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Woman Glancing to the Side, S. Myers
Charcoal and Conte on Paper
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It’s always wise to view your
artwork, during creation, from the same angle you intend to use once
you are finished. If it’s to be hung on the wall, work with it
upright. When a larger picture lies flat, there is always an element
of foreshortening.
I take angles into serious account
with my sculpture; if it’s an object intended to sit on a high
pedestal, I clamber around under it and make sure the shapes function
from below; if the art is made for a position like that on a low
table, I work with it at hand-height or lower.
But last night I wholly forgot to
apply the rule with my drawing. The result was that, while the
sketch was lying on the table or the floor it looked quite handsome;
but jerked upright it was an altogether different piece. The cheeks
were distressingly lax; in some areas flow of the modeling was
totally lost. I needed to pull the picture out of distortion, and quickly.
Foreshortening on a
two-dimensional piece can be used skillfully as a visual trick; the
formal name for this is anamorphosis. I don’t believe many
examples have been produced in the realm of fine art, but Holbein
used it famously in his Ambassadors, where a viewer standing
in front will see only a dignified double portrait with an
inexplicable brown and white streak in the foreground. If the viewer
moves well to the left, however, this strange shape foreshortens and
resolves itself into a skull.
I had no intention of producing an
anamorphosis that appealed only in the horizontal. After my surprise
and recalculation, I taped the drawing to my closet door
and finished it from that angle. This helped the picture
considerably. But it also dismayed my Schnauzer,
who woke up from a late nap to see the charcoal face staring across
the room. I cannot imagine the drawing realistic enough (from a
dog’s point of view) to produce hostility; but she kept her eye on
it and continued fretting and growling until I took my newest artwork
off the wall once more.
