Geometry and the Human Body

Invariably, when art teachers begin a unit of portrait drawing, or figure drawing, they say something to the effect that it no more difficult to draw a human being than it is to draw a jar of flowers. There's a great deal of symmetry and regularity about the forms. As a student I was always slightly dismayed by these statements. Have drawn and painted a bit more since then, something I've come to appreciate about the human body is it's geometry. Of course it's a very complex form, but the body has major planes, and some degree of regularity that is very useful to a painter. Previously I've mentioned Loomis' planar treatment of the head. It's very useful, when drawing or painting a clothed figure to visualize the core geometries, as this is often expressed in the fall of fabric. Details and nuances of form will obscure this form, but it's presence at the heart of a painted form yields dimension. I struggled to establish his body for a few hours, painting, scraping, and repainting, before I returned to the geometry. For example, as I painted the boy's leg and foot I thought of the leg as a triangular prism with a dominant side plane, and the foot as a wedge. His shoulders are a cube.