Extreme Foreshortening

Students created mixed media artworks featuring a foreshortened figure in tonal pencil drawing, contrasted against a mood-oriented background in medium of student’s choice. Together, the works express personal feelings about the school environment through body language, composition, and atmosphere.

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Throughout this unit, students were introduced to perspective both as a visual art technique and as a way of communicating their point of view. With a specific focus on extreme foreshortening, students responded to the stimulus ‘How it feels to be here in school’ reflecting on how mood, body language, and location can influence artistic expression.

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Students developed their drawing skills through life drawing of foreshortened poses inspired by Renaissance masters, using these principles to inform their photography practice. Students considered the works of artists who captured the human figure in dynamic, expressive poses, identifying how mood and atmosphere are conveyed through body language.

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For their final works, students experimented with a series of poses that best expressed their individual perspectives on school, capturing these through photography using extreme foreshortening. Their photographs served as their primary sources for their tonal drawings, with some students employing the grid method to support their drawing. Each drawing was combined with a mixed media background inspired by the work of Kehinde Wiley, exploring how backgrounds design can complement or contrast the mood of their figure.