The crudest mode of representing the side view of the forward-reaching arms is by drawing the lines from the contour, as in Fig. 35 [(a)]. Difficulties arise when the lines are carried across the trunk. Very often both arms are drawn in this way, as in Fig. 35 [(b)]. There is a certain analogy here to the insertion of the two eyes in the profile representation, a second feature being in each case added which in the original object is hidden.[[265]]
Fig. 36.
When the two arms are thus introduced their position varies greatly, whether they start from the contour or are drawn across the body. That is to say, they may be far one from the other (as in Fig. 35 [(b)]), or may be drawn close together. And again the point of common origin may be high up at the meeting point of trunk and chin, as in a drawing by a boy of five (Fig. [36]), or at almost any point below this.
In the cases I have examined the insertion of both arms in profile representations is exceptional. More frequently, even when action is described, one arm only is introduced, which may set out from the anterior surface of the trunk, or, as we have seen, start from the posterior surface and cross the trunk (see above, pp. 353, 356, Figs. 23 [(a)] and 26 [(c)]). In most cases where no action such as walking and holding a cane is signified both arms are omitted. The uncertainty of the arms is hardly less here than in the front view.
With respect to the legs, we find, as in the primitive frontal view, an insertion of both. An ordinary child can still less represent a human figure in profile with only one leg showing than he can represent it with only one eye. As a rule, so long as he is guided by his own inner light only he does not attempt to draw one leg over and partially covering the other, but sets them both out distinctly at a respectful distance one from the other. The refinement of making the second foot or calf and foot peep out from behind the first, as in Fig. 29 [(a)] (p. 359), and possibly also Fig. 18 [(c)] (p. 349), shows either an exceptional artistic eye, or the interference of the preceptor.
Fig. 37.
The treatment of the feet by the childish pencil is interesting. It is presumable that at first no difference of profile and front view attaches to the position of the foot. It has to be shown, and as the young artist knows nothing of perspective and foreshortening, and, moreover, would not be satisfied with that mode of delineation if he could accomplish it, he proceeds naturally enough to draw the member as a line at right angles to that of the leg. This is done in one of two ways, in opposed directions outwards, or in the same direction, answering to what we should call the front or the side view. At first, I believe, no significance of front and side view is attached to these arrangements. Thus in some sketches by a little girl of four and a half I find the primitive front view of the head combined with each of these arrangements of the foot. In drawings, too, of older children of six and upwards I have met with cases both of a profile representation of head and trunk with spread-eagle feet, as also of a side view of the feet with a front face (see Figs. 5 [(a)] and 13 [(c)], pp. 339, 345). This last arrangement, I find, appears in a profile treatment of the whole leg and foot among the drawings of North American Indians (Fig. [37]); and this suggests that the side view in which the two feet point one way is more easily reached and fixed by the untutored draughtsman.
