Forty Minutes Left and the Forearm Reads 40% Too Long
Amara is in the last stretch of a three-hour timed observational drawing paper. Her subject is a seated model holding a clay bowl out toward her, so the left forearm is strongly foreshortened. She is working in charcoal on A2 cartridge paper, 2 hours 20 minutes gone, 40 minutes left. Stepping back, she sees two faults: the forearm reads about 40% longer than the upper arm, and the bowl's rim ellipse is too open, so the bowl looks tipped up toward her rather than level. The hand area already carries two layers of fixative sprayed at the halfway break, and the paper tooth lifts if she rubs it. The model returns for one final 12-minute sitting and then the pose is gone for good. Her teacher has said repeatedly that examiners reward a drawing that is 'seen whole' rather than one that is merely neat. Amara has one kneaded eraser, no spare sheet, and a well-practised habit of panic-erasing.
1. Before she alters anything, what should Amara measure, and what would each measurement tell her about whether the fault is proportion, scale or value?
Read the worked answer
Measure first, draw second. Three checks, each diagnostic:
- Head-unit comparison. Arm locked, one eye closed, she measures the head on the pencil and steps that unit along the limb - shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist. Foreshortening does not change the true length of the forearm, only its projection. If the forearm still measures more than about one head-unit, this is not foreshortening at all: she has drawn the arm as she knows it to be. That is the classic symbol-drawing error and it will not be cured by nudging a contour.
- Plumb line. An arm pointing at the viewer should drop the wrist almost vertically below the elbow in the picture plane. If the wrist sits well outside that line, the arm has been rotated sideways as well as foreshortened - which by itself makes it read long.
- Scale change along the arm. In foreshortening the nearest part must be drawn largest. The hand should be visibly wider and longer than the wrist. If the hand is the same size it would be in a side-on pose, the contour can be perfect and the arm will still read flat and endless.
She should also check value: a hard dark edge at the elbow acts as a boundary and pushes the joint backwards, adding apparent length. If that edge is the culprit, the repair is tonal, not structural - much cheaper in a medium that will not erase.
2. Recommend an order of operations for the remaining 40 minutes, and justify each choice against what an examiner is actually rewarding.
Read the worked answer
| Time | Action | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| 0–5 min | Re-measure; mark elbow, wrist and knuckle with three faint dots | Decisions made from measurement survive; decisions made in panic do not |
| 5–12 min | Lift charcoal with a kneaded eraser pressed and rolled, plus a soft brush - never rubbed | Fixative has sealed the surface; friction tears the tooth and leaves a shiny scar that no charcoal will sit on |
| 12–22 min | Re-position the wrist and hand, not the elbow | The elbow is locked against the torso. Moving it forces her to redraw the ribcage and the whole drawing collapses. The wrist is the cheapest joint to shift |
| 22–32 min | Re-state value: the near hand carries the strongest contrast on the sheet | Foreshortening is read from scale and contrast. A pale hand at the end of a dark arm still reads as distant |
| 32–38 min | Reconnect the arm's shadow shape into the bowl's cast shadow | Isolated corrections look like patches; the drawing has to read whole |
| 38–40 min | Step back and stop | Every late mark is a gamble on a fixed sheet |
Justification: examiners reward evidence of observation and control, not the absence of error. A corrected arm with a visible ghost line - where the new contour is confident and the tone supports it - scores above a tidy arm drawn wrong, because the ghost is proof she looked and re-decided. What is not rewarded is the scrubbed hole: it reads as loss of control and drags the surrounding tone with it. If the tooth is already gone near the hand, she should leave the old mark and change the values around it so the eye reads the corrected form.
3. The model returns for a single 12-minute sitting. What should those minutes be spent on, and what should she deliberately refuse to do?
Read the worked answer
Spend the sitting on information she cannot invent later:
- The hand-to-bowl junction. Where fingers wrap the rim, the ellipse is interrupted and re-cut by each finger, and a contact shadow sits in the gap. This is the most information-dense, least guessable passage in the whole drawing and the one that decides whether the foreshortening is convincing.
- The shadow shape, not the edges. From life she can see how the cast shadow of the bowl joins the shadow under the forearm into one connected shape. Twenty seconds of looking at that beats twenty minutes of contour tidying.
- One relationship check. Head to hand to bowl - three landmarks, one glance. If the hand has moved, the bowl must move with it.
Refuse to:
- Re-block the figure or 'improve' the face. Facial features are almost never marked in a timed observational study and are the fastest way to destroy a good tonal structure.
- Add detail in the awnings or the background. Detail at the periphery pulls the eye away from the corrected passage.
- Spray fixative before the corrected charcoal is fully dry. Wet fixative blooms and flattens the very contrast she has just rebuilt.
The discipline being tested is knowing which information only the model can give her, and spending all twelve minutes there.