Foreshortening...

Here's an excerpt from "Dynamic Figure Drawing" by Brian Hogarth, regarding foreshortening, and how it can seem like quite a feat for the amateur figure artist. I am trying to understand this book, because it teaches how to become inventive with the form, something that is crucial for an artist interested in the human body, as you will not be able to have a model holding a dramatic pose, or being suspended in the air with arms and legs flailing and depicted in illusional deep space. If anyone wants to see tis book write me a comment and I'll bring it to school. Hogarth writes:

"Most art students- and too many professional artists- will do anything to avoid drawing the human figure in deep space. Walk through the life drawing classes of any art school and you'll discover that nearly every student is terrified of action poses with torsos tilting toward him or away from him, with arms and legs striding forward or plunging back into the distance; twisting and bending poses in which forms of the figure overlap and seem to conceal one another; and worst of all, reclining poses, with the figure seen in perspective.

These are all problems in foreshortening, which really means drawing the figure so that it looks like a sold, three dimensional object which is moving through real space- not like a paper doll lying flat on a sheet of paper. Drawing the figure in deep space foreshortening is not a mere technical trick, not a mere problem to be solved; it's the essence of figure drawing as perfected by Leonardo, Michelngelo, Tintoretto, Rubens, and other great masters of the Renaissance and Baroque eras."