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Mike,
With a slender brush in my hand, I hold my arm straight out in front of me. I close one eye and "sight" down my arm. I place the tip of the brush at the uppermost portion of what I am measuring, (say... the top of the head... ) and I move my thumb (or index finger) to indicate the bottommost line of what I am measuring, (say... the bottom of the chin.) I now possess one head measurement. If I don't move, I can continue to use this "head" to create a mental grid. The distance from the top of the head to the chin is one head. From the chin to mid-breast, is a second head. A third head from midbreast to waist, a fourth head from the waist to the knee, etc., done the body. Then I establish how many heads there are across the figure. I draw an "amoeba", a shape which contains all of the figure, including chair, clothing, hats, dogs, etc., everything that is in the body of the piece. Once I have determined the amoeba, I can move it around the canvas...make it bigger or smaller, until I find the right compositional placement. Then I draw a grid on the canvas (in the example, 5 1/2 heads down, and 3 heads across. And then determine what parts of the body are in which square. It's a lot easier than it sounds, and gives a dead on accurate placement for everything in the painting.
It's all about ratios. Thought you were all done with math, didn't you....?
Peggy
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