The World According to Tom

I thought I’d do a series of articles on proportions, distortions and how to measure but first I’ll lay some groundwork on what it means to say ‘realistic proportions’.

I see a lot of misinformation about what constitutes the average and the range of human proportions. You can find all sorts of ideal proportion systems in art books, though these rarely go in depth and always seem to be based on some abstract ideal rather than actual observations of real people; for example the common admonition of drawing instruction is that overall height is eight times the height of the head when in reality perhaps one person in fifty has a head so small. It’s like calling someone six foot four ‘average height’.

This is a subject I’ve spent a lot of time researching over the years and while I make no claim to definitive knowledge my understanding is aimed at sculpting and perhaps can be made into something solid enough to build on. I welcome correction if it comes with solid evidence and anyone who wants to link or excerpt from this post is welcome.

All natural proportions show a degree of variability becoming exponentially less common in occurrence as you depart from the average, the ‘bell curve’, so while it’s theoretically statistically possible you could have almost any ratio you want, the likelihood of an extreme juxtaposition actually occurring can be about the same as a broken teacup suddenly flying back together. Also, when you get too far from the average the effect can appear freakish. How far you have to go to cross the line depends on the viewer’s sensitivity, the context and what part of the body you are distorting. Figure collectors for example have become so used to greatly distorted heads and a set of compensatory distortions that a 1/6 head proportion seems ‘realistic’.

Average height:

This varies in time and place, modern U.S. males of European descent average 70.5" modern Dutch are nearly 72" average, while Portuguese are the shortest Europeans at about 68" average. Women are about 7% shorter than men on average.

The standard deviation is about 2.85" or 4% so if the average height is 70.5" then 68% of men are between 67.85" and 73.35", and 98% are between 63.8" and 76.3" or a variation of about +/- 8%. This variation of about +/- 8% is a good rule of thumb which serves pretty well for most human proportions that is to say if you make a part of the body 8% bigger or 8% smaller than average with respect to the other body parts you have distorted it to a point where it represents less than 1% of the population. Going beyond this point there is an exponential increase in rarity so that a 10% distortion is 1 in 200, 12% about 1 in 400etc. thus the likelihood of someone being 20% taller than average or 85"(7’1") is one in about 200,000 excluding instances of growth hormone disorders.

The average height of recruits in the ACW was a bit less than 68" and the average height of the garrison at Heraculaneum was about 66" as was the height of an average Iron Age British male. The average height of Frenchmen drafted into service during the Napoleonic wars was 64.15" (Napoleon was 65" about average height BTW) though it was nearly an inch taller in the following generation. The British Army of WWI average height was 66.5".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

Head as a proportion of overall height:

Modern males, 1/7.65 average with 99% of men falling between 1/6.75 and 1/8.

Modern females, 1/7.4 average with 99% falling between 1/6.5 and 1/7.75.

People from pre-modern times when average height was less seem to have had proportionally larger heads, or rather their legs and torso seem to have been shorter and their heads the same size. This is something I have noted from measuring old photographs and I don’t really know how valid it is.

There is a tendency for shorter persons to be towards the higher end of this scale and taller ones towards the lower end i.e. taller persons tend to have proportionally smaller heads and shorter persons larger ones.

The position of the eyes in the face:

The mid-point of the height of the face is, on average, just slightly above the lower lid of the eye for men with a variation of less than .5" or about 5% of an average 9.25" head. The midpoint of the average woman’s face seems to be very slightly higher, though this could be a skewing caused by selection of women with eyes nearer the middle of the face for photography. Children have eyes lower in the face than adults.

Body Proportions: (average measurements are for a modern American male,i.e. 70.5" in height)

The bone of the upper arm (humerus) is about 15% longer than the bones of the forearm (radius and ulna) if you compare a line from the shoulder joint to the elbow with one from the elbow towards the hand the equal point is about the middle of the palm. Average length elbow to fingertip is about 17". The average arm span is slightly more than height. Because of the way the joints of the elbow and shoulder move you can not straightforwardly add the lengths of the bones to get the length of the arm in various positions.

The hand is about 2/3 the length of the forearm the palm width about 1/3. Relating these to overall height would give a ratio of about 1/6.5 for the forearm, 1/10 for the hand and 1/19 for the palm. Average hand length is 7.5", the width across the knuckles of a clenched fist, 3.6".

Leg length is a bit more than half height for modern men, measured to the hip socket. The bones of the upper and lower leg are about the same length. I can’t find any information for the degree of variability in the ratio. Note this is measuring from the hip socket to the heel and the bones from the hip socket to the knee and the knee to the ankle.

I can’t find any statistics on the variability of proportion of leg length to overall height but judging by what looks quite odd in either direction compared to the average the extremes would seem to be 46% to 58% of overall height. Women have proportionally slightly shorter legs on average; that’s not a misprint, women have as a percentage of overall height on average slightly shorter legs than men.

Foot to height ratio is about 1/7 on average, about half the distance from the heel to the knee and seems to be more variable than most proportions.

Here are also some pictures sf another 1/48 (35mm) F&IW figure I made a couple of years ago but only recently fitted with a musket.

This entry was posted by Tom Meier on Wednesday, October 7. 2009 at 18:31. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog.