred to because it’s rounder, the flank pad. Then we have this articulation here.
See the inguinal ligament that ties from here to here? Here the center line is the sternum
into the linea alba. That is the division of this abdominal muscle as it comes down.
Right in the middle of it is the navel. Like I said, point 1, 2, 3, 4.
Alright, notice I’m giving you some things. I’m not giving you everything. Simple measurements.
The outstretched hand to the fingertip, to this fingertip as I stretch out. From the
pit of the neck equals from the top of the head to the pubic bone. That means that the
outstretched arms as in the da Vinci Vitruvian man, you know, in the circle, are equal to
the height of the body. The outstretched arms. This would be the pubic bone. This would be
the top of the head. Out this way the bottom of the foot. It’s an interesting way to
break things down simply.
We come up here. We’ve got bones, by the way; elbow, the olecranon, one of the bones
of the humerus, the condyles coming off, and in here we’re going to see some of the triceps
disappearing in a series of muscles with zig and zag. This muscle is attaching to the edge
of the scapula, so it’s coming down and attaching to this edge in here.
Okay, so notice we’ve mentioned some key things in both of these. Those things have
been conceptualized specifically for the directions that we’re looking at them from. In other
words, simple ideas. For instance, the rib cage in the profile, I might take this distance
from the arch from here to here and go, alright, we’re going from there to there, from there
to there. There is the sternum. Then it cuts back so this is slightly rounded. The spine
is going to be in here. I’m not actually going to see the spine because it’s in a
trough. These are things we can look at later when we look at the skeleton. So, this is
in the trough but won’t be perceived here. When we get to the iliac crest here, you notice
I’m taking that plus the gluteus maximus down here and making the profile so much simpler
than both the front and the back. I also want to come down here and make sure this more
or less lines up.
The way the leg fits in the front, when I did this arch, put in the inguinal ligament,
about an inch and a half down from the iliac crest, because this does this like this like
that, but an inch and a half down is where the center quadriceps muscle starts. That
starts where the bend of the leg would be. Not here. Here. The stomach muscles along
here where the navel is here cut back like this. Head. We said the occipital ridge is
where the neck muscles start in the back like that. They’re going from there to there.
Look at this. Let’s just do the brow. Get a basic on this. I’m expanding this. It
started with a sphere. I’m just expanding back. It’s the simplest way, to start with
a sphere and expand it and then drop this off maybe. You get these areas. You can make
any kind of face—soft, harder, whatever. So, we’ve got the arm. I’m not going to
draw the arm in, but I’m going to draw the pecs over to where the shoulder would be.
Here is where the clavicle is. This trapezius muscle which does this here and does this
here, from this view it would look like something like this. I’m just going to tone it in.
It’s starting up here at the occipital ridge. It comes down and it attaches in front to
the clavicle and back to the spine of the scapula, so it would look something like that
here. Here is the mastoid bone. It is behind the ear which, by the way, lines up like that.
It’s behind the ear. From there starts the sternocleidomastoid muscle, which pulls this
way. The throw muscle might be this way, or I should say the cartilage of the throat might
be this way like that. This cuts that way. We’re seeing some of the major muscles here.
Down here, the obliques tying in. They, by the way, are flat up in this area and work
digitally into the rib cage. Notice how I’m doing this rather quickly, so I’m not taking
it so seriously, but I am trying through these simple notations that we’re doing to get
the point. Not render the point; to get the point. Simple notes. Simple notes. Not polishing
this thing, because it doesn’t matter how much you polish it, that is not going to instill
this thing deeply into you. It’s understanding it and trying to see how it works that makes
the difference. Your sense of measurement will grow the more you work with your general
model. You’ll become more and more articulate about how to do this. Get the idea.
Notice that this arches, this comes back. We’re not looking for a perfect drawing.
We’re looking for understanding. Where is the knee? Right here. This does come down,
but there is a kind of rhythmic thing that takes place. These are the quadriceps. That
tensor fascia latae muscle is in here. This one is the gluteus medius. The gluteus maximus
actually comes down. What we see here, the bottom of the buttocks, is actually a fat
pad. This is tying in. The tensor fascia latae, as I said, comes down this way. The great
trochanter is here. So, it meets form of band coming down this way. The IT band, iliotibial
band is kind of on the outside holding the quadriceps in. It comes down and attaches
down here to the tibia. Behind here are the hamstrings. This band can often be mistaken
for the hamstrings because it depends on how someone is standing whether there is more
emphasis on the band or more emphasis on the hamstring. The basic difference between those
two is that the hamstring itself is more robe-like, and this is more belt-like. But, they can
switch back and forth as to which one is working. Sometimes you can see both at the same time.
This attaches lower on the outside to the head of the fibula, which is the ankle on
the outside of the leg. If we come down and find the move into the tibia along with the
indicis muscle here, which rounds this out a little more along that bone line. Then we
can—actually I’d like to bring that back. It does this more. The calf muscle attaches
up to the back of the femur and the condyles of the femur as they wrap back and then swing
out this way. So we have this kind of rhythmic consideration here into the foot.
Alright, so we’ve got him leaning a little too far back, maybe, but this is the essential
idea for building a model. I’m not going to go into the legs. Take it there. Back to
this portion. This is the external oblique as it fits into the ribs, you know, kind of
locking into each one of those, though, is the serratus muscles, which are much more
rounded. Hard for us to see this until it becomes part of the flank pad consideration.
Flank pad, navel, chest, alright. Okay, so much for the general model. Try to do your
own. Get a set of measurements that you become comfortable with, that you begin to know,
and that you can actually bring with you to the real conditions, to the wild, so to speak.
You’ve got ideas you’re bringing to the table.

Let’s start with a little bit of review. Let’s just say I’ve got an upper torso,
lower torso. I’m dividing. Here is the scapula now. Remember the scapula, the spine of it
goes up like this we’re going to put the rib cage in here. Back of the head right at
the occipital ridge. The ear is here. This comes down, attaches here from here. Very
simple idea. Arm is here. C7, T1 breaking this. Let’s make this a little higher. I
want to make it a little higher. Notice, also it’s eight parts of the body. We’ve got
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Let’s move this up again. What we want to show is
that there is a lot of movement in the shoulder girdle, so we’ll do this. We can do this.
Well, we’re coming close. We’ll do this again. This is short simply because it has
been foreshortened, the length of this line has been shortened by moving into the space
away from the observer. It can actually become a point. Right, but what we have is a shortened
or foreshortened length, right? So, that’s how that happens. This, as we said, attaches
in front. It attaches here. It attaches here. More accurately, it originates and ties down
on the stem. Okay, we have some muscles that are on the scapula itself underneath the infraspinatus,
teres minor, teres major, and then the latissimus pulling into that.
Latissimus pulling up and in like this.
What we’re really looking at are these eight parts of the body in the first thinking about
this, our first level of thinking. There are four including the neck. I said in the beginning
that the neck has special property, and this is a reminder. In the beginning I said we
have one, two, three, the neck, four, five, six, seven, eight. Five, six, seven, eight.
But the neck, and this is a reminder, is actually something that joins three major parts, this
part and this part. There is a lot of flex here and a lot of flex here. What that does
is it allows maybe the body to bend. So, now you have the head, the upper torso, and the
lower torso because you’ve got this bend.
Now, if you come over here you’ve got a knee bend, right? Maybe this leg is back a
little bit. This might be okay out this way, and maybe it’s something like this. So,
you feel the story. Feel the story. What’s going on? For something like this, we might
even want to drop the head lower. This is the time to decide a thing like that when
you’re telling a story. What we did is we did a gesture, but we added some of the forms
into the gesture itself. That’s what I’m saying is that the breakdown into the three
stages is artificial. It’s a useful breakdown, but there are no sharp edges between one and
the other. One might help the other and so on. For instance, when we talked about the
gesture we couldn’t talk about just long lines of action. We also had to talk about
foreshortening and concealed forms. You can’t talk about foreshortening and concealed forms
with long lines because they aren’t made up of long lines. We’ll get into both of
those in a moment.
But, here we are. We’re talking about what happens at the joints now, you know, how much
can happen. We can bend our figure down even lower. There is the neck, back, pelvis. Let’s
make this a back view. We’re seeing even less. Do you see how a simple gesture can
say so much? If you get too involved in articulating the bits and pieces you will lose the sense
of the big story that you’re trying to tell. You might say that part of this might be this
person’s anguish. That expression is made on the face, but if you find it and you’re
able to articulate it really very well in the face, that doesn’t mean that you found
it in the body. The body language is the biggest possible statement of the expression of whatever
the emotion is and so on. Really, it comes and finds its final articulation in the facial
muscles and so on. The face is really the outcome of this flesh that comes through the
body. That’s why I have a tendency to not want to draw the head first because in a way
you’re end-gaming by starting that way.
Really, again we’re talking about joints. We could do this, for instance, and then maybe
we could even do an angle and say, well, this angle allows the body—let’s do this—to
do this. So, now this is rather straight, and our subject swings up. But, we really
need to notice what’s happening here at this joint. We’re starting to, you know,
spread from here to here, and we might feel this angle. Notice that if this is doing this
that the buttocks have to reflect that. This might show a little bit of compression, right?
This is supporting you might have a very definite visual on what it means to put pressure back
here and allow this to be more free. Here is the gluteus medius. Here is the gluteus
maximus. Notice that it’s relaxed compared to the squaring up of this one. There is the
fat pad. This is doing this. We can feel the difference in how they’re participating
in this. This, on the other hand, might be very relaxed. This is carrying the show. It’s
where the support is. That’s where the balance is. That allows this leg to be freer and make
its own statement. We can do this various ways. I could bring the heel up. I could extend
it out on the other hand. Instead of this coming back toward us like that, I could do
it so that the knee is here. We could do this this way. This is where you explore the idea
and the gesture. Then we see the mechanics begin to support that right down here, down
here, and so on. Alright, up and out.
We’re really talking about what the joints do. We have eight parts of the body. We have
joints that move about. For instance, if this arm goes back the shoulder will go back. If
the other arm goes forward, the shoulder will pull out like this. You can see it pulling
forward because in the back you’ve got the scapula pulling around. We’re seeing it
on edge. Again, this pulls around. It opens the hole back up. When the arm reaches up,
and I’m going to draw it right in this area, when the arm reaches up, say here’s the
head, the neck, the rib cage. When the arm reaches up like this, it will expose these
ribs. If the arm is down and back, these ribs may not be exposed because you’re pushing
all this flesh tight together on this side. Whereas you’re opening it up and stretching
it on this side. Again, we have different things going on and you want to ask yourself
always, well, what’s the story. That’s what helps you decide how you want to tell
it by the choices that you make. Once again, let’s take this now. We can pull this down.
We’ve got this. Maybe it’s arched back. On the other hand, it could be tipped forward
like this, you see. Maybe that’s tipped forward but maybe the back leg is back here.
We have these different possibilities that can be explored by your understanding of the
mechanics of the joints. You want to get to know those joints really well.
That comes not so much just from study but also from experience. You’re going to need
to draw from life action models, not just photographs, but as often as you can begin
to study how those things work. Then you’ll become more and more articulate. For instance,
I said this shoulder pulls forward. This shoulder pulls back. We’ve got this kind of thing
pulling back. It creates something here. This creates something different. They’re not
symmetrical. Unless they are.
Okay, so let’s continue this idea of working with conceptual ideas. We’ve talked about
working with things like this where we find our center line, and we come down and find
pubic bone. We could just as easily do this and find the back of the head, the spine over
to the sacrum. See the simplicity of that. A simple volume gives you the leg, right?
Here we’ve got it from the front view. Come out and find the shoulders and so on. We’re
finding our way across the form. Now look, I’m suddenly looking at it in terms of surfaces,
this surface to this surface. There is that hidden corner. Where is the hidden corner
here? Well, that comes around like that so there is kind of a hidden corner here. I’m
seeing around the corner. I need to see both ways. If I can see both ways at once it gives
me an advantage. Notice how I’ve turned that now into two surfaces. I could do the
same here. I could do this. I could turn this into a donut with that leg going off.
It's valuable because I could actually—I’m going to bring this leg up in front of this
one now by saying the leg could be this way. But, it could also lift from this point so
now we’ve got this. This won’t change much, but this whole thing swings up like
this. I can do that with the leg draping down this way, see, so we can do that. All the
time this is supporting it, you see. Support, support, support. Okay.
So, we’re saying that we can do simple conceptual ideas that are useful. This might be useful
to understand, and then maybe we can turn it back into a volume that’s a little more
organic and so on. But, we might also need to do this in order to find the clavicle that
wraps around this way. Maybe this view has a head where we’re having a hard time understanding
what the shoulders are doing. Maybe we see a little bit of the scapula in the back and
then wrap around the shoulders. Maybe this arm is forward so I can think of it with the
pecs pulling up and out like that, pulling away from this. Maybe this arm is going back
so I’m thinking this way. The pecs are pulling around and back underneath the deltoid.
The neck muscle is coming down and attaching in here, back. Let’s get just a little of the
head. Do you see how I’m building on the ideas, right? Simple ideas.
Let’s just take another one. Let’s take a very complex form and let’s just say we’re
seeing the top of the form, the upper torso. We’re seeing down, and we’re seeing the
back of the form. Here we’re seeing the front. Here we’re seeing the back. We’re
seeing the top, the side, the front, and the back. Here is the sternum, the neck. Over
here is the hip. Maybe we’ve got this leg forward now. The hip, the spine tucking into
the sacrum. We’ve got this, maybe the rib cage pulling off. Alright, so there we go.
This leg might be back, and this might be forward like that.
Okay, so now we’ve got a subject that’s very complex. I could even drop this down
and make it even more radical by doing that and putting the head here. Even more radical,
more bend there, and so on. But, you see we’re using ideas to get there. We’re not copying
something. This is the great advantage of working with conceptual forms.

Foreshortening, by the way, is also—well, it’s helpful to think of it conceptually.
You can copy what you think you see, but when you think about what you see it gets us back
to the difference between, say, this and this. Again, it’s a perception thing. If you’re
inclined to see shape then you’re probably not going to really see around the form and
take advantage of the things that help you with the spatial foreshortening. So, when
we think about it that way, we need to bring in the concept of volumes here.
So, if we take something that’s been foreshortened—you may remember I was talking about things like
that—if we put one form in front of another. Now, there may be a direction here, but it’s
confusing at this point as to which is front of which because we haven’t attended to
what’s happening at the intersection. The moment we do we can say, well, this one is
in front of this one, and that one is in front of that one. We could have just as easily
said this is front of this one. This one is still in front of this one. Or, we could have
said the center one is in front, and the others are behind. It all depends on how we handle
the intersections. Once that’s understood I think that we can move on.
You also want to remember that even though we’re talking like this, it isn’t necessarily
that each one of these segments is the same size. We’re not doing Michelin men here.
Also, that’s a very bumpy road. We can have different sizes, but we can also have the
way, how one things flows into another. For instance, this one can be more open, closed,
open, open, closed. Notice, this is a big difference. This is a very bumpy road. Boom,
boom. These are a series of ones; one, one, one, one, one. Kind of boring. One might refer
to it as timing. That might be like the drum beat behind a melody or something. In this
case, it’s one-two-three, one, one-two, one, one-two-three, one-one-two.
We call that timing in music.
You can see that it has its visual alias. Here we’re looking at something that also
has timing. It does this, this, this, and this. It doesn’t really even have to go
in a straight line. We can take it around rhythmically. Maybe we want to close these
so we get one-two, one-two-three-four, one-two, one-one-two, one-two-three, and so on. But,
we’re also making a rhythm out of it. It also adds a feeling of going into space. If
you look at these arrows you see that, in this case, it feels like it goes into the
picture plane. We’re using this kind of a volume in order to express an idea, but
it could just as easily be something like this. Here is the top surface. Again, something
like this. Again, maybe something like this and maybe even something like this, something
like this, something like this. See, so you can have a variety of different kinds of shape
volumes. Again, it’s just an idea. You’ll notice that in this case it’s one, but it’s
a flat one, round one; one-two, one-one, and so on.
Okay, let’s play around with this idea a little bit. Let’s take these ideas, let’s
just start with something. Let’s play. We’ve got a form into another form. We’ll come
down here. Let’s go across the form. Maybe something like that, so not terribly foreshortened
but enough foreshortening in it. You notice I’m thinking what’s the subject doing?
In this case, our subject is reclining. I’m basically trying to find out what the basic
statement is, the feeling for it. Now, for my center lines, right, finding these things.
Intersections kind of like this. Hip bones, under, across.
Okay, so you see, slowly I’m beginning to develop something, and let’s just find the rib cage here.
Feeling it out.
Center lines. Again, all this is rather sketchy at this
particular point as I’m trying to decide what it is to do. Here is that ovoid, by the
way. We could do this. Say something like that. This leg is cylindrical, kind of ovoid.
I’m not getting too involved in description, still just trying to feel our way. Cross-axis.
By the way, this is putting pressure here,
so it’s forcing some tension around this way. It forces this to here, center. Coming down.
So, when I start to look at this as a piece of foreshortening I’m really doing the same
thing. We’re saying what’s in front and what’s behind. It’s basically this rule.
The only think I might add to that is between these two big forms there is a transitional
form. If this is the A form and this is B form, this here is the transitional form.
So, how would that look here? Well, we might see the hip pulling around this way. It goes
under. Maybe we see the latissimus pulling around. We feel the rib cage in here. In between
those two coming down this way and between the hip and this, we’ll find a transitional
form. In here, pulling down this way. From here to here. Between these two big forms,
there is a transitional form. It’s not big form into big forms so much.
Transitional form, right here.
Transitional.
We’re just feeling our way out around the form.
Again, here we’re feeling this whole thing pull in front.
This isn’t, I wouldn’t consider this as just a linear movement.
I'm seeing this tucks under as the quadriceps pull in front and the tendon pulls here, ties
in here as this tucks under. Pulling down along the shin. I’m thinking around the
form so this is back. This is in front. This is the closest thing to us. This is close.
I’m finding the center. This is tucking so we could throw a little tone on it.
By throwing a little tone on it, it creates a little atmosphere, you see, so we’re doing
this and this. It gives it a feeling of space. It’s in this spirit that we begin to just
explore using this idea. You can use this idea to interpret the subjects position in
front of you, it could be very complex. But when we start thinking about this, one thing
into another, it gives you a great tool for interpreting very complex things.
For instance, twist, twist. Without going into any really detailed description you begin to feel the
push and tug and what’s in front of what, by the choices we’re making about this.
Bring this up with the head back here, behind. By the way, this one gets us a little bit
into hidden form. Let’s talk about that next.
So, hidden form and concealed form. We’re dealing with parts of the body which are actually
very important for establishing balance, for establishing the main sense and weight of
the figure, that are lost behind incidental movements of the arms and legs or whatever
and are not attended to by the artist. What I’m suggesting is that you deal with those
concealed forms before you build the smaller forms that are in front such as arms and limbs
and so on. Let’s take a look at that as a possibility.
Let’s take a figure, let’s take upper torso. We’ll have a sitting figure like
this sitting on this edge. Really, what we’ll probably have is arms and legs in front going
around, around. Hip high. I’m thinking about it. Even though I’m going to build a leg
in this way and a leg up this way, across, in front. See, now I’m seeing very little
of what’s behind. As this is twisting I’m going to bring it back. Upper torso. The head
might even be somewhat tucked as the arm raises up. Now, we have foreshortening, and this
arm cuts across. We’re attempting to find out what’s going on here with the underlying
form before we invest too much in what we’re seeing in front.
Now, let’s say the other arm is here. We’ve got this—and it’s also hard to see the
underlying form because even the breasts are up front. The breasts are not really showing
structure so much. Like the arms and the legs, they’re obscuring the support forms, the
main structure of the body. But, I’m going to find it here in the navel where the rib
cage hits here, so that in some ways it peeks out, up and around the shoulder.
This arm comes back this way in front. Again, this is foreshortened.
Have a little bit of the head showing.
So you see, even as we draw this, it does respect where it’s coming from, each one
of those things. I’m not just drawing the knee and the shin bone. We’re actually asking
where does it come from? How does it detach? We can see possibly that this one, this kind
of lays across here by the way. This one is coming toward us, and then it moves back.
Now, on analysis of this first line, I’m going to leave it. It’s the first gestural
thought. Try to see how this tucks in because this is pulling back this way. I want to feel
the tension right up here. I can feel it best if I can actually come all the way back and
find it in the rib cage. I’m starting to feel it all the way down over here even to
the crotch. I’m going to let that fall over to the crotch. We’re building in, building in.
Heel. Again, there is some foreshortening, so we’re doing this. In other words, this
is in front of this. This is in front of that, and so on. Here we have concealed forms. Up
here a foreshortened arm. We’d get maybe some of the bones in here.
So, you see, we’re just handling the situation rather than ignoring the situation.
Pulling up, pulling up. Head pulling down. Elbow to the wrist. Again, you’re general model will
give you these, give you some distances. What the general model won’t give you is how
to deal with foreshortening. That’s why it’s a different conceptual notion about
foreshortening. When you’re bending the lengths of the widths of things, it’s hard
to measure them against other things because you’re not seeing them flat-on. You’re
not seeing their full lengths. When you do a general model it is basically dealing with
the full lengths of things. You’re measuring one body part against another body part. I
didn’t say this yet, but in formulation, which is the second part we talked about that’s
it’s about where you take measure.
But there are ten different ways to take measure, and one of them is to do this general model
we talked about it. Another one is, for instance, to understand shape and volume and its direction.
That is a form of measurement about what’s happening spatially. Those are two forms of
measurement. Now, I’ll talk about a couple more. We’re still just finishing on the
concealed form issue. We give this some weight, and we begin to feel that this is not lost,
that in here we feel the whole figure. We’re not cheating out on this.
We’re attending to it.
So, another form of measurement might be to say measure this against horizontals and verticals
as if we were measuring it with a picture plane. What is I see is that this is on an
angle. This is on an angle. I might even come in here and say this shape in here is something
like this. I could even drop down and say, well, this elbow sort of hits this hip about
this point. Then I might go, oh, I’ve got to bring that out a little bit, or it’s
not going to quite find its place. This elbow might line up with the ankle down here. Right?
There might be a negative space in here, which has a certain shape. That shape might include
an angle like that, an angle like that, and an angle like that against a vertical or a
horizontal. We’re actually measuring negative/positive. We’re measuring volumes. This is coming
forward toward us. We’re measuring in a series of different ways. Each one of these
things is something that you come to with thought, with analysis, which leads to concepts
and visual ideas that are extremely useful for dealing with your form. In this particular
case we’re dealing with forms that the eye does not see. We’ll have to surmise them.
They’re built out of our ideas about form. Or general model should give us some of those
simple ideas, and so on.

I would like to talk about a couple of concepts that I find extremely useful. They are very
old. They were used and conceived of by Michelangelo, so they’ve got a history. I think it’s
important to understand that our notion that there is a single light source is an idea.
It’s hard to pull that idea off when, say, you’re in a room and lighting something,
and there is all kinds of light in the room, and you’re trying to create a special condition
where there is a single light source on your subject. When you do that you’re actually
working conceptually with an idea. It’s not what would actually happen in a room when
you have bounced light that’s coming from everywhere. I think this single light source
idea was established a long time ago. After all, a lot of the Italian Renaissance painters
and artists, they were working with light sources that weren’t so as electric as the
ones we’re working with. They were relying a lot on the available light and manipulating
that available light as well as they could. They must have run into the same conditions
and problems that we all do.
Light has its own way of either revealing form or destroying form. They’ve done a
lot of analysis and a lot of thinking about these things and established certain clear
ideas so that the story they wanted visually was equally as clear. The clear idea about
light is that we could say like the sun, there is a single light source. On occasion we get
bounced light. Bounced light creates an interesting effect. It’s also referred to as reflective
light. When you have, for instance, a single light source. Let’s just say it’s hitting
a sphere. Let’s just say it’s hitting a sphere. Let’s say it’s hitting up in
this area someplace, maybe like that. So it’s hitting up in this area. As it goes around
this sphere, we’re getting more and more tone as it turns away from the light source.
There is more and more tone as it goes away from the light source. If it’s a really
dark space that could get very dark. That could also create a cast shadow. Let’s just
talk about that for a moment. It might create a cast shadow. This might represent that.
Because it’s hitting here there might be a slight bit of tone around this side. Might be.
Essentially, it’s kind of like that. As a result, we do experience the volume.
We don’t experience this as a disc. We experience it as a volume. We’re treating this form
as if it’s a sphere, not a disc. By the way, we’re lighting it.
On the other hand, let’s say we have the same condition, but the light is bounced.
So, we’ve got this happening, but there is a phenomenon which happened that is called
core shadow. Core shadow is the shadow between the lightest light and the dark side. When
you have light that bounces back. So, when you have light that bounces back, you get
a certain degree of light in the tone side. It still casts its shadow. If this bounced
light is really bright, then the cast shadow will be darker. If we look at a Carravagio,
the dark in here is going to be very dark. He gives us a movement across all his form
through the light. We’re jumping. The eye jumps from one light source to another and
bounces around the frame. Cast shadow and so on. That’s an extreme where you have,
even though there is some reflected light it’s very dark in there. We go all the way
over to here, and this is more the way—for instance, Tiepolo uses light, which is a little
time later in the scheme of things. Essentially, he has his figures up in the clouds, so he
wants them to be as light filled as possible. But, the interesting thing is that he’s
still using this concept of single light source, but if you’re up in the middle of the air
light is coming from every direction. It’s bouncing off of clouds. Essentially you get
something which cold completely destroy the volume, and we might just
simply see the shapes if we’re lucky.
So, what he’s done is he’s created a Renaissance approach to lighting the figure, which allows
him to creatively go into it and make these ribbons of core shadow that have a life of
their own with little accents here and there, and it’s really quite beautiful. Once you
look at it that way, you’ll begin to realize that’s it’s highly unlikely that somebody
up in the clouds would be lit like that.
Okay, so what are the elements here? The elements are with a direct light source. Since we’re
working on white paper, we’ll take the highlight, which would have been here.
This would have been local color.
You could say the highlight, the local tone, core shadow, refected light, cast shadow.
If this gradates at all into this, we also get half tone. So, what are
we talking about? We’re talking about highlight, local tone; three, half tone; four, core shadow;
five, reflected light; six, cast shadow. They each have their own properties. In this particular
case, when we’re talking about cast shadow, it’s darkest closest to the object that
casting the shadow. It might even be sharpest. As it pulls away, as that shadow spreads out
away from the object that’s casting it, it has a tendency to come more light-filled
and the edges much fuzzier.
Okay, so that’s one of the characteristics of that. Now, this is one form of light which
I think is really going to be important when we start talking about breaking form down
into volumes described by light and tone. This is one of the important forms. The other
one that I think is important. By the way, this is all under formulation. This is two
different ideas about life. The other one is when there is no light source, but you
want to make a description of the form in some way. You create a light source. In this
particular case I just like to use this phrase because I said that I think it states it as
clearly as possible. The center of the form gets the light. What that means is that the
center of the form that’s facing you, the observer, gets the light as if you had a third
eye that you switched on at a certain wattage, maybe 30 watts. Maybe this is 70 watts, but
this might be 30 watts. I’m just going to do this. Center of the form gets the light.
That means as we travel out towards the edges it becomes more and more in tone until it
actually hits that edge.
That could be darker or lighter. It doesn’t really matter, but
what this does do is it gives a description of form, which is an independent idea from
there being a direct light source.
Once this is understood it’s possible to change the light source directly from the
center between one’s two eyes, the observer’s two eyes to a new location, a location that
might better benefit what it is that we’re trying to say about form. For instance, this
tells us one thing that’s very strong. What it doesn’t do is it doesn’t tell us anything
about this quadrant in here. Oftentimes, when a light source hits an object it blasts it
out, so we get lots of form around where the shadow meets the light and maybe in some other
places. But oftentimes, it washes the tone out along the edges. It could be, for instance,
that we could take that secondary light as a kind of helping light and photographers
would call it fill light. They’re using it to help create the visual story that they
want to tell. However they use it. It’s to enhance their vision, enhance the shot.
In this case, let’s say we’ve got some tone here. It breaks into core shadow because
this in fact is going to be…
it’s going to have reflected light, and this goes flat.
But, we could take this idea here and apply it to this section. We can say, well, this
is kind of flat, and what I’d like to see is a sense that this goes around.
You'll see. That’s why I’m saying that this is at a small percentage compared to 70% on this side.
This could be 30%. All it needs is just a touch to help us find our way around the form.
Okay, so this idea is being applied here. This idea is being applied here. Alright,
we can take that whole notion of this into more organic forms. Do you understand, though,
that if the light is hitting the center of the form it depends on what that form is as
to where that light will be. It will not always be a spot. It might be something like this,
closest to the light source is in the center of the tube, for instance. It’s going to
be more of a line than it is a spot. You have to keep in mind that you cannot light something
unless you know what its volume is. If you do, for instance, a shape that’s like this
without knowing what its volume is, we can’t really say much about it. But, once you understand
its volume we can light it. Supposing, for instance, that this is something like this…
and a little curve to that.
We start to feel that it has three-dimensional properties.
That goes for anything, even this. We can’t really light that until we’ve decided that it’s
a sphere. It could be a cone. It could be an impression. It could be any number of things.
If you’re actually drawing your figure...
without understanding what these forms are really doing volumetrically, you cannot light it.
The moment you decide, for instance, you have a light source coming from here, and
you have a top surface, then you can kind of come alone and say all of this is going
to be in tone. And maybe here. And maybe here. Because you’ve decided, for instance, that
this is turning away from the light source. Maybe this pinches it. Maybe this pinches. See a
little bit here. Maybe this drops down and in. The whole head drops back. If you follow
me on this then I think it might be possible to talk in more specific terms about how we
would work with this, you see, so we can start to give a sense of space with our figure by
understanding its volumes and using light and tone to describe the form. We’ll go
into that in a little more detail in just a bit.

We’re going to be using a CarbOthello. It is blue or one of the varieties of blue. It’s
390. We’re just going to try an approach or two on the construction of form. I might
just start with a quick lay-in. In this case, the lay in has to tell a bit of the story,
so in some sense it’s dealing with the gesture. This arm is up. I’m going to pull that down.
I’m going to put it there. I’m going to put the head here, just a little construction here.
The hips are in this direction. Notice when I say the hips are in this direction
that means I’m thinking about it. The leg is this way but it’s also toward us. This
leg is this way, two-dimensionally. They’re actually kind of like in a 45-degree angle.
I’m actually going to make this shorter, make this shorter, and make this up here so
I can put the foot in. So, I’m making adjustments, you see.
Okay, so notice that I’m doing some blocking. You might say, well, where is the gesture?
The gesture would have been there. I’m coming op. It’s like I’m taking, I’ve already
made an assessment. This side is stretching, you see. This side is compressing like that.
This I said is a 45-degree angle, but it’s also three-dimensionally moving toward me,
and it continues toward us there at this point. Okay, the heel is in here, so he’s reaching
out. The heel is in here. At least there is kind of the attitude of everything, and the
head maybe a little narrower in coming in. Something like that. So, we feel this movement.
Remember, the square of the back does not really do that. When I’m thinking about
the shoulders, they’re probably—or I should say the upper body. It’s probably more like
that. So, when I get into the rib cage rounds out like that. But, I am looking at this now,
and I’m saying, okay, how can I break this down so I understand where the backs, the
sides, the rest of those things are at. In this particular case it might be useful. I
can curve this or roll this in this way so that I can see a side over here. Why roll it?
Well, it suggests itself that way. I’m really rolling it like this. I could have
made a box. It doesn’t really matter which kinds of concepts you use, as long as they
help clarify. In this case, I really don’t want to stretch this up like that. I would
rather find what the upper torso is doing and then put the scapula in, which supposes
that I know that there is such a thing as a scapula, and that it’s part of the shoulder
girdle instead of the upper torso. It’s part of the arm system.
Now, here we go. So, there is a cylinder. There is another one. Notice that these cylinders
have character to them. They’re not just simply cylinders like this. They are ovoid
like, and a lot of parts of the body are ovoid. This is a cylinder coming back towards us.
At least we can take it to be so. But, if you look at it, it does something like this.
When it’s wider at one end than at the other end, that’s an ovoid form I’m seeing.
Alright. You’ll notice that eggs are like that. Then we’ll repeat this information
so you’ll get it right.
Again, even this now I can feel the hip is under some stress because this leg is pushing
against it. This is going around front. This is kind of like that. Pulling in. The calf
part of the leg down here, one thing fitting into another like this. In a way we’re analyzing, see.
This is stretching so I’m stretching in a way from one box to another. In here
I’m putting the sacrum, so again I’m adding some ideas into this. I’m adding some anatomy
into this. I added some anatomy when I said, gee, isn’t that the scapula here. How does
that work? I could maybe move this down a little bit. How does that work with this upper body?
Center line. Again, the heel is back here. The foot is tucked. I’m not going overboard
with squares. I’m not saying I’ve got to square this out. I’m only using the squares
where it’s useful, so I could do this and say then it drops down. Then I could do that.
I could say the same thing about this. And that might be useful, and if it is you go
ahead and do it.
I have a tendency to enjoy using cylinders whenever I can and box it out or do squares
and boxes. When things need to be revealed in terms of clarity of side against back or
top against side against back. We’ll have examples of that, I’m sure, where we see
all three at once. In the meantime, you can see that this then can be developed further
and further. This arm is going around the corner. The face is going to be over here
down here. I’ll get that a little lower. Little lower. Kind of the idea. And in this
particular area right here we get compression. This is pushing against that. On the other
hand, this is pushing against that.
Maybe the head is a little large.
Okay, pull up.
Little thick here. Anyway, you can get the idea from what I’m talking about here.
Alright, again, let’s see, just trying to get the gesture. So, we start with the gesture.
We want all eight parts of the body. Bring this in. Arms practically straight down. There it is.
Okay, so the gesture. I come in. I’m actually trying to find the front. Where is
the side? Center line. Coming over down to the lower torso. How’s that going to work?
Come around, looking for a way to describe this. This I’ve got described this way.
Down here I’m going to go for something like this. I do want a center line so I’m
probably going to do this. That brings this choice from here to here into a cylinder choice for me.
I might square the knee off and say the knee is going something like that. This
This leg from here, maybe something like that.
Again, kind of a cylindrical. Down, knee.
We’re back up here. The head.
Neck, cylinder, shoulder.
Notice I’m not doing the arm in front until I feel comfortable with the forms that would
be behind. Again, that’s dealing with a concealed form, the important concealed forms.
A simple take on it, conceptual forms. At the same time you don’t want your conceptual
forms to destroy the rhythm and feeling of your gestural story. You want to constantly
try to stay in touch with that and attend to that. Here we go. Coming to the inner forms.
There is the hip. Maybe we won’t see the hip once that arm is in. Here is where that
arm is going to be. I’m reminding you. And the hand here. This leg is back.
Ankle, foot, okay.
Alright, I think that will kind of get it. You see, that whole idea is to be clear
about what those surfaces are doing, which way the planes are facing.
Okay, let’s take another. Shoulder, upper body, lower. Notice, hip is low. I’m coming
right in. Where is that knee coming across? That’s the stabilizing leg. I’m going
to make sure that it’s taken care of. It’s the balance for everything. I’m going around.
I’m coming over. This knee is higher. This foot is back touching. This is lower. Okay,
so center line. Center, center. Low. Her head is going to be low. I did this so that we
make sure that we find where the neck is seating itself in the upper torso. Shoulder, right
around this area. The ribs are actually going to be coming way down like this.
By the way, when is said the head is seating itself into the upper torso I really mean
this egg-like shape because the clavicles are going up and back and up and back. Why?
Because she’s raised her arms up. Notice that she’s pulling her pecs back this way
and this way as she raises her shoulders up. By the way, all that is raising up so that
these arms can be lifted and kind of perform this creature-like quality that she’s getting
to her fingers. I’m not going to go into that, but that’s part of the attitude. But
while that’s all doing that and this is pulling out this way and pulling back, her
head is actually looking down. So, I’m going to do the brow line down like this and bring
the chin way down here. When I say the brow line that means that the eye is underneath
like that. The eyes are down here under the brow line, and her hair line is going to be here.
Okay, so the neck is coming in. This begins to make a certain kind of sense then. If I
want shape for balance, when I do the hair I’m basically looking for shape. Notice
that everywhere else I’m kind of looking for volume. Here is kind of the box. I’m
boxing her out, and the ribs may stop about here, but then the stomach muscles are coming
down this way. You’ll notice that, well, in a way they’re kind of like a roll. It’s
rolling, rolling, rolling this way, and then right here this is kind of pulling around
and down. Maybe that’s not quite fair, but there is kind of an angle. This might be a
little overkill on this, but I think it’s important to understand that this is a whole
surface. It’s not just a line. This here is basically showing us the division between
the front and the side of the body. Here we have—it’s just rolling around like this,
so the side of the body is back here. It’s hard to turn it into just a box.
Anyway, this is coming. Hips. This is—I’ll make that a little higher even. I guess we
could say, here this whole thing right here represents the front, and this represents
the side. At some point it starts to look like shorts. But in a way the shorts or jockey
shorts really do help describe. I’m going to soften that and bring it in a little bit.
Soften it and bring it in a little bit. Alright, so then I’m going to put this spheroid in
like this again, you see. Notice that I don’t need to really block this out. At least, that’s
how I am about it until I get to the knee, right, because I want the knee to be clear.
Which direction is it facing? I want to square that out. I don’t need that here and here.
What I need here is the sense of distance and position compared to the other leg. We
have this. We’re actually turning the corner. Turns the corner like that. This tucks under.
Knee, continue it out. In this case, tucking. I’m thinking around the form. It’s a little
foreshortened as it goes back. Up here again the shoulder is up, maybe even push it and see.
Push it a little bit. And the breast is on the chest. It is on the rib cage.
Okay, how to think about this. Shape, volume, surface, planes. For instance, top plane.
It’s the plane of the knee, side of the knee. If we need to, the knee. The side. What
do we need in order to get this in the ballpark? That’s basically the thing. Once again,
we don’t want to lose the gesture, right? The big feeling of the pose, the big sense of that pose.
A little wider.
Anyway, something like that.

Okay, shoulder, hip, supporting leg, playful leg. Arm is almost vertical. Notice I’m
turning it in a little bit. In other words, I’m avoiding the vertical. Head, hair, shoulders.
Okay, so now I’ve got my basic elements. There are the basic elements. I’m going
to go back and cross check and make sure they are where I want them to be. This is coming
this way. Knee is here. Cross check, cross check, cross check. Coming in. Knee, ankle, foot.
Okay, so now I want to examine this a little bit. This is going back cylindrically. This
is coming—I’m going to have it come forward slightly and right around in here have it
drop down to the surface so the thumb and fingers are doing something like that. Coming
around this. I’m thinking around the form. It’s possible to come down and find the
pit of the neck down to where the bottom of the sternum might be, where the navel is as
well and belly and the pubic bone, crotch. I’m coming down here and looking for the
way this muscle tucks behind this one. These are the quadriceps by the way. These are the
muscles of the buttocks that go behind. We have a little bit of that.
I’m also looking for the center surface. I could say the center is there. The knee
is there. Here are the attaching muscles coming up. I’m navigating around. I’m thinking
around. If I want to add the idea of rhythm into this so it doesn’t become too static,
I can say, okay, quadriceps on the inside, quadriceps on the outside. Notice it’s lower
here. Out of that comes the patella. The patella turns the corner. Fat pad. I’m bringing
a little too intricate. Notice I jumped down to that level. Once again, that’s going
to happen. I come back. What is it I’m trying to do? Back to the big picture. Back to the
big picture, see. Alright. This leg is going off. The reason I did this is to find the
rhythm. We’re over here where the bone is. Now I’m coming down the shin bone. The shin
bone I’m going to navigate around it so I can find these calf muscles. It’s not
so much the calf muscle. There is the peroneus longus. Carrying it down to the ankle into
the foot. I don’t need to draw the whole thing. Up here this breast is falling away
in this direction, pulling up this way. Off from the shoulder. Now I’m seeing the shoulder
a little more like this. I’m seeing this muscle, which is the bicep, pull into the
tendon just before the olecranon or elbow.
Okay, on this side, tricep into the deltoid coming around on that side. This means that
the clavicle is here. Trapezius here and into the neck. So, we’re examining as we go.
The other breast is attaching and falling away here.
What is this? This is the pecs
major and they’re pulling off this way. Where are they going? They’re going underneath
the deltoid. We’re already giving a direction to the arm. I’m just thinking cylindrically
at the moment. Pulling. This is this way, soften that a little bit.
This is somewhat around like that and just give it a little tone. Okay, a little tone.
Okay, the arm is coming down. Attachment here. Brachioradialis here down into the wrist,
into the fingers. Finger, finger, thumb.
Neck, neck. Okay. In a way, that’s another way
of thinking about these forms. We’re going around the forms. Center, center. Rhythmically
this is high. This is low. I don’t even need to know what these muscles are, but I’m
looking essentially at the play between one side of the form and the other without losing
the initial direction and without losing the feeling of the pose and the larger rhythm
once again. Crazy, crazy. Alright. Don’t want to get into that too much, but here we are.
Pull, pull, pulling across. I think that’s enough on that one.
So, let’s take this. This is a concealed form issue. Let’s just kind of come over it.
Here is the concealed form down in this area. We have this leg here.
We see what this form wants to do. There is the foot. What we don’t see is right in this area right
here. We don’t see how these things fit together. Now, one way to look at this is
to say, well, foreshortening wise, this is in front of this. If you can see that, this
is in front of that and so on. What you can’t see is where this other leg is coming from.
Anyway, let’s find a center line through the belly, up.
This arm is off from the rib cage. It’s stretching up. It’s got the scapula. Here is basically...
where the arm is going to be.
Deltoid. Simple. In this case, simple. I should have done that this way, too.
Simple. I should have done that this way, too. Simple. This is a direction. Direction
is pulling. So we see this one pulling all the way from here because the chest is over
this way. I’m seeing a little bit of the latissimus along the side. Tucking in his
belly like so. Pulling over it. Now, we could say that this like a tube here. See, that’s
going back. We’re seeing that underside of it. We’re seeing the trapezius back here
with the shoulder line. We’re seeing a little bit of the clavicle. This is running up to
the back of the ear, cylinder.
We’re going around the figure this way because the body is tipped away from us, you see.
So, we’re thinking that way, thinking that way. This arm is back slightly so we’re
thinking this way. Maybe less so here as we come down. I’ll keep that simple. This is
coming up this way. Now, when I get into this knee I do want to show that this is the bony side.
This is the rounded side into this. We’ve got a corner here. There is a corner here.
And so on.
Notice I’ve done a lot drawing. I still need to come back to this hip. Where is it
around there? Over. I see this is coming up from where I imagine that hip to be. I really
do need to imagine where the hip might be, coming over and feeling that pull to the bony
part of the knee, pulling under, over. Maybe we even see the heel. In this case I think so.
Some tone.
Yes. A sense of the bone here of this flesh being pushed as it wraps around here.
And in that way, coming inside here, here, we begin to get a sense that there is
a connection between the upper and the lower, the part seen and the part that’s unseen.
Muscle here. Actually, we’ve got the thumb here, fingers here. Little finger. Just a
sense of where things are at. Alright, that gives us some attempt at working out the important
forms that contribute to the overall pose. We don’t want to lose those and we don’t
want to feel like they’re just care freely attached to the body, but not in a convincing way.
Okay, dealing with some foreshortening ideas. Again, one thing in front of another. In this
sense maybe we’ll be thinking about the structure a little bit.
Let’s just try this thing.
One thing in front of another.
Let’s pull that back further. Not seeing much, if
anything, of the upper leg, of the back leg. Foot is over this way. Right away the…
foreshortening. So, we’ve got some foreshortening here, which is what I’m describing here.
You’ll notice that one thing is in front of another. And it’s the same here. Just
pulling across like that. This is front of this. We’re also getting the square, you
And here. Going off, going off. Coming back.
Leg is going crazy back here.
It's kind of nuts at this point. This is going this. Belly into this.
A lot of muscles in this leg.
I want to free up on that just so that we can get our directions right and not get caught up.
There is where the knee is going. If I put an X calf muscle, foot, okay.
This arm again. Ovoid, thumb, finger pulling.
Okay, so we’re taking care of it with some relatively simple things. I’ve come in with a few complexes.
I could droop this a little more. There is room for it.
I made the leg here a little big, so that allows me to pull this. This is pulling over.
Elbow.
Notice we can develop everything once we have a clear idea of what the action is.
If we don’t have a clear idea of the action, we have a tendency to be just pulled along.
Alright, so we’re seeing a bit of a front. We’re seeing a bit of the side. We’re seeing a
bit of the top back here. We’re actually seeing a bit of the bottom back here.
Basically, it’s top, front, side, belly, and once we do this we’ve actually even got some of the back.
So, A, B, C, back here is D. That many surfaces. Front surface, top surface,
side surface, and the back surface back there. We’re analyzing it in terms of conceptual forms.
When we go to the arm back up here it’s one form in from of another. A is front
of B which is in front of C. A, B, C. Alright.
That pretty much, I think, will handle that
lesson there. So, why don’t we go over to the easel now for some more examples.

Okay, so we’re going to start by doing some more stage 2 formula breakdowns.
By the way, I’m using Faber-Castell Pitte pastel. I’m just starting with kind of the gesture to
begin with. You’ll notice this arch. I’m really kind of, again, asking what’s the
basic story with relative proportion. You’ll notice that this is the lumbar spine. The
head is tipped back. The axis of the head is actually back this way. Right arm is out.
It could bring them up. I want to make sure this is working for me before I take it further.
There is a kind of a beginning.
Now I’m going to come in and start finding my forms. You’ll notice that the pelvis
is back on this axis, so here is the lumbar spine, and here is the cervical spine. It’s
turning back this way. The head actually, the chin is up, so there is the axis. The
arms are out. Shoulders forward but the scapula is in here. Just kind of drawing it as a shape.
Again, we’re drawing shapes, volumes. These are the most important things. I’m coming
out here like this. I could get the axis. Pay attention to the axis. It’s going to
come up this way. The forearm, hands. I might drop the head back even a little more, a little
more axis on it. This against this.
The upper torso is probably important to understand. I’m going to break this down like this.
Here is the side. Notice that I’m seeing some of the front here and some of the back.
That’s because I’m not actually turning the subject’s upper body into a box. What
I’m actually doing in this case is here are the two edges—see, like this—but I’m
actually just making it a little wider in front and in back. Okay. You see that? So,
we’ve come out. That puts the center line out a little bit more when we do that. The
center line here, flatter is going to be closer to the center. Because of this curve wrapping
around like this we get it there.
So, what we’re looking at here is kind of that choice. With the pelvis tucking. In a
way I’m going to kind of grab the iliac crest. I’m kind of looking at this as an
oval, but I also want to make sure that I’m seeing some of the front. So, let me just
tone the front of these two like that. If you take a look at that you see that we’re
actually, therefore, thinking through the form. When that happens then there is probably
going to be some compression around in here, some stretching here, some compression on
this side. When we come down we’re going to see some compression of the forms. Coming
up again, knee up, I’m going to be thinking volumetrically. Again, rather simple cylinder.
I could take it very simply like that, or I could begin to taper it. I can taper it
and use the idea of an ovoid form. Wider at one end than the other. There are a lot of
body parts that have that feeling to them.
Again, talking about this. I’m going to use another cylinder, slightly ovoid, and
I’m calling it this way. So we’ve got this. Pull that back a little bit. The extended
leg and we’re thinking around the form. Obviously, it has axis. Over heel to the extended
toes. Notice I went right for the toes because that’s really the direction. In this case,
it’s down to the heel and then out to the toes. Here is a real difference there.
I'll come back now. Again, it’s an ovoid kind of form. So, that’s as close to being organic
as I need to be at this point. Notice that this is also a form. Even when I break things
down further, I’m still thinking in terms of concepts and ideas. Volumes that have shape.
Let’s draw a little closer. Make the back of the head a little closer. Making these adjustments.
So you see how we’re breaking this down into ideas. Again, it’s a lot like this.
Here maybe slightly. It doesn’t need to be perfectly symmetrical. After a while you
begin to be sensitive to what the forms are really saying in their subtlety. The more
stage 3 understanding we have about the muscles and their rhythmic relationships, the more
it will affect our choices at this stage. In the beginning it might be rather geometric
and fundamental. As we go along it’ll take on more and more subtlety and sophistication.
But anyway, I’m saying really that you can deal with these volumes without knowing a
lot of anatomy, simply by observing and formulating concepts and then trying them out.
For instance, here is the scapula. It’s actually going back on an angle like that,
but it also has an underside so I could do that. The rib cage we’ve decided is something
like this. There is a series of ideas, visual ideas that we’re trying out in this case.
The head, I could also think of it as a volume. There is the brow line here. Chin. The neck
is like a cylinder. Then you can start to break it down into its smaller and smaller
parts. Hair is always an interesting thing. I always think about hair as shape, the question
is how it will serve to help me express the action that I’m looking for or the character
of the subject. If that becomes one of the important points then character will kind
of rule. Alright, so both arms are doing this. I can bring the other one in, something like that.
They’re really running parallel to one another.
We’re keeping these fairly simple. I’m just kind of coming in and asking what is
it that the subject is saying? I’m being very simple about this. The arm is down. Looking
at the center line. Head is—the head is in here. I’m kind of laying in the pose.
We can see a little bit of the other arm back here. Okay, just kind of laying in the pose.
Notice I’m using the term laying in the pose rather than gesture. There is something
less active about saying laying in the pose than finding the gesture. There is something
in a way more cerebral about laying in the pose than the gesture. The gesture would be
looking for the energetic relationship in the action. In this particular case we’ve
come back from that a little bit. I really am looking for that, but I’m doing it in
a much more casual way. Anyway, I’m starting this way. The head is here.
Now I’m going to start breaking these forms down. So, here is the front. Perhaps the side
is in here. What I’m drawing now is the hidden corner. You may have noticed that on
the photograph that the light is coming in from this direction here, and right at the
hidden corner you have a tone change. That tells us in some sense where the side begins,
where the front plane ends and the side plane picks up. This corner might be from here to
here and here to here. In some sense it’s not so hidden. In this I feel that there is
a little bit of rib cage under here. Notice I’m going around and finding that rib cage
a little bit. That implies that I know there is a rib cage and not just a series of boxes
and so on. I figured that out over the years. I realized that there are these things called
rib cages. It’s nice to get it into the thought system. So, even though I’m doing
boxes, those boxes are simply a rather quick way to create some simple forms. They are
not the end of the process. They’re the beginning of the process. I wouldn’t think
of them in terms of polishing them.
Okay, so the clavicle is in here. Notice it’s right along perhaps where the top of the box
is in front. You could say that the pit of the neck. The other clavicle is here. The
head is here. The shoulder is pushed up. Why is the shoulder pushed up? Well, because it’s
supporting this whole movement of the body. I could think of this as a support system.
It’s buttressing. I can come down and think of this as cylindrical, and then I could also
break it down into smaller choices. This is coming over. These are the pecs, and the arm
is coming off this way. I’m going to swing this out where the bones might be and bring
the arm back like this. At this point, just trying to keep the idea simple. Shoulder capping
it off. In a way I could say—put a little tone here.
Show the cap.
Now I’m coming over this like this, and this leg is going to move it up a little bit
going in this direction. So, I’m aware of the axis. I’m saying yes to that, and that
means this is all swinging over. A lot of what I see in the model’s pose suggests
that the muscles are pulling around this way. I would probably take advantage of that to
help show the direction, the three-dimensional direction. This is up to the bone, to the bone.
Then this is pulling back. Remember what I said in this drawing, that this head
is right down toward the toes. In a way in this case the same thing is happening. In
this case, I don’t go to the heel first. I’m going to go right down to the ball of
the foot because that. Then I’m going to come back and find this. That’s where this
foot is actually headed. It’s how it’s balancing, angles and so on.
Again, we may be seeing, because this is turning in this direction—that’s the way I want
to think about it—we’re going to see a little bit more from behind. Again, this is
actually coming back toward us slightly, so I’m going to be doing that down to the ankle,
the heel. These other areas will be treated the same way. Coming up to the head, the neck
is seating itself right into this rib cage. Rib cage concept with the neck. Center line, rib cage.
Alright, so head I’m establishing with an egg-like shape, and the axis of the
head is on a slight angle so the chin is over here. Maybe the head is back slightly. I’ve
got my brow line here. Okay, so there is a cross-section of where the front of the face is.
The eyes, the nose, these areas. The cheekbone. Again, the hidden corner.
The hair, once again, I’m thinking of it in terms of shape. You can modify those shapes
to be whatever you like. But I say shapes with the hair because hair is hard to think
of in terms of plane that you count on from one figure to another. Everybody’s hair
is different, and there are no rules. No way to be absolutely sure that you have a formula
for the hair. By starting with the shape you can at least get yourself in the ballpark
of what you’re dealing with in this specific case. Alright, so let’s do something like that.
Let’s leave it somewhere along that line. Get her chin a little higher, a little longer neck.
Pushing up.

Let’s take this figure. I’m just going to kind of do the blocks here. We have to
remember, though, that if you generally start this way without a gesture, you’re going
to end up probably with a character drawing that’s going to look like a mannequin. I’m
actually going to be thinking gesture. I’m going to be thinking this. But, I’m looking
for the forms around the corner. I wanted to start this way just to show you what it
might be like. The center line maybe that’s over here bending back. Center line on up
into the neck. How to think on this.
Alright. The leg, find the center in this direction. I’m thinking axis this way.
The leg comes back. This one is tucking in so it’s extremely foreshortened. The heel is
here. If I do this. Again, this line now becomes a volume that comes back toward us like that.
The heel is actually over here. We can break the smaller forms down, but essentially what
I want you to understand is the large forms. The iliac crest is probably going around this
way, but actually I might start thinking about this form more like that. See how I change
that? That’s what the whole idea of doing this is. It makes you evaluate your choices.
This also kind of tucks under. This may not go right down to here, but something like that.
Remember, these are surrogate forms. They are not absolute. They’re not supposed to
be absolute. They’re simply a way of getting things into position. Notice that now I’m
going to make this wider, you see, all from here. You kind of analyze, conceptualize,
develop your concepts as you go. This is a direction and this calf part of this leg is
foreshortened quite a bit so that’s going to bring the heal up in this area. I’m just
drawing it right now as kind of a shape. Our subject is leaning back. The head is back
too. Notice that the axis of the head is even in that direction, so when we start thinking
around the head it’ll be back this way.
This arm is coming back toward us slightly. It’s actually pulling this whole shoulder
girdle in the direction, whereas in this case we’re being pulled up and over. Alright.
You see the direction. Here we go. We’re going to drop down this way. That’s kind
of folding across. There is a kind of an alignment. You’ll want this to feel like it hits the
ground. That gives you some idea about how this might be deconstructed into these forms.
Here is the shoulder girdle pulling up. You see it’s actually pulling up away from the
rib cage up into this area. Pulling up, pulling up. Again, the head is back.
The wrist is here. The hand has some weight too. I’m just drawing the hand simply to
show that it also, it’s not just a shape. It has weight as well. You could do that.
What it does is it helps the fall. Notice I added a squiggle to it. It just kind of
helps the fall. Nice and easy. It moves from that into a straight fall. Up and over. Up
and over. There we go. Something like that.
Alright, let’s take this back view. I see kind of an angle here. Remember we are analyzing.
Nonetheless, we’re thinking that maybe we have a gesture to start us out. Angle, angle.
Okay, so the head could be turned back. Hip. Arm up. Arm over. Okay, so it’s a back view.
In this case, there is quite a bit of distance between the rib cage and the pelvis, hips,
so we’ll find that. I guess you could say something like this here. Then you could say
something like this here, which furthers it coming in. Actually form center something.
I’m going to raise this up a little bit. Shoulder is going to be up. Elbow up. Cylinder.
Squaring. You see this is kind of like a partial cylinder. I was saying that there aren’t
these perfect ideas. We’re combining ideas so that we can get a sense of what we’re
looking at, combining ideas and testing them to see if they work. In here I know there
is a rib cage. There is kind of angle to all of this that’s created that another muscle.
I wouldn’t know that unless is studied some of them. I also know that that rib cage is
pulling this way. But, when I look at just the general forms this is kind of like going
around. This is going around this way and this division like that. I’m not breaking
it down just into some fundamental geometric ideas.
This is like a sphere, but not exactly. If the light we’re hitting here you’d get
some tone over here. You’d get a cast shadow over here like that. Of course, this would
be also like a sphere. We could break it down into these forms that run alongside the spine,
sacrospinalis group. Creating a little tone because we’ve got the light coming from
over there. In other words, notice that I’m actually talking about tone as being conceptual
as well. We have a single light source or lighting of the body according to that light
source, you see, coming down. Again, the light is hitting here and here. Not so much in here.
We get these kind of little bits of tones. We get this. Again, light is hitting here,
strongest. We get some tone in here.
Let’s come back to the cylinder as we’re dropping down, dropping down. This change
in direction like this. This is pulling down and around, change in direction. Calf muscle.
The center is off to one side like that and coming down. Here it’s foreshortened it
in, so this form is high. We’ll put it in kind of partial tone like that. Then as the
leg comes back toward us we find out why the heel is off the ground, and the ball of the
foot is supporting the position. Whereas on this particular side we have something a little
different, we have the heel supporting.
Okay, so then coming up, up the arm is draped. I should say the hand is draped
over the head in this particular case.
This arm is out and shooting back this way. Notice that when we just draw it as a line, it does
give us some information, but not as much as we need. The cylinder actually adds a whole
dimension to this. Bones being just in the right place add yet another dimension to this
whole thing. Alright. On this part of this leg remember this is cylindrical too. It’s
coming down towards us. We’re giving that cylinder a little shape. We said it’s an
ovoid consideration, but we’re also giving a little organic twist to it. This is pulling up.
Probably enough on that.
Okay. That’s enough on that for now.
Okay, let’s take another one.
As I said, start with the simple gesture.
So there is the sense of it, bending this way, this way down into the lower torso, connecting at the
pubic bone, looking down. Let’s get that a little tighter. Where do we stop this?
We're stopping, right now we’re getting just a sense of proportion, and I’m basically shooting
from the hip. I’m not taking measurement. Notice I’m giving that a little bit of rhythm.
Again, it could be just simply cylindrical, but ultimately we’re talking about giving
it some rhythm that is based on the anatomical understanding. Anatomical understanding comes
back and articulates these simple forms into something that gives it nuance and rhythm.
It basically crosses the T’s and dots the I’s. So, I have this, but then the clavicle
goes up. Shoulder blade is up. Okay, now back to the cylinder. I’ve got that understanding
there, and I’m working with that
combining the idea of a simple form
with something that includes anatomy, anatomy allowing for
more articulation. Come down here. We see compression right here. Compression here.
With that much stretch we get that compression.
So, the arm is here. Again, simple cylinder is coming down and around. It’s coming slightly
toward us and then going back as it wraps around the arm. When we do that we understand
that this goes around this way so it’s headed in this direction, and then the hand does this.
We’re looking for the organic evidence of the choices that we make. I’m looking
for them here, here, here. This wraps around this way. This wraps around this way.
They help to give a sense of the actual direction of the arm out toward us. Even showing this
tone in here gives us a little distance in here so it helps separate the arm from the
upper body. Pulling down, navel, pulling down pubic bone. Locking off at the knee. So, you
see we’ve used a series of ideas to get us in the ballpark. This, of course, is this way.
I went into the basic rhythms of the muscles of the leg. It’s all based on a
straight line. It’s based on simple concepts. This is coming toward us. I look for the evidence
of that in the organic forms. I try not to contradict it by choosing something that would
kill the form. For instance, we’ll take that again. Killing the form
would be doing something like this.
So, instead we’re trying to prove the form by looking for things that help show its volume.
I’m thinking around this way, thinking around this way. Even as this comes down we’re
looking for other things that help articulate the idea. In this case, I’m basically around
this way and so on. Okay, I think that might get us to where we need to go with that.
I even see this shorter. You get the idea, so we’ll move on to the next round.

Alright, let’s take another standing pose.
Just kind of lay in some forms here then we’ll
break them down. In this case, the head’s axis is that way, tipped away. Here we go.
It feels like it’s up. Gesturally it just feels up. Coming down, finding a center line.
Again, it’s not a bad idea to give us a sense of proportion and a sense of story before
we start breaking things down into their fundamental shapes and volumes. This is going around this way.
I’m thinking around this way that makes me want to push this up a little more.
We're looking underneath the jaw. Neck is in here. We’ll see how that goes.
We’ll come back to that. Center.
Alright, so basically I see that the hidden corner is actually right along in the light.
We’re not getting help from the shadow on this particular one. We’re narrowing this
part of the form here and in the waist area, coming around to the lower belly.
The hips.
Down to where the leg begins. Relatively straight line down the center. We’re cutting in,
this muscle is coming this way. Look at the knee. It actually cuts in, but the calf muscle
continues the straight edge, kind of interesting. In this case, most of the curves are in the
outside, you see. I notice that it’s kind of an across-the-from approach, like this
side to this side. But, around the form we’re still thinking volumetrically. Even though
I’m thinking this against this against this rhythmically across the form, I’m also thinking
around the form this way. Around the form means I need to make sure these rhythmic shapes
don’t flatten my attempt to show volume. Best of both worlds. Best shapes and best
volumes.
Anyway, we’re going to go over in this direction. This hip drops down. Off we go over here expanding
out. Here is another one of those cases. We’ve got the shin bone coming down into the ankle
so it’s going to be down. Once again, we’re down to the ball of the foot. The heel is
back. Do you see how I’m doing that? That pushes back. What I’m doing is I’m going
for the direct touch.
In this case, the breasts will come in after we’ve established the frontal plane. It
might include some anatomical understanding of where the rib cage is, where the obliques
kind of take over and attach to the iliac crest. Okay. On this side, pecs pulling up
and over, out. The forearm is back a bit. I’ll just give it that. Where the olecranon is, that is the
elbow. Lifting. See the lift in the muscle? Then it comes over as we’re going into the
bone and the forearm. Wrist, fingers. The head now is tipped further back than I originally
had it. It’s tipped way back.
Okay, the general sense of starting with simple ideas that help describe the direction, the
intent, and the shape, and the volume. Let’s take another position. I’m simply starting
up here to make sure I get this on the page. Coming down. Just trying to position that.
Okay, maybe this is shorter like that. We’re reaching up. The head is kind of an extension
of this whole movement. This is pushing back. Of course, the support is this leg. Alright,
here is the upper body. We’re reaching. Just kind of give a sense of it. The head
is extending back. It’s a continuation of that curve, so I have a tendency to want to
push that a little bit. You’ll notice that we’re opening up so here to here opening up.
The oblique is down in this area or going to see some compression back here. Opening
up means that we’re getting some expansion on this side. The navel is going to be about
here. Belly here down to the pubic bone. I’m kind of taking this as a little bit triadic,
you see, like a delta of some sort. Well, originally I might have take and do this in
an oval, but because of this strong push back in this direction it forces
all these muscles up and some tension.
Again, earlier I was saying here is the side. We’re actually seeing around to the front
and the back, so the side is in here. You’ll notice that it stretches in this area and
then pulls down this way. See that? Here, here. Kind of opening. I’m just kind of
diagramming in a sense. This is pulling. Because this foot is pressing here, pressing back,
we’re seeing an awful lot of these muscles at play. Tendon.
Okay, notice we’re actually playing one against the other.
Then it forces downward like this, forces back. The heel
is up. Toes are down. There’s a sense of that direction.
I am going to make the head a little smaller. Notice that when I make the head smaller all
of this gets larger, the relationship gets larger. It’s an amazing thing. Sometimes
when the head gets really large it diminishes everything that happens in the body if it
gets a little too large. Oftentimes, people will extend the legs, make them longer. I
think that can work to some degree, but sometimes if you make them to long it also kills the
action. The head could be too large, but the legs could be too long. You want to be careful
about that. Of course, if you had to choose from one over the other, I would choose a
longer leg. However, when you make a larger head you’re talking about making your character
more childlike. Children have larger heads. It’s the basic proportions of their body.
I’m just relaxing into this. Notice our forms are coming back in this direction.
It's an interesting view of the leg going back in this direction. It’s coming back this way.
Pulling up and over. Into the extension of the arm. Examining the whole thing with
ideas. Landmark. This pulls into the upper arm. Rib cage starts about here. I’m just
going to do that. Again, pulling down.
Again, the whole idea is to find out what the story is.

Here we go. Just give a new angle. Let me see; I want to get this in the ballpark. Okay,
let’s see. We have this going across this way, and this is this way. We’re on an angle.
We’ll do this. The hand is coming back and supporting from an angle, something like that.
There we go. The head is in here approximately. This time I’m just kind of geometrically
laying it out. Once again, you find your gestures in a lot of ways. In this particular case
I’m actually measuring against a vertical and a horizontal. Just how vertical is that?
Not exactly, but close enough. Just exactly what is that angle compared to this one. Even
though I’m still working with the feeling and gesture of this, it doesn’t mean that
I’m not paying attention to other options for laying in the form.
We’ve got this, got the hand here. Thumb, elbow. Right, we’ve got this. Here, here.
Of course, we want to keep the feel of this, the rib cage in here, the mass of the upper
torso that is. Just kind of get where that is. This leg is going back this way.
Let's do this. Going from here to here.
In this case, I think it’s important to understand
that you have to draw through. If you don’t, this foot will never feel like it’s attached
to this leg. It just doesn’t work. They really have to be thought of as one thing,
not two things that are on other side of, say, a pole.
Okay, round, bony area.
Notice that she is pointing down. We come back and find the heel. See that? This heel
is behind this leg. I still feel like it has to be acknowledged.
So, it has to be acknowledged
and it still has to feel like one piece. Then we also find that it’s probably matching
what this one is doing. We’ll keep it simple.
Hand to here. Shoulder.
Notice that even now we have to pay attention to how that head connects.
Anyway, I think we’re kind of in the ballpark here. This is a difficult pose to hold, let
alone to convince than it can be held. More like an action. But we want to get a sense
of it and break these forms down. I think we can bring the hair down a little bit, a
little bit lower and put the ear here. That might be enough for now. The breasts actually,
though, are coming off from the rib cage
and pulling back this way, falling back towards the head. Alright. I think that’ll do it for that.
Alright, let’s take our next figure. We’ll try to be a little more gestural now to start.
I’m doing these rhythmically, but I’m also taking into consideration the volumes
as I go. I’m thinking this way. I’m also thinking that the knee is not a profile knee.
This is also not a profile knee. In other words, the knee is in this section. Let’s
do a little X. Let’s do a little X here. That kind of kills the flow, doesn’t it?
The thinking, nonetheless, is important so that when I’m coming around and the coming
up and around that I don’t make the mistake of losing the direction of the knee. It is
actually coming toward us. In this case, the knee is also coming somewhat toward us. That
means I need to find the side of it back here. Right? Top of it, where it joins the shin bone.
This relaxed, this foot is in here. Just placement. Here, here. Placement.
Sometimes finding the placement is enough because we end up sometimes drawing good things,
good arms, good legs. Particularly good legs, but they’re not in the right place. They
don’t hit the ground quite right. Here we go. We’re feeling the weight of this.
We're feeling this push up.
Head is over.
Direction.
Alright, well you kind of get the sense and
the idea. Notice that in this case the twist is playing an important role in determining,
and by showing it, it helps us to see which direction the surfaces are in.
We’re looking for things that help prove our point,
like here’s the navel. Little tone going around here. It helps show that this form
turns quickly over to here. Locking to find the center line. All these little things.
Again, cylinder, simple idea. Again, a simple idea. I’ve even got a drop shadow under here.
Goes over to the heel. Let’s bring that up a little bit. By throwing this shadow
in, you see, then it gives us a real sense of how she is in the space.
Tighten that up.
Bring it a little closer. Okay.
Well, that gives us a sense of how to deal with something like that.
Okay, so we’re going into some foreshortening ideas. I just want to keep in mind that we’re
dealing with how one thing fits in front of another, and those are the basic concepts.
Another aspect of that is we have maybe these two forms, but they might have an adjoining
form. So, this A form and this B form, they’re the large forms. This is the transitional
form. Let’s just take a look at that and this pose. Keep it simple. Here is the rear
end. Here is the upper body. Divide the rear end.
Here is the transitional form, the waist area in between. The leg is coming off this way,
and this leg is back. This foot is this way. Those are the directions. Here, here.
We come out. There is a shoulder here. I think she’s stretching her shoulder way out like this.
This one is kind of pushing up, but you see this upper torso into the leg.
See how we’re making this.
What is this? This is going around this way, right? See how these forms are working
like this? This is like this. Shoulder area. See how it’s pulling in? We see a little
bit of the under so the breast is going to be in here. From here. Arm, direction, right.
Let’s get that way out here like this. This is tucked.
Okay, so I’ve worked this area. I’m leaving this area simple. Okay, so we
can see how these things are going together.
Again, a little transitional right here. This is transitional as well.
There we go.
Here is another action.
Upper torso. See kind of a center line here down into the waist area.
Then I’m actually coming down and seeing the back. Here is the center line in
the front. I’m actually seeing some of the back now because this is bending towards me.
She continues to bend this way. The neck is in here. The head is in here. Okay, I’m
just going to keep it really simple. Front. The arm is going to be coming back this way,
this arm is coming around this way. This arm is coming down, and it’s going to foreshorten
and support. I’m not going to get into that. There is the center line of the head, neck,
upper torso, transitional area, waist, belly, down into the hip. You see that? Then the
legs are up here like this. I’ll just draw the shape of it. But, that’s also—now,
I can get into the volumetric aspect of it. But, I wanted to do that because I wanted
to show that they were parallel. This one is a little longer. The legs are coming back
this way in here. This shows the back but then there is a turn. We get this as a cylinder.
In the simplest possible way, you see how we’re using these ideas.
Alright, so back up in here where the heel is, where the foot will go in this direction,
I’m just kind of blocking it out.
Let’s bring the knees up a little higher.
Alright, anyway, again it’s one thing fitting into another. Transitional forms and so on.
All there.

Alright, let’s try another one. Just a question of direction. Leg, that is the thigh down
to the calf down to the foot. Knee out, back. I’m looking at the hip. This is actually
going in this way, coming across.
This is the hip area, waist. Upper torso.
This will actually be the rib here.
The breast will be here. We’ve got the arm swinging around this way. Hip.
The arm is this way. Neck, head in here. Head is tipping away.
Alright, so down to the shoulder.
Very foreshortened upper arm. Wrist, hand. Fingers are like this. Justa sense of direction.
I’m going to bring that hip a little closer, like that. I’m going to make that heel in
here. Foot is pointing. But, here is the main thing. You’ll notice that this is fitting
into the upper torso, and that everywhere we go we have a bit of a transition where
we show one thing in front of another thing. So, even here. Even in these smaller forms.
Even here and here. Even this in front of the thumb. We’re doing it both in the larger
and in the smaller forms, this idea. The knee is pointing off, and we’re coming back in
this direction. Notice the feel of that down to the foot. Heel does not end there. Just
giving kind of directions at this point. Heel.
Again, feeling of it and one thing in front of another.
So, continuing along with the simple ideas of foreshortening. Okay, so I am—you know,
I’m still in stage 2, foreshortening, so I’m doing some construction. Here is the
hip going into the upper body. We’re seeing it at an oblique angle. This is kind of the
side here. The shoulder girdle is like that. The arm is going back, and the forearm is
even more foreshortened. A lot of foreshortening here. We don’t see much of the thumb side
or the fingers or anything. It’s going off and the head is also at a very extreme angle.
The ear is way up here. The nose is probably one of the highest things we see along the
headline. The neck here. So, the breast is very high up on the chest. Again, very high
way up here. And so here’s this angle. Ribs coming around and around.
Coming back to the hip now. Let’s bring that leg down. But it’s not just down, it’s
really toward us. Navel, navel. I guess this could be a little longer for this particular
one. We’re coming down through the—we’re not seeing much of this arm over this way.
There is a little bit of concealed form here, too, which I do want to discuss in a moment.
That means I need to understand where that hip is over here in order to give us a sense
of where this leg, the one that’s behind. Just where does it come from. Then you’re
seeing this principle of one thing in front of another. Here we go. This, then this. Then
it comes around this way, and we’re dipping down into this.
By the way, this is a transitional form as well between this large form and this large
form, and we’re headed off this way. Notice that I’m navigating around this form this
way. As I come down and I’m pulling this way, this leg continues to move towards the
eye from here to here. I can corner it and I can come around, peek around the form this
way, come back to the bone, ovoid. We’ve got this, this, this going out to the toes.
Heel is here. Head in that direction. We’ve got this. Again, I want to see through here.
I want to make sure that these forms alone to one another, this, this, and this,
that they add up to what we see here.
Again, up at the top, up and over. Yes, I’ll make
that a little longer. This stays very short. Okay, we can move that over.
Okay, turning the corner. We can see that the tone is helping us to understand that corner turn.
The tone itself is conceptual in that we decide that it is a light source,
a single light source and not several. We’re not even using much bounced light here. The
lights are all coming from this direction. Even in the face coming around.
Here, here, here. Just to give you the sense of it.
Alright. We’ve got the under—maybe this kind of
comes in a little tighter. Let me see this. Okay.
Alright, again we’re dealing with concealed forms.
We’re not able to see the hip on
the other side, but we do want a sense of where it’s at because the lower leg is coming out.
There needs to be a sense of blocking here, like where is this hip?
Where is this lower torso? Where is the division point? Once we find that we can do this. We’re
doing this to it here and here. We’re coming across this way. The actual form is like this.
But, we can feel where things need to attach. This leg is coming like this.
This one is cutting across this way.
So, I’ll just take simply, simply…so that goes here. Heel. This lower leg is coming
out from underneath this. It’s coming rounded until we get to the knee. This leg is actually
lying on it. Just a simple idea. Okay, this coming across into the heel.
Okay, so this to this to this.
Front of the body. This is bending over. This is sitting on top.
Pulling up.
Let’s get that a little lower.
Head is in here. Neck.
Alright, it’s just a sense of,
again, one thing fitting in front of another, dealing also with the concealed forms.
So, there is a sense that things belong together and they’re not just bits and pieces.

Okay, so now we’re going to be working on some old master references. We’ll be looking
at them strictly from the point-of-view of formulation, meaning conceptual ideas.
Here we go. Let's just take this figure here.
I’m taking the upper torso and swinging around. Finding the hip. Remember, formulation
is about analysis and I’m really looking at this upper torso. It’s one of the major
forms. The arm is coming across. Its axis is this way and this way. You can see that
he’ll use the material to help describe the direction that we should be thinking about
this. Even though he’s got this pulling up this way and this way, here’s the major
right there, coming around this arm, which is coming in this direction.
Then it cuts across the body.
Still, here is the cross-axis. The cross-axis is an analysis of the direction
of the form. We’re coming down this way. We have a hip pulling around. It appears to
be seated or moving in this direction. This is more or less the direction of the leg.
You’ll notice that the thigh area of this leg is rather foreshortened toward us. We’re
seeing the knee, and then we’re seeing the lower leg. Here is the shinbone down to the
ankle sort of like that. Got this mass. This leg is, now we’re seeing
more length actually in alignment here.
This leg here we’re seeing foreshortening in the thigh. In his right
leg we’re seeing the length of it. We’re also seeing a great deal of foreshortening
down here in the calf area, whereas in this leg we’re seeing more of its full length.
It’s a nice juxtaposition from one thing to another. You see that he’s really helping
us to swing back this way. The arm is up and out like so. The head, let’s get that a little lower.
Kind of the cross-axis of where the eye or brow is. Mass.
The arm up and over.
This is coming toward us slightly like this. Also, it continues toward us.
It’s rounded more like a bead up into the thumb, fingers, and hand. Elbow area. Mass, mass, mass.
Okay, so it’s just a quick analysis of the forms by blocking it out with boxes.
Cylinders that have been tapered and facing us. This left leg is facing toward us sort of like
this, you see. We’ve got one, two, three, three stages of thinking on the cylinder and
tapering the form and then turning it towards us. Interesting development.
Next, we have another figure that’s in here. I see that she’s bending this way. This
leg is coming across. Let’s do this. I’m going to tip or swing this down a little bit
more. This arm over, up, and the hand is here. Hip this way. Her center line is tipped away
from us, and now she is over this way. Her leg is doing this, and underneath this drape
the leg is pulling back. It’s pretty clear about that with the way he handles the drape
of the figure. This leg, on the other hand, is coming down and out like this. I suppose
if we shorten his leg a little bit more to say there let’s get rid of this then, more
dramatically. Then hers will come down this way. This leg is cutting back, probably does
something in here. Shoulders high. A little bit of the attitude of that.
Alright, so I’m just cutting through the drapery. Here we go with another figure from
Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment. We’ve looked at this figure before, but I’ll just
try to simplify it, revisit. So, here I am finding where the back is with, again, geometric
ideas and geometric forms. Here is the center of the back up this way. His neck is coming
over this way. Geometric forms. Shoulder is going to be here.
This is going in this direction,
so our cross axis is like this. We have the shoulder girdle, shoulder, elbow here, cylinder.
We’re actually even seeing some of the edge of the front here.
Originally, I made the spine this way, but now I’m turning it this way a little bit
because of the way the rib cage is. Ribs. The arm coming across like this to the wrist.
We made a turn right about up in this area. It’s a little complex because there are
some bones there. Shoulder around. But, notice we’re taking this as being the back. Cylinder.
This is coming back—alright, here’s our direction, but this coming back toward us.
We’re navigating around the axis this way.
Okay, the wrist, thumb.
Alright. In addition to this, we’ve got this arm coming around
from back here. Forearm. By the way, rather foreshortened it is—let me clean that up
a little bit. So, we’re adding this forearm here. Fingers.
Okay. Something like that.
That’s pulling all the way around from back here. Big distance. Actually, I’m going
to pull that in a little bit more. Yeah, so I’m going to get rid of this. It’s a little closer.
Alright, let’s take another figure from The Last Judgment. Thinking conceptually around
the form. His forms are very massive. I’m not going to concentrate so much on that aspect
of it, but rather just the thinking about the form itself. Axis up and through so the
head is in here. Shoulder.
Forearm. The attitude of the whole arm.
You’ll notice that, for
instance, when you do into the muscles they really do help us get from one thing to another.
It shows us how to segue way from one kind of form into another.
Massive muscles in here.
Tensor fascia latae down here. Sartorius.
Shin bone. Calf muscles. Ankles.
Low.
Knee facing direction.
So again, it’s cylinders, direction, a breaking down of the big forms,
thinking around them, finding center lines,
attaching things like the neck, integrating
one form into the other. We move, for instance, from this form into this form with rhythm,
that kind of a thing.

Alright, let’s take a look at this figure, another by Michelangelo in The Last Judgment.
Coming around. Just formulation.
Okay, she’s got a lower leg here. We can barely see it.
I will surmise that it’s something like that.
Shoulder high. Neck. Reaching across.
Okay, trying to keep it simple.
This arm is coming strongly toward us as it embraces another figure to the wrist.
So, get used to the sense of the swing of it. Notice center lines. Finding the front.
Direction of the knee.
There is another figure here that’s leaning in. Let’s take it
really slowly. Ordinarily I wouldn’t draw these two separately; I would draw them together.
But, since we’re breaking down the forms I’m taking a slightly different approach.
This is where the head is.
The back. This arm here embraces —so does this one.
A round direction. Alright. Notice that the material cuts across this way, so it supports the movement
across just as this comes down. Okay.
So, we’re going to take another figure from the last judgment, just a single figure here.
See if we can follow it down. The head is back.
Arms swinging around. Torso.
Again, swing it out a little more. Kind of seeing the back of the hand.
Not quite sure what’s
happening here, but we’ve got this pulling around. This elbow is coming out towards us.
This oblique is here. We’re feeling this stretch down like this so that we get something
like that. This knee is raised calf high. Notice the big stretch back this way all the
way back like this. There is actually at this point a pull-up. Swing around. Pull up even
as all of this kind of pulls down. Alright, you get a sense of that now. Just in the simplest
possible way here. Cross-axis, cross-axis. Cross-axis.
Okay, let’s take this figure from the last judgment. Again, I am going to think about
analyzing the form. So, here is the upper torso swinging around the midsection. Lower
torso where the leg fits in. Got this pulling around. Actually, the hip, let’s do the
lower leg like this and center line over. I’m also looking at the top of this form,
you see. Chest area in here. Rib, center. Hip to a leg that goes behind. This is coming
toward us. Alright, shoulder pushing back. It’s also riding on something. This is a
cloud formation, but it has a tubular feeling to it. Okay, this shoulder is swinging around
way down. Not to be confused with too much detail. We want to stay simple with the forms
coming toward us here. The leg, calf, over to the ankle. Down into the toes. Again, one
way that he is describing this form is by dropping this drape from underneath his character.
Feeling of weight coming across. Okay, something like that. And the fingers. He’s actually
carrying a gray ladder here, coming up this way, tucking under the arm. Okay, say something
like that.
Okay, let’s take another figure from The Last Judgment. We’ll just analyze. So, we’re
coming down here. Here is the upper torso actually leaning in this way. Lower torso,
notice that he is actually leaning on this side, which allows this side to be somewhat
free. This is actually opening and then pulling down this way. So, we get actually even a
squash on this side, so let’s think about that as being squash. This leg is coming off,
and let’s take it volumetrically like this. And it’s actually going beyond the cloud
that he’s sitting on, so the cloud is approximately this kind of a shape back. This leg, if I
come down here and find the oblique down to the crotch. Anyway, we’re seeing compression
here over to the knee here. Now, his one arm is coming down and he’s holding the skin.
I’ll just do this quickly like that. The skin of Michelangelo because Michelangelo
put himself in that situation. The knee and the corner of the knee over this way. Our
figure, shoulder. He’s looking back. Let’s see the neck, and here you can’t see it
because he’s got this beard, so you can’t see the connection. But, even though you can’t
see something those are always the condition that I call it as concealed form. Essentially,
you need to deal with those concealed forms, or things don’t look like they attach properly.
Alright, so chest, arm out here. Direction, direction. These are the two-dimensional directions.
Three-dimensionally, cylindrically it comes out that way. Three-dimensionally this is
coming out this way. Let’s get some more mass, maybe a little less mass here. There
is the hand here. In his hand is the knife he uses. I won’t go into too much detail
on that. So, spreading out more mass, more mass. This leg is down. Actually, you see
the inner thigh muscle here as lower. That way we’re really feeling the stretch. It’s
basically doing this stretching like that. See that? Then where this is a hit point,
in fact, there is some material that pulls off this way. The knee is kind of like down
at the bottom of that. We’re seeing the muscle of the quadriceps and the patella describe
how the corner is going to look. We’ve got the foot off this way. Some tone down here.
Some tone in here.
Alright, so that’s the basic thing that’s going on. Again, this arm is also described
not just two-dimensionally, not just the feel, but also the three-dimensional. We’ve got
this against this against this. Thumb is in and so on. The eyes are back here just looking
off in this way. Cheekbone, head into the beard. Okay, so that’s the general sense
of it. The fingers, the knife blade. It’s pulling down. All the forms are placed in
such a way that we feel the description of them using the organic form. That’s sort
of it, sort of the idea. Okay, a little more silhouette back here, I think. Alright, so
again, compression and it starts to open up on this side.

Okay, this next analysis will be of Venus. It’s a painting by Titian. Let’s start.
I’m going to pull her figure around like this, just a quick take putting together the
forms. She’s swinging back this way, and her head is back. Arm up. Let’s bring that
up. Head is back. The upper torso, we’re thinking about it going around like this.
Shoulders raised. Well, okay, her head axis is this way, and she’s tipped back like
that. So, that way when we’re thinking around the forms we see that they are going off in
this direction around the form. In fact, all of these, the whole thing is doing that. We’ve
got this and this center line. Rib cage. Over. This is going around that way.
What we’re doing is we’re finding the axis, and then we’re defining the form with
the cross-axis. Let’s do that. This is this way. This is this way. Cross-axis helps us
define the three-dimensional characteristics of the form. We have a hidden form here. What
is the whole hip area doing? Then we attach the leg to the hip. Here is basically the
center, bringing it back. The other leg over here is attaching to the hip. We want to see
through the form in order to do that. Coming down this way. Again, in this case, I’m
defining the direction of the knee with this square. Arms square. Down, direction, direction.
Now, her head is tipped way back like this. Mars is interacting. I’m just going to place
his head with hers. His axis is this way, and he, she her head is tipped back. His is
interlocking with hers in here like this, so his ear is here. His eyes are around this
way. This nose is here. This shoulder here. His whole arm is coming down this way. This
is rather nice. Nice, interlocking. I’m not going into any detail on it, but you see
he’s coming down here like this. He’s coming, her arm is up here. He’s coming
from back here. Nice relationship. You see the swoop down and back. I didn’t define
this quite right. His fingers are back here embracing from all the way back here.
Alright, this is Tintoretto. Let me just see if I can include everything
in this space that we have here.
Get a sense of...
where she is at.
Center line where that rib cage would be.
Hips. Defining where we’re at. This is a foreshortened upper arm. Full length
of the forearm. Her head is back.
Another figure reaching, probably Venus and Mars
She’s looking over this way. Nose around the corner.
Fingers.
Keep it simple.
Alright, we’re seeing some of his back. He’s reaching around this way.
Some of the front, side. Leg. This leg is the closest thing to an El Greco that I’ve seen outside
of being an El Greco. Notice this is kind of an interlock right here. This is coming
down, forcing itself. I’m just going to lower this.
Stronger here. Coming around.
I see a lot of the back, actually see a bit of the spine. Arm down and so on.
Leg up and over.
It’s interesting. His back, if you look at it as a big shape is turning into here front.
See this? Nicely designed and composed. Here is his front.
Scoot that back.
Anyway, that’s sort of the feeling of it and the direction of it. Again, we’re dealing with
cylinders. Her axis, the head of her axis or the axis of her head this way. The axis
of his head is this way. When I say this way it’s coming toward us so, therefore, his
features are around—his eyes are in here, nose down here, and so on.
Hers are back this way. Interlocking.
Alright, we’re looking at Tintoretto again. Basically, you’ll notice that everything
is kind of on this diagonal, so I’m watching the forms rotate around this diagonal essentially.
Arm across, shoulder.
We’ve got the upper leg foreshortened. Lower leg is still foreshortened
back, but not as radically as the upper leg. She’s twisting. See a little twist. She’s
turning around in this way. She’s actually turning away from us. And as she’s turning
away from us, she’s looking back against the twist. She’s actually turning this way,
and then she’s looking back this way against the twist. Contrapposto. So without refining
this, that is the essential theme. That I think is worth exploring here.
Something like that.
Again, working from Tintoretto. Let’s take this form coming across like this. She’s
supporting herself. Coming down the center line, moving into the hips.
Leg is forward in this direction. I’m taking the basic idea of a cylinder here and doing forms that
are just a little more organic than that. In this case, this figure is moving back like
this, and as she raises her arm and comes this way this comes forward. Notice that it’s
still basically a cylinder. I’m trying to keep it in a sense lively.
Hip.
Knee is very foreshortened.
foreshortened. In fact, there is something here that kind of goes around. The leg disappears
behind that. All this, she’s kind of leaning on a variety of things. The knee ends here.
See it go around the corner. Lifting. She’s actually got this thing draping. It takes
the complex, this drape takes the complex of the silhouette of the form and gives it
a simplification. Swinging up. Again, the shoulder.
Head.
Wrist.
Okay, so we’re attempting to keep the rhythm.
At the same time we’re dealing with the development of form.
Again, here’s a cylinder. This is also a cylinder here.
Hips. Findings things like where the
bones are and where the pit of the neck is and where the navel is, those are all ways
of adding in the critical anatomical stuff.
So, you might notice that I approached several of these drawings in slightly different ways.
They’re all a way of getting to the bottom of what the forms are doing. Sometimes we’re
dealing with things rhythmically. Sometimes we’re finding the volumes and what they’re
doing spatially like this. Sometimes we need to find the center line, and finding the center
line, or we find a hidden corner. Okay, let’s change that. Let’s make this the center
line, see, and there is the hidden corner. There are all kinds of way in which your mind
can be brought to bear on forms that need analysis. The key is analyzing, conceptualizing
and then trying it out. See if you can prove it. Again, this is a simple cylinder here,
from here to here. But now it’s got the attitudes of the organic forms. Don’t let
the organic forms take away from your understanding of the volumes you’re dealing with or the
rhythmic flow. I think to some degree that’s the key is to how to get these different things
working together without one obstructing the information of the other stage.
So we have gesture, form, and anatomy.

Okay, now we’re going to go into the assignment portion of the formulation study.
Please keep in mind that this is about you exploring and thinking about how to break the figure down in
visual terms, not just copying the images. I would hope that you would do that and spend two or three minutes
on each pose. However, if you need more time— and that may be important—stop the video and work on your
own for a moment. Think it out. When you’re done with the assignment then take a look at how I handle those
same assignments. You’ll notice that there is no exact formula for doing this. There are simply different ways
of interpreting what you’re looking at. It’s somewhat creative.
We have a few ideas, and then explore your own at the same time.

Okay, now that you’ve had a chance to play around with this and explore these ideas visually,
think about them, try some concepts and ideas, you might want to take a look at how I handled it.
You’ll notice that I have no exact formula, but there are a lot of ideas tried, and perhaps
new things come up in terms of developing form. You might also not that I have taken
more time than I have suggested that you take. One of the reasons for that is that I’m
actually trying to voice what it is that I’m attempting to do and follow, to give you an
idea of what I’m thinking next and where I’m going to go with the process. So anyway,
have a look at that. Take a look at your own drawings afterward, and see if you can bring
anything new to the table.
Okay, today we’ll be working with the Faber-Castell. It’s a Pitt pastel. This is kind of like
an indigo blue. It’s number is 157. We’ll just take a—we’re in the formulation stage,
which is really more cerebral than the gesture stage, so we’re going to make an assumption
about the gesture, and that is that the gesture is already there because I don’t want to
get into that too much. I’m just going to lay this out quickly as if I was helped and
supported by the gesture. There we are. Let’s kind of get the sense of the pose. At this
particular point it is relative proportion. In other words, I’m using my sense about
proportion, by the way, which has been developed a little bit from years of measuring. That
comes in the formulation stage. But, it always comes back and supports and changes how I
think about when just shooting from the hip. You become more sophisticated. Subtler. Clearer
about very small changes and understandings about measurement.
The body begins to feel it in a different way.
So, here we go. This would be the formulation part. Really what I’m asking myself is possibly this.
Where is this main service facing? Let’s just take it really quickly. Notice that I’m
dealing with a corner that’s not really clear in the photograph, but this actually
helps me find where the center of the form is. It’s going to be over here. If I were
just going to do this. There is the center of the form. He’s facing this direction.
And perhaps even more so the center is pulling over. Now, notice that there is some analysis
here. That’s really important. I may do the same here. Maybe we’re seeing a little
bit of the back and we’re seeing a little bit of the side. Let’s kind of do it this
way. He’s bringing his leg forward. I’m doing this in a rather analytic way. So, we’re
swinging, swinging, swinging.
Notice this is kind of—the rib cage will be in here, and we’re swinging over to the
hip here. The leg is moving in this direction. I’m doing this with basically some geometric
ideas about form. This is essentially a tapered cylinder. The whole idea of the cylinder is
that it does have three-dimensional axis, and that we can modify it. I am, for instance,
modifying this now in order to show where this center is. Down like that. If I’m thinking
about the neck fitting in here. Now, the question is, is it this way or is it this way? I believe
it’s more like this. In other words, the direction is this way. This is the time to
be thinking that way. Shoulder. If I’m thinking about this form, cylindrically
it’s coming off this way.
Notice I’m taking some very geometric forms along the line of the gesture and clarifying
three-dimensionally what’s going on. This is relaxed. This side the clavicle is up.
Now, notice I mentioned the rib cage and the clavicle pulling out. The clavicle brings
the whole shoulder area up like this. We have a hidden form here. That’s a led form.
That is the upper arm because the forearm is in front of it. I want to make sure that
I know where that upper arm is. It’s a concealed form. Otherwise, I may just draw what the
eye sees and rather than drawing through and around the form.
So, now I’m coming over and I’m placing the hand, the heel, palm of the hand here.
Square that off. Okay, so the subject is tipped away from me, so I’m thinking now this way
tipped away. So, everything is going around this way. I think this is important to understand.
You’ll notice that this is really helping me to grasp my directions. Yes, he’s got
a little belly here. That’s going to enter into the equation, but I wouldn’t be carried
away by that character so much as it is the positioning and the volumes themselves at
this point. Notice this leg has been turned into a volume, and it is going in this direction
away from us like that.
So, we’re analyzing, and then this is coming back toward us a little bit like this. We’re
analyzing. We’re conceptualizing. This is this way. My main thrust is right down to
here. The heal is back here. Notice I didn’t go to the heel first. This is the touchdown
point. Well, that’s the way I see it. It locks it down. Notice this leg is out. Eventually
we can bring in the more organic consideration, like this is suspension and then pull over
into the hamstring. Up here the IT band in here, and so on. So, this is the hamstring,
the IT band which is pulling up in this direction and so on.
So, we want the weight. We want this tipped away. So, there is kind of like an analysis
of the forms. I’m going to leave this and not take it too far. Again, like I say, from
this we can then begin to work into our more organic forms and so on.
Okay, let’s take another pose here. Again, I’m assuming, and we need to move ahead
on this, is that you have the gesture. And I’m just kind of laying the pose in. Assuming
we’ve done the gesture. His head is back. So now I’m analyzing, saying this head is
tipped way back like this. The upper torso is—look the whole thing is on an axis that’s
relatively a straight line until it gets down here, and then it turns. Why? What does that
mean? It means that our subject is leaning on this part. Analytically speaking, this
and this have turned this axis into a new position, or you could say this is actually
foundation of everything. Notice I’m taking a cylinder and foreshortening it toward us.
That means that the length of the upper leg has been shortened. This is coming back this
way. I’m just going to take a cylinder like this. I’m squeezing it at the knee because
the calf is a little rounder. And I’m actually going to do this and give direction like that.
Notice that this is simply a cylinder that’s got some shapes to it.
Now, I might be thinking about the knee being in this quadrant, so I’m just kind of X’ng
the spot where the knee might be. Center, belly. This form is tipped all the way back
away from us, leaning away. That’s what I’m thinking about. Then the clavicle, which
is part of the shoulder girdle, and the shoulder is part of the shoulder girdle lifting up.
It’s pulling away from the upper torso or the main frame of the upper torso. This is leaning.
That is kind of allowed to fall free, so there is under the jaw. It’s very extreme
foreshortening. The ear is over here, pulling this way. This arm is going in this direction.
It’s going in this direction. It’s away from us like this. This is pulling back towards
us a little bit, more like this. I’m being analytical about this, and then we’re cross-checking.
The mainframe here is the rib cage, so it’s doing something like this.
Notice that on this side we’re getting some, remember we said this is its direction, and
then the head is going off, and then the lower torso is seated so it’s supporting all of
this. Going away from us. Swinging around. Here is the belly. Here is the iliac crest
pulling around from behind, quite prominent. Then the inguinal ligament pulling down into
the pubic bone. This is doing this. We see a little bit of the sitting here. Attach over
like that. This leg here is actually going away from us, so if we analyze that we see
that it’s this way. So when I describe it, I want to make sure that I’m suggesting
just that. It’s going back in a way. I’m surmising that the heel is back here someplace
where I don’t see it. By the way, this leg looks. After awhile you begin to recognize
by the way something looks what’s happening to the portion of it that doesn’t show.
If you can’t analyze that, then chances are it’ll just look like a big sausage.
Anyway, here is the breast falling off from the mainframe. In this case, it’s being
pulled up by the shoulder. Oh by the way, we get the hand and fingers. Just analyzing
what we’re looking at here. Notice that the knee is slightly turning away this way.
That’s because the heel and the foot is going to be back here. This is coming around.
We can break down these forms and analyze them in detail. I suppose that you perhaps
have tried that already. This is the way I would be going about it. You’ll notice that
this is in front and so on. We can continue by analyzing these forms. Yes, we’ve got
volumes and those volumes also have shape. It’s a little flatter. We can go into that.
That’s the sense of it, anyway. A sense of how to break these big forms down into
these different things.
Before I leave this drawing, I want you to realize that this is quite a stretch from
here up, and it continues all the way over here. We see it under the ear and even the
hair is pulling that way. Where does the stretch? I mean we’re going all the way over here.
I can even shorten that, which brings this down and lengthens this.
Okay, so we’re actually now feeling this, and if we get underneath the rib cage we’re
feeling it’s pulling just as the stomach muscles are pulling this way. We’re not
just pulling along the edge. All things are pulling,
whereas on this side they’re very compressed.

Alright, let’s take another figure. Again, I’m going to lay this out. Notice I’m
saying layout instead of saying I’m doing the gesture. Actually, I’m laying out the
forms as if the gesture were done. Angle here. This arm is coming out this way, about where
the elbow is. Okay, upper torso. She’s leaning back, so I’m actually feeling like I’m
seeing a little bit of the top. When I think about and look at the natural forms coming
in here, it’s almost as if I could see up on top a little bit. I’m seeing the top
shelf. This spine is basically predicated on my thinking on the upper torso that this
is slightly around. We’ve got it in here somewhere. We’ve got a hidden corner. In
here we’ve got a hidden corner. There is in her body what we feel is the midsection
between the lower torso.
She’s very long in the waist, so in some senses more prominent than it may be on some
people. Her iliac crest is coming here. Tuck. As kind of a triangulation. I’m seeing this
form. I could do this form as a box like this and say, alright, here’s the back. I could
do it that way. That tells me basically that this is the closest part to us. Then I could
continue on down and say that this is the direction that we could do this cylindrically.
Notice in all cases though I don’t want the conceptual ideas, the geometric conceptual
ideas to stiffen or take over the attitude of the pose. This is coming down.
Another way to think about this form besides this to this to this is to think of this as kind
of like a wheel. See that. Conceptually it gives us a sense of, it’s like a big cartoon
wheel with those closest to us. Like that.
What’s interesting now is as if—there is the center. This is actually the indentation
between the gluteus and the tensor fascia latae here. Right under here is the great
trochanter. That’s basically where the leg bends, so if we were to bring the leg up like
this it would bend approximately from there. This wouldn’t change a whole lot. This is
like the hub of a wheel. Anyway, so I can continue then to think about all these forms
coming back. Again, this is back towards me. I’m thinking this way. I’m going to use
some anatomical consideration in this, assuming that I have any experience with it or have
done any exercises with it. You’ll notice that I’m also going to bring in a bit of
the scapula because as this arm pulls back it forces the scapula in a certain way into
its prominence. It’s the same here. We see it here. Because she’s bending back this
way also, we’re also seeing these muscles that ride along the spine, and they’re doing
this as this does this.
Anyway, coming down into the hand. Maybe that’s a little long. Bring that back a little bit.
Alright. I’m doing a little bit of this so that you can see this not just as tubes
but where we can go with it once there is a little bit of anatomical understanding.
Otherwise, it’s simply a cylinder or a surrogate form that has a slight ovoid quality to it,
like I said, from here to here. It’s apex round is closer to one end than the other.
That’s what we’re seeing in a lot of forms. I’ve mentioned that before. This is pulling
over, pulling back. Just get this right. You get kind of a center line there. Okay, so
you kind of get the idea on the analysis of that. I didn’t take it all the way. Obviously,
now I think we’re thinking not just directional, but how we’re going to express these forms
in simple geometric ideas because when we do you stay real clear about the form and
not caught by any of the detail. Obviously, then you can get into it.
Alright, let’s take this next one. The form is interesting. Let’s just go from here
to here. But, look what’s happening. The first thing I notice is that the upper torso
is slightly angled, and the center line is over here. As it gets down here it kind of
changes, and the head, okay, it’s over this way. The shoulder is lower. That’s because
the elbow and the other arm is over here like this. She’s tipped. But, this one is up
and back, you see. So, we’re analyzing. We’ve got the upper torso in here, and now
there is a shift in the hips. We’re coming back over here to here, and as this swings
out that’s the sacrum of the lower torso. This leg here is now basically supporting,
it’s the main support. Notice that it’s coming right underneath, and this is, therefore,
able to do this interesting twist while this supports coming straight down. You’ve got this.
Okay, the iliac crest is coming in like this and like this. This form to some degree where
the rib cage ends is somewhere in here. We’re getting maybe a little bit of belly and oblique
here. Then this is getting some thickness right in this place here. This leg is raised,
so we’ve got this happening, the support leg. You’ll notice that they’re using
tone to describe this volume right here. That’s really pretty much the closest spot to us.
This leg is raised cylindrically. The upper leg is tipped in this way, but now it’s
shorter. Notice how much higher it is than this one. We’re actually seeing this leg
basically straight on. There is no angle on this leg. We’re seeing the full length of
it. This one, on the other hand, is here, and we’re actually all the way, even as
this does this, this will be quite a bit higher. That’s where the ball of the foot hits.
The heel is quite a bit up here. Notice the difference between where this heel is, where
this ankle is. I’ll make it shorter. We’re going around. It’s a cross-axis.
Okay, so this ankle is high. It’s low. In a sense, now look at the way that rhythm works.
It’s pulling up and around. That allows her to throw her hip out. She’s even coming
more so rhythmically. See it? And the scapula. Actually, this is coming out towards us. The
upper arm is coming towards us like this cylindrically. Analyzing the shoulder.
The elbow, wrist, thinking around the form
Right into this.
It might be a little large, but the other elbow is coming out here.
The wrist here is bending down to the fingers.
Thumb, fingers, something like that.
Arching. Around.
Emphasis here.
Okay, so you see there is a great deal of thinking about what’s going on, not just
copying the form. That’s the main thing here. There are different ways to analyze
the form. Very easily we could have said this upper torso is a box and essentially it shifts
so we might see the side of it here and then it’s shifting back this way as this comes
toward us. This is shifting and going over. Again, you can attempt to try to draw this
figure using a number of ideas. This is already around the corner.
Shoulder is in here. Shoulder is pulling up, see.
Okay, so here we go. We’ve got a figure that’s twisting this way, and the upper
torso is bending away from us, so there is some foreshortening here. We’re dealing
with the foreshortening situation. I guess the arm is like this. Head is continuing the
movement. I’m seeing underneath the head. I’m also seeing the side as well as the
top or the front as it’s pulling away. Then it’s dropping down into a whole area that
I can’t see. I could simply draw those legs. I could simply draw the legs, but really,
what I’m trying to do is find out what we’re actually dealing with. I’m going to actually
try to analyze the form. This is a concealed form so I’m seeing this pulling in. Center
line pulling over this way.
Now I can only surmise that it goes around this way. I’m seeing basically the side,
perhaps some of the under as well. I’m thinking under. I’m not seeing that the analysis
needs to be this extensive or that you should engrave this in your work, but what I am saying
is that you need to have this kind of understanding of what’s happening to the forms. This arm
goes off, got a handout. There is where the elbow is. So, this is relaxed. Kind of relaxed,
tapered cylinder that has shape. Elbow and kind of like that. Ribs.
Now, when I come up here, I’ve got some sense of where the center is, where this other
side of this is, and so on. When I start drawing the leg from behind it has a place to begin.
Then I can also draw this one here which is coming out this way. It has a place that it
actually begins. It originates from here, and so now, okay. Then the knee, it’s not
just a square, but it’s a square that’s bent over this surface. The center is over
here someplace. Let’s mark the spot.
Okay, so I’m thinking around this form this way. This leg is coming back. It’s perhaps
coming slightly toward us this way. The back leg here is also coming toward us a bit so
I’m going to analyze it that way. I’m also seeing the knee. It’s not a profile
on the knee. This leg is coming back. The heel will be here. This is coming back. This
heel, okay, somewhere around here. I narrow this down, narrow that a little bit. Okay,
alright so you kind of get the gist of it. This also. Again, the shoulder, the face.
Kind of doing where the eyes are, where the nose is. Here is that surface. Fingers.
So, that’s a general sense of how we might break that down. I’ll come to the bone.
Notice that even though I’m finding the bone in the wrist, it doesn’t take away
from the kind of relaxed quality that the arm has. You don’t want to turn it into
a mannequin. This keeps this quality about it. Relax. Up and over, up and over.
Pulling this way. Okay.
Alright, if we look at this pose, it’s on an angle. She’s turning this way and then
turning back toward us a little bit, supporting here, supporting here. See how I’m going to do that.
Hip high. Shoulder. You see that the gesture and the hand back like this.
Hair piled up. Head tipped away. That’s kind of the sense of it, right? Now, if we start
to break these forms down a little bit, we’re seeing that the upper torso is actually, we’re
seeing the side in here. It’s actually facing way over this way. A little bit at the back
here. So, the center line is placed way over here.
Now, we’ve got this pulling off this way and over. Again, we’re seeing the side.
This leg coming out, disappearing there behind this one. Actually, if we could see it, it
would be here. I’m actually drawing the underlying forms first here. Notice this is
high. This one is going to be lower. This is swinging down. This is pushed up. This
is swinging down. Notice no hands yet. But now, although this leg is supporting, we’re
just going to draw more of it. It’s in here. This leg is actually starting from behind.
Oh by the way, we’re seeing this around this corner and then around this corner. I’ll
just tone that. This leg is actually now starting behind, and then at this point forces itself
in front. We’re seeing a little bit of that and then over here this knee is basically
also facing this direction. Gives away. Again, I’m thinking around the form. It’s length,
proportional length down into here. Ankle here. It’s interesting lock between these two.
Now, having done that, this shoulder—neck is here. This shoulder is low, but she’s
pushing it up. There is a little attitude in it. Her arm is coming around her wrist
into the fingers, thumb, finger, and tipped away from us. You’ll notice I’m reevaluating
this right now, the way the box is down, tipping it away. Center. Now I’m bringing the shoulder in.
The forearm, wrist. Again, it’s cylindrical. See that? This is analysis now. This is not
about pretty drawing. You’re drawing for understanding at this point, not to make pretty.
Push it a little more, a little more attitude in it. Okay. By the way, this is the wrist.
Probably don’t see much of that shoulder there, but we have a sense
or a feeling that it’s fingers.
So, formulation in some way may not seem like the most exciting part of the drawing process,
but it is extremely essential, and we will be coming back to it again and again and again.
It is really how we resolve our concepts and ideas and give them structure. Even when we
talk about stage 3 and anatomy, which will be coming up we have to bring that back to
this structure, and the structure is constantly modified by our ideas and our ability to articulate
better. It always has to come back to that. As creative and as interesting as we might
get with this enterprise, it always has to hit this certain rhythm, this certain beat
that’s held in place by this structure. So, I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Otherwise,
I will be seeing you in the next stage of work, the development of anatomy.
So, see you next time.