Reader Collection > Blog > Bird and Flower Pose |
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| An artist may choose to draw an object from one of three positions: front, side or back. When the object is a person the front view pose is most popular with artists but when the object is a bird or flower it is usually the side view pose that is chosen most often by artists. In Japanese printed art, side view poses of birds far outnumber both front view and back view poses (i.e., 71% of pictures compared to only 19% and 9%, respectively). An example of each of these three poses is shown below. These pictures are part of the Reader Collection of Japanese Flower-and-Bird Art. |
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| Most birds have eyes on the sides of their head rather than the front and when they look at the artist in the real world they do so most often from the side, using only one of their two eyes. Most artists choose this familiar side view pose when they draw a picture of a bird. In Japanese printed art there are also more side views of flowers (60% of pictures) than front views (40% of pictures) or back views (0% of pictures). An example of a side view and a front view is show below. |
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| Flowers typically open upwards, facing the sky, to be most visible to a flying insect or bird which visits the flower to both deposit and pick up pollen. Because an artist stands on the ground rather than flying in the sky (s)he would first see a flower from the side rather than from above. Only if the artist then made a conscious effort to stand directly above the flower and look down at it would it be seen from the front. It would take even more effort to look at the back side of a flower because it normally faces the ground. Understandably then, there are no back views of flowers in Japanese printed art and side view poses appear more often than front view poses. | ||
