One of the best things about learning to draw is the requirement to look, really look, at how things are constructed. Size, shape, color, texture and spatial relationships of each part to part, must be studied, analyzed and interpreted.
When you draw people, as I do, it’s obvious that actual women look quite different from the images we are used to seeing in the media. What a variety of shapes, sizes, colors and forms!
Bones, muscles, skin, hair, curves, angles: The human figure is endlessly fascinating in its variety and expression, each one as interesting and amazing as the next.
We look at images of fashion models, actresses and stars in a different way than we look at each other. Frozen on a page, or moving on a screen, we actually “study” them far more closely than the women we see on a daily basis. (It’s not polite to stare!)
While we study these images, what we don’t really see is the artificial manipulation behind the scenes: the makeup, the lighting, the Photoshop “enhancements” that range from color correction all the way to actual reshaping.
By studying this very narrow range of women, we internalize an image of womanhood that blinds us to the amazing variety that surrounds us every day: so tall! so blond! such flawlessly young skin! so thin! (or such rock hard abs and gigantic boobs!)
And then when we study ourselves in the mirror,
the comparison seems flawed, a failure, a disappointment.
The young 20ish woman, whose body I used as a model in this little sketch,
is a real person who has spent most of her life thinking she was too fat, always on another unsuccessful diet to starve herself smaller, trying to become more like the women she has studied all her life.
Perhaps if she had grown up in a culture where images of women were “allowed” to show a full variety of sizes, shapes, colors, and ages,
she would understand that she has her own uniquely perfect body:
soft, curvy, beautifully plump and truly feminine.
In our world of bizarrely underweight, teenage fashion models and surgically enhanced stars,
it seems we have forgotten what adult women look like, really look like.
Next time you are out in public, sneak a long hard peek at the women around you.
Study them.
Be amazed!
I love that sketch. Looking back at artwork from the ancient Romans and Greeks is really eye-opening with their view of the ideal beauty. It's so intriguing how much things change over time.
- Sagan
Thanks! I love to look a how the image of women has changed over history; until the 20th Century, natural feminine curves were the ideal. Its cool that you mention Classical Greek & Roman Art.One of the pages in "More to Love" features a woman in a museum looking at an Ancient Greek Sculpture, with a Renaissance style painting of the 3 (full-figured)Muses dancing in the background. We need to re-claim our womanly bodies as beautiful!
I love this. The sketch, the observations, all of it.