In our first session of life drawing, we drew using the proportional method, one continuous line and a basic charcoal study.
We also looked at a brief history of the anatomy of the human body and how it was interpreted by artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Brunelleschi and Michelangelo.
45 bc- Vitruvius (Ancient Greece)
The Italian Renaissance marked the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, the word 'renaissance' means re-birth. They were full of admiration for the wide-ranging talents of 'universal men' such as Leonardo Da Vinci. Although most famous for his paintings, he also studied engineering, anatomy and botany as well as architecture, physics and meteorology. From his detailed notebooks came the study of the 'Vitruvian Man'. The Vitruvian Man is a drawing created by Da Vinci circa 1490, portraying the male figure into two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvian.
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| Leonardo Da Vinci, The Vitruvian Man circa 1490, Pen and ink of paper |
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Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man was the dominant method of pictorial image making for the next four hundred years, until Impressionism and Cubism made their own interpretations of this.
