math, science & art: the awesome threesome

ugh, i can't deny it any further.
math, science and art go together like peanut butter, jelly, and toast.

you can't have one without the others.

the perfect triplet, the awesome thr333some (lol) is exemplified by Leonardo da Vinci's diagram of Virtruvius's Vitruvian Man.

oh man, this takes me waaay back in art history.

let's start from the beginning:

the first grid or model of human proportions known as the canon of proportions was actually invented by the ancient Egyptians.

we've all done grid drawings, right? a grid allows an artist to copy an image more accurately than just observing it with his or her eye.

here are some of my grid drawings: [a]°[b]*

°yes, i know that her left arm looks retarded. -___-

*image b is finished--i just don't have a photo of the completed piece...

in ancient societies, individualized faces were only reserved for people of power so anyone else had generic faces. (this is not only for the Egyptians, the technique was found in many other cultures such as Japan and China as well).

the Egyptians used the canon to efficiently replicate the thousands of servants and people of the lower caste in their hieroglyphs.

awkward tie-in time: Vitruvius based his Vitruvian Man drawing on the Egyptian canon of proportions. Later, da Vinci based his version of the same drawing on Vitruvius's original.

both Vitruvius and da Vinci believed that the body had a center point. however, they disagreed on the focal point's location. Vitruvius believed that the center was the navel whereas da Vinci thought it was actually the phallus.

of course, we know that da Vinci's theory was and still is right but why is it?

that i don't know. i aim to find out.

you see, without crazy math, science, and art nuts like da Vinci who exhumed cadavers just to study and draw them, there would be no representational art-- without the correct proportions, our pieces would never correctly represent our subjects!

had not crazies like da Vinci drawn every bone, every muscle, and every feature of the human body and laid it out in easy to understand diagrams, the entire human race would accept Picasso's drawings as the highest form of art! (take that, Purists! side note: Purism was actually a branch of Cubism so i made a nice little double-entendre joke for ya. hehe.)

i know i can probably argue this case even more.

actually-- i probably just need to explain the math part of this more.

i wish i can, but because i don't entirely understand how the Vitruvian Man was constructed mathematically, i won't talk about it.

i'll save that for the day i finally understand.

oh, but here's a really great diagram of how it's constructed:

oops, looks like my mouse made it into in the screenshot, haha.

the circle and the square is easy enough to understand.

i just don't really know how Leonardo determined such things as "a man's height is 24 palms" unless he actually felt up a guy to measure him, haha.

so much of our knowledge of the human body comes from Leonardo's Vitruvian Man.

a third eye can fit exactly between our two eyes, a human adult is generally eight heads tall, our shoulders are two heads wide, etc...

there are just so many examples i can find but for now, i'm done-- i have poems to analyze... ):

oh, and here's to hoping that i develop a gigantic liking for math... 乾杯！

Posted by miyavicake at 4:52 PM