Thumbs up drawing reference driver#

Thumbs up drawing reference driver#

For example in the seventeenth century, see the Diego Velázquez painting The Lunch.Ģ0th century A truck driver giving a thumb sign in Britain, 1940 Over time, the mere sight of an upraised thumb came to symbolize harmony and kind feelings. ĭesmond Morris in Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution traces the practice back to a medieval custom used to seal business transactions. The term fistmele is a Saxon word that refers to that measurement. This fistmele should be about 7 inches (18 cm), which is about the same as a fist with a thumb extended. Before use, the fistmele (or the 'brace height') was checked, that being the distance between the string and the bow on an English longbow. It has been suggested that 'thumbs up' was a signal from English archers preparing for battle that all is well with their bow and they are ready to fight. In modern popular culture, necessarily without a historical basis from Ancient Rome, it is wrongly presumed that 'thumbs down' was the signal that a defeated gladiator should be condemned to death 'thumbs up', that he should be spared. According to Anthony Corbeill, a classical studies professor who has extensively researched the practice, thumbs up signalled killing the gladiator while 'a closed fist with a wraparound thumb' meant sparing him. While it is clear that the thumb was involved, the precise type of gesture described by the phrase pollice verso and its meaning are unclear in the historical and literary record. I usually try to make my ref lib images at least 800 pixels, to offer more detail.- Juvenal, Against the City of Rome (c. If you’re not familiar with the ref lib, go here to check out the contribution guidelines:Īlso, you’re entirely welcome to post your assignment photos here in this thread, but do be sure to upload them to the library! And remember that you can put larger photos in the library than you can here. Pictures of hands doing things, hands holding things, hands resting, feet standing, stretching, toes wiggling, anything! As you can see, the reference image library could use a few more images that fit this category: This isn’t a terribly exciting photo by itself, but it makes for a good reference image – I had a great time drawing it: Here’s one I took myself, as an example of what I mean. Having a single light source is also good, to create good light and shadow on the subject.

For this first assignment, for example, a good reference photo of hands and feet would be quite simple, a closeup of the subject with as little around to clutter the photo as possible. The goal here is to enrich the reference image library, because it’s a great resource that will only become better if we help to fill in a few of the gaps! With that in mind, remember that sometimes taking a good reference photo isn’t the same as taking a good art photo. IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ all the info I’ve provided here before participating, so we all know what this is about. So I figured that’s as good a place to start as any! And since one of the recent photgraphy monthly projects was hands, I’m sure many of you already have some good photos you could contribute! Okay, here we go! I was trying to think of a topic for our first ref lib assignment, and then I went DUH, because I was just in there yesterday looking for some photos of hands to draw, and I wasn’t finding a whole lot to choose from.