Massen - The artists guide to drawing the clothed figure : a complete resource on rendering clothing and drapery

Copyright 2011 by Michael Massen
All images the author unless otherwise noted.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Watson-Guptill Publications, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com
www.watsonguptill.com

WATSON-GUPTILL is a registered trademark and the WG and Horse designs are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Massen, Michael.
Artists guide to drawing the clothed figure/Michael
Massen. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eISBN: 978-0-8230-0120-0
1. Drapery in art. 2. Figure drawing-Technique. I. Title.
NC775.M37 2011
743.4dc22
2010048019

The quotation from Leonardo da Vinci that appears on is from Jean Paul Richter, trans., The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, vol. 1 (1888), page 272.

Jacket design by Jenny Kraemer
Jacket art by Michael Massen

v3.1

For my mother

My sincere gratitude goes to the many people who made this book possible.

Id especially like to thank Candace Raney and the other wonderful professionals at Watson-Guptill, including Autumn Kindelspire and Jenny Kraemer, who made this project a reality.

Many thanks, as well, to James Waller for his careful, considerate, and unflagging efforts in editing the manuscript.

I am grateful to Amla Sangvhi for her advice and guidance in my researching and securing the outside illustrations; Rob Schaffer for reviewing and correcting my understanding of the scientific concepts in the work; and my friends and fellow artists Debra Goertz and John Brown for their feedback and encouragement when the project was little more than a hope and an outline.

Special thanks go to the professional models and friends who gave so much time and energy posing for the illustrations, among whom I count John Forkner, Laura Mae Noble, Emily Roberts, Amy Russ, Rene Veneziale, and Izaskun Zabala.

S ince the Fall, our natural state has been clothed. Those who eschew, to one degree or another, the protection, modesty, and adornment that clothing affords are exceptions to the rule. For the most part, the wearing of clothing seems to be a human norm.

While the nude has been the source of some of Western arts greatest masterpieces, if it can be agreed that all artists, at least to some degree, express the world that surrounds them, then their ability to represent the clothed figurewhich they encounter dailyshould be considered at least as important as their skill in rendering the nude. It is the purpose of this book to assist them in that effort.

Historically, artists wishing to represent the nude figure have studied artistic anatomythe analysis of the forms, proportions, and physiodynamics manifested in the bodys visible characteristics. This book can likewise be thought of as a sort of artistic anatomy of draperya study of the factors that cause drapery to appear as it does.

As the various forms of the human bodyits depressions and projections, concavities and planesare explained by the bones, muscles, tendons, and organs that lie beneath the skin, so, too, do the folds and gathers of clothing owe their form to underlying causes. Though a beginner might think so, folds do not appear haphazardly. On the contrary, cloth, being a pliant material, is shaped by the forces that act on it. The trick to representing drapery well, in whichever artistic medium, is to recognize the consistent behavior of cloth as it responds to those forces.

Although different kinds of cloth may have their own personalities, cloth, in all its variations, behaves in a consistent way, assuming consistent and replicable forms. These folds are volumetric, even though most cloth is meager in thickness. They occupy space.

In drawing these volumes, it is important not to confuse the patterns of shadow created by light as it falls upon these folds for the material itself. They are only a side effect of its structure.

Understanding this structure of cloth gives the artist advantages similar to those gained by studying the anatomy of the figure. First, understanding how drapery works enables the artist to convincingly represent it. As has long been noted in academic practiceand has been wonderfully expressed by Robert Beverly Hale in Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters (1966)artists cannot convincingly portray what they see without first understanding what it is that they are looking at. Beginners are often frustrated when depicting drapery, seeing it only as an incoherent tangle of lights and darks. Ignorant of its principles and bewildered by its transitory and inessential details, they either content themselves with a crude, muddy representation of clothing or desperately try to precisely imitate what appears before them. Even some experienced artists, who otherwise show a solid command of traditional representation, have trouble with drapery. The mistakes they make are apparent to the educated eye, and even the untrained eye may be able to discern a lack of the solidity and surety of form that come from a more informed understanding of the subject.