Life Drawing, easels vs tables, and parallax errors

Surprisingly, nearly all the life drawing group venues I have been to have poor lighting and seem to prefer chairs and tables over easels.

The best so far in terms of space and facility is one that has the use of a local schools' art department. The funny thing is that even with a choice, most members still use chairs and tables.

Maybe it is tiredness from the day job, the endless demands due to the large volume of art commissions, laziness, or some other reason, but drawing on a pad flat on a horizontal table creates some interesting drawing problems. Here are some tips to learn both why and how using an easel makes learning to draw that much easier!

First, plain old logistics. If easels were used, twice the number of people could use the same space comfortably, the shared cost of the model would be halved, and the choice or position would be much more flexible.

The next problem that arises, is parralax. Fine if you are Tiepolo Battista designing a mural to be viewed from an oblique angle in a german castle, but even trying to keep the distortion consistent would be difficult with your head and upper body moving around and changing the angles.

One advantage of standing in front of an easel, is that with some basics, it is very easy to keep a consistent viewpoint. This is a very big part of being able to measure the relationships between planes and angles that you see, and placing them in the same relationship on a piece of paper.

Place your easel at an angle or to the side of the model, ie not between you and the model, and ensure the easel is perfectly flat when you turn your head to look at the paper.

Another way of explaining it is that you should imagine yourself as the centre of two circles, the outer circle has the model, and the inner circle has the easel, but moved around the circle a litlle to the left or right so you can see the model.

Stand an easy arms length from the easel and pick out some marks on the floor for your feet. Because you are standing, gravity makes our job even easier, because if you move your head away from alignment you will feel like falling over. This means we only really need worry about our feet placement, as the head will tend to be in the same placement when looking at the easel and the model.

Now the hard part - ensure your feet are always at the same point throughout the duration of your drawing.

Sounds easy, but you will be tempted to shuffle about, move closer and further away from the easel at various times without you even being aware of it. If you do, then for example the left leg may be out of proportion or relationship to the right leg, because you measured each from different points of view.

Just check your feet against the marks on the floor regularly, and at least the parralax issues should not be in your way to learning how to do better drawing or painting.