/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

> What annoyed me about Hogarth's
"Dynamic Figure Drawing" is that the methods he described couldn't,
in my opinion, work. He describes a "perspective" drawing system
that has no perspective; in which foreshortened figures are merely
shortened (but are the same width through). The height of this
silliness is his oft-repeated diagrams in which he swaps front view
and rear view and claims they both fit the same outline.

> To add insult to injury, through pages of drawings filled with cute
little arrows showing how the width of a knee was the same in THIS
view as it is in THAT view....well, I pulled out a straight-edge and
checked. He cheated. They weren't. Nor were any of the knees I
checked actually isocoles triangles.

> In a particularly cute bit he shows how the possible positions of a
rotating arm can be plotted along an ellipse. Well and good -- yes,
an ellipse can be made to fit. The question is, can you draw the
ellipse first? How would you derive the plane and ratio of that
ellipse?

> It left me with the feeling that this was the self-deluded work of a
decent anatomist, fitting triangles and ruled edges after the fact
onto freehand sketches and claiming to have invented a system that
allows you to derive the latter from the former.