“But NORMAL People’s Bodies Didn’t Look Like That!” …right?
Some of you may have seen my post about Baroque artists and their realistic depictions of human bodies as having skin and fat.
I’ve had a lot of negative and frankly fatphobic comments on that post, calling the people in the paintings “fat” and “obese,” mostly along the lines of this:
“It’s because the artists are depicting rich people, who were fat and lazy. Normal people didn’t look like that!”
The idea, of course, is that these artists wouldn’t have ever drawn bodies that looked like those in the Baroque paintings, if they weren’t painting super-rich people that stuffed themselves with food all day.
Supposedly. We’ll see how well that holds up.
Today I was in the library looking at a collection of drawings by Albrecht Dürer, and learned that in the early 1500’s, Dürer tried to put together essentially a “how-to-draw” book, showing how to draw people. His work was controversial, because of his technique of “constructing” figures using rules about proportions. (A quick and easy method of inventing realistically proportioned bodies out of thin air? Cheating!!)
However, in his “constructed” drawings, Dürer had to figure out how to handle the range of variety in bodies, and ended up breaking down how to create a variety of body types in correct proportions.
I’m showing the women, to contrast with the post on Baroque paintings. Here are some of his drawings that I thought y'all should take a look at.
These are a couple of his more “average” women—the one on the left is from his drawing book, and the one on the right is one of his drawings.
Here’s a “strong woman” and “A very strong, stout woman”
This is what he refers to as a “stout woman.”
Here’s where it gets interesting: this is what Albrecht Dürer refers to as a “peasant-type” woman
^That. That’s what a “peasant” body type looks like.
He labeled this one “A peasant woman of 7 head lengths”
in case you missed it: this figure drawing by a guy in the 1500’s is literally labeled as being of a peasant woman! this is what a “peasant woman” body type looks like!
He did draw similar amounts of thinner figures, but they’re not particularly emphasized over the “Strong” and “Stout” figures. Nor is there exactly a “default” figure. He’s just…going over the range of variations that there are?
Here’s another “stout woman,” covered in notes on how to draw the proportions:
now that’s too technical for me to make any sense of but
this was in the 16th century!! This body type was apparently not incredibly rare in the 16th century. This body type was important enough for you to be able to draw, as an artist, in the 16th century to be handled in detail in a 16th century artist’s drawing advice
In conclusion: yes this is just what people look like, yes it’s important to know how to draw fat bodies, even this dude from the early 1500’s is telling you so, Die Mad About It
all of this is from “The complete drawings of Albrecht Dürer” by Walter L. Strauss
Work in progress: one of a series revolving around bones/fungus. At this stage I’m pushing in the colors & fighting the black, where the highlights & color saturation has to be emphasized.
Small study of one of the gnarliest human skulls I have in my collection. I struggled with this one, got lost in the details & was on the brink of overworking it & eventual tearing it up & throwing it in the bin. Right now I think I somehow balanced it out & start to like it but am still not 100% convinced.
“Clawing Earth” part 1-4, color pencil & acrylic on matting board. All part of a langer series entitled “Fleeting Earth”. Expect to see more pieces in the near future, my mind is still racing about all the possibilities. Enjoy!
“Clawing Earth” color pencil & acrylic on matting board in progress. 2 new pieces of the “Fleeting Earth” series, inspired by my last homage to Albrecht Dürer. More pieces to come!
“Fleeting Earth” color pencil & acrylic on matting board 05-02-2019. The start of a new series, inspired by my last homage to Albrecht Dürer. I’m really fired up about this new series: my mind is racing about all the possibilities, so expect to see a lot more pieces, both in full color & tonal like this one.
Tour admat for Baroness for their North American co-headline tour with Deafheaven, with Zeal & Ardor joining them, in March/April 2019.
Always a pleasure & honor to work with John, although this one was produced under a bit of time pressure, even more than usual with an aperfectmonster collab ( I’m not complaining, mind you.) because of that, I didn’t take my usual time to sort out models, etc but straight away went to my archive of photos: the osprey is based on a great shot by @joinus12345 & the heart/beetle is based on an earlier design of mine (go down my feed to find that one.) That being said, limited time can sometimes lead to good things: it forces me to make bolder decisions, “downside” might be that I had to do a bit more digital work. I made this in 5 days from scratch. Swipe to see the art in different stages. Layout by John Dyer Baizly.
The Young Hare(1502)by Durer rendered almost with photographic precision of a hare against a plain ground influenced Hans Hoffmann’s A Hare in the Forest (1585). According to the Getty Gallery Label, Hoffmann having seen the Durer watercolor in Nuremburg, convinced Emperor Rudoph II to acquire it for his Kunstkammer. Hoffmann imaginatively created a forest that included an array of detailed plants, flowers and insects which would not have co-existed in nature.
German Artist, Sigmar Polke, made this silhouette of Durer’s Hare using elastic band in 1970 after his own painted version Durer Hare from 1968. Durer’s charming Hare, which has continued to affect and influence for more than five hundred years is a wonderful example of the lasting legacy of a great artist and the relevance of art history for a contemporary audience.
