One of the toughest parts of the human anatomy to draw for me is the foot. Getting those toes, nails, heels and arches to look right is tricky. This is why many art instruction books show the bones underlying not only the human form but that of any animal. There’s really no way around it. To get the outer part looking right, you need to know what lies beneath.
The human foot is made up of 26 bones, 30 joints, and more than 100 muscles, ligaments and tendons. No wonder the darn things are so hard to draw!
Our feet are highly specialized because they help us accomplish that amazing balancing act known as walking upright.
Our habit of walking on our heels and toes to do this is referred to as plantigrade locomotion. Other animals also use this method such as other apes and monkeys, raccoons, opossums and bears.
The above photo was taken by one of my brothers, showing an excellent bear paw print in new fallen snow with his hunting glove beside it to give some scale. Bears can also manage the trick of standing up on their hind legs and walking a bit, but this is not their preferred mode of walking.
Other four-legged animals have differently shaped feet, depending on their own style of walking. Cats and dogs, for example, don’t walk plantigrade as we do. Instead, they use the digitigrade form of locomotion. This involves walking on their toes. Many people do not realize that their pets literally tip-toe about. If you look at the ‘toe beans’ on the bottom of a cat’s paw, you’ll see the row of toe pads and underneath them is a pad which actually covers what for us would be the ball of the foot. The heel is further up on what many people take to be part of the leg but is really the foot of the animal. This photo of a kangaroo makes this a little clearer.
Like us, the kangaroo has a highly specialized foot. When at rest they are plantigrade like we are. But when they begin hopping, they rise up on their toes. Interestingly when they move at a slow walk, they use their large tails as an extra ‘leg’.
Hoofed animals, like horses or deer, carry the digitigrade form to an extreme. They don’t just walk or run about on their toes. They actually walk about on their toe tips. Hooves are just highly modified toenails. Ballerinas, eat your hearts out!
My art efforts for the foot are modest to say the least, even with the use of gestural drawing, which is useful for starting out, while learning to master the form of your subject. As always, practice makes perfect, so it’s a good idea to stock up on sketch books, so you can observe the evolution of your own drawing style. In addition to art anatomy instruction books, here are many tutorials on You-Tube to follow, to help you draw better looking feet.
Happy drawing!