The Nature Of How Different Heights Affect Proportion (Female)
4yr
Vincentius Sesarius
The topic may sound obvious for a lot of people, especially if you have been doing figure drawing for years, or even decades. But it doesn't so much so for those who have just started or are somewhere in the middle. I know it for a fact, because it didn't for me.
Years ago, when I started doing figure drawing, I always got this almost like a frustration kind of feeling, because whenever I felt like I knew how to draw people with the 'right' proportion from imagination, I looked into a reference image of similar pose, and to my surprise, my imaginative figure drawing looked wrong. It's not the rendering, it's not the lighting, it's not the perspective, but it's the good (or bad?) old proportion.
So if you're just starting out, or maybe you're more of intermediate level, to save your (possible) frustration in the future, I make this comparison of two female models with the same pose, same camera lens' focal length, but with different heights. And as you will notice, it doesn't affect just their proportion, but also the overall look of the models.
Taller models do have longer lower body (that is legs), not proportional to their upper body. They still have taller and bigger torso and head, but they have even longer legs. I can't put them into mathematical equation, nor there's much use of it. But if I could give you an estimate, say if one model is 3 inch taller than the other, then one inch will go to the upper body, and the other two inches will go to the lower body. So it would be around 1:2 ratio, that is 1/3 for upper body, and 2/3 for lower body.
You may have known this fact (taller people have longer legs), mainly because fashion shows and beauty magazines have been showing these tall women with gracefully long legs for decades now. But words are less useful when it comes to drawing. This comparison will help you by showing how long is 'longer', and also the other way around, how short is 'shorter'.
So the next time you're drawing a shorter female figure, you don't need to get frustrated and try to make their legs longer than it should be. And otherwise if you draw a taller female figure, don't try to make their legs shorter than it should be as well. It's not just to spare you from unnecessary frustration, but it's also a form of respect to the models by appreciating their natural beauty, however they come to be.
Asked for help
Interesting... apparently, in the example here the perspective do play a big part to the lower legs as well.
To me, I'm not very sure how to really "measure" the leg-to-body ratio. In the two images here, through comparison, I can clearly see the right one has shorter upper legs (and body), but such subtlety is not very obvious when you are looking at a fully fleshed model/reference. Using head as a measurement is great but when I put the head size into the measurement, because of there's a lot of play in the perspective, especially in a wide FOV seen here, so there's a certain "range" that you will feel the measurement is "passable", however it's really not. I'd like to know how to deal with this problem...
Yes, the certain range and passable part is very relatable to me as well. Also I've been there trying to measure a figure by head size with little to no avail. The reason I chose sitting position was exactly for the purpose you pointed out, because in standing position, the perspective causes more distortion to the figure, while in sitting position the distortion is much milder.
Of course the difference is fairly subtle, and even more subtle if the figure is fully clothed or is standing. And most of the times, 'just practice' approach doesn't really help much when it comes to figure out this subtlety. Thus I will definitely post the ones with standing position in the near future.
This reference is fairly limited because it's only in one sitting pose. But considering that there's a lot of sitting poses out there, this reference will (or I wish) be helpful if you're trying to draw a seated figure pose.
So yes, stay tune!
