FEET AND LEGS The challenge of drawing my feet became evident the third week of the assignment. How does one draw one’s own feet week after week, I wondered. I learned to carefully look and to accurately see what was before me. I found that gravity plays an important role in how the masses of the feet relate to their context. I realized that the tendons, ligaments, connective tissues, digits of varying sizes, and bones all reveal themselves differently through the skin when oriented in different positions. Certain parts of the feet, ankles, and lower legs appear soft and rounded when restfully reclining on an ottoman, while the same anatomical elements are quite angular and planar when standing firmly in front of a mirror. — CHARLES KREKELBERG Feet are that portion of our extremities most distant from the eyes. Feet most often fall beneath our gaze. Save for the daily ritual of housing them in shoes (further obscuring them from view), we seldom take a serious look at them. Unlike our hands, with which our eyes are in constant collaboration, our humble feet are more typically called to visual attention when they cause us pain (fashion slaves excepted). When, for instance, was the last time you carefully examined the sole of your foot? Yet there they are—those feet—our base, our daily contact with the ground plane, with the earth. When we speak of a firm footing, we refer to a stability of posture or a secure basis. In architecture the form called “footing” mitigates between foundation walls, interior columns (in larger structures), and the earth. Usually rectangular in form, typically composed of concrete, and larger than load-bearing columns, footings are thrust deep into the earth to establish a building’s stance and stability.
F IGURE 1
The Feet and Legs drawing project evolved from the Shoescapes assignment. Although shoes had been discussed as structural housing for feet, many of the drawings pinned up for critique appeared to be studies done from new shoes. Their more prominent attributes were stitching, laces, grommets, straps; no foot seemed ever to have occupied them. The in-class exercise required students to remove their shoes and take a good look (while drawing) at their feet—their feet undressed, their feet in socks, and finally their feet back in shoes. The resulting drawings, however well drawn, resembled amputations. Feet were abruptly terminated at the ankles or legs were severed arbitrarily at the calf or somewhere below the knees— inventory from a body-parts shop floating about on a field of white paper. The project evolved further. Drawing longer portions of the leg entering the page from the top, side, or bottom of the paper’s edge immediately interrupts and divides the 81