a lot of clay

This week, we finished a lot of our clay maniken. On Monday, we worked on the Hamstrings, which consists of the Semimembranosous, the Semitendinosous, the Biceps Femoris (meaning "two heads"), and the Sartorius. I learned that the Sartorius is the longest muscle in the body and it fits in the groove between the quads and the adductors (in a spiral form). On Wednesday, we drew some more poses; which I forgot to take pictures of again. Hmm, I should try to just take pictures at the end of each class, because I always think I'm going to come back and finish my maniken during the weekend. But I usually get done with the homework muscles by the end of the class period. On Friday, we again worked on more homework muscles while Amy went around to check off people’s muscles and help them correct it. But she didn’t quite get to the people in our area, so I don't know if my previous homework muscles are correct yet. The muscles we learned on Friday were: the Peronus Longus (also known as “Pin” and “Fibula”), the Soleus, and the Gastrocnemius (which has a silent “c”—I found this to be very interesting). I am hoping we get to draw and do our muscles equally this next week. I need more practice.


A diagram of the posterior view of the legs.

When we drew on Wednesday, we started to add more details, such as the lines of the thighs. I feel as though my quick gestural drawings are a little lacking lately because I can’t seem to fit the “egg” (the ribcage), the pelvis + the hip bones + the pubic bone, the sacrum, and the thighs in 30 seconds. But I also need to practice gestures because the faster I can get everything down in 30 seconds means I can fine-tune the details when we move onto the one minute and longer drawings. I think I am starting to get the hang of having the spinal column not be too long or too short.

long week over~

This past week seemed to go on forever, but the weekend flew by like nothing.


This is a picture of the female 45 minute drawing on Wednesday. I thought I started off pretty good, but later when Amy came by, she pointed out that I had drawn my waist and pelvic bone too small. So I fixed it, and the finished product you see here looks more anatomically correct. A tip Amy gave me, was to exaggerate the curves around the pelvic bone, so you're drawing what you know rather than drawing what you see.

On Friday, we drew a 45 minute of the male body (which I forgot to take a photo of). But that drawing took me forever to get the proportions right. At the end of the 45 minutes, all I pretty much had was the shape of the sternum/chest, legs, and the abdomen. Nothing much to show. While I looked at everyone else's around me, they had the body shape, ribcage, pelvis, pubic bone, and some muscles on their page. I felt like I moved way too slow for that drawing.

new model

We learned more about the muscles and practiced drawing more positions of the ribcage and spinal column. This week we had a male model for the first time, it was much much easier to see the ribcage and especially the sternum. Before, when we had the girl model, it was kind of difficult to see the sternum because of the breasts. So it's much easier to find on the male model, but sometimes I got confused if I was looking at his ribcage or his muscles. I practiced drawing outside of class without references, and so it is totally not accurate, but I found that knowing where everything is located helps me develop body forms a lot faster than I used to. I used to skip drawing the bodies, in my characters, in general because I really sucked at body proportions. But it is slowly starting to get better. I am learning a lot in this class, and I'm glad we're able to get to draw both a female and male model, even though I was nervous at first, I've gotten used to just drawing and looking at the shapes of the ribcage and stuff, and not really the body yet.


We built about four more muscles onto our manikens, the Gluteus Medius, Tensor Fasciae Latae, and the Gluteus Maximus (Iliac & Axial Head). They are all muscles that help form our butts. I've never actually looked at the shape of the butt before, and I didn't realize that there were so many different curves of muscles on the butt. I always thought it was just a round shape.

This is a drawing somebody drew on the website DeviantArt. I love looking at the shape of the body, it inspires me to try and draw better ribcages and such. I want to be able to draw without using many references for the torso, in the near future.

Starting on clay manikens

This week, we spent a lot of time studying the spinal column, taking notes, and sketching various poses of the spinal cord.

Monday-- We took notes and went over the Vertebral Column. I learned about the anatomical landmarks, and that the first anatomical landmark was C7, which is the bone you can clearly feel at the back of your neck. I also learned that newborn babies are born with no Lumbar or Cervical until they are about a year or so old. We then did quick sketches of our model's spinal cord, and nothing else. I am used to drawing faster, so when we had to take ten minutes to draw one line, it kind of killed me a little. haha. But, I am getting a little better at taking my time.

Wednesday-- We received our manikens, peeled off the existing clay, and cleaned them. Then we took more notes and learned about the muscles in the body. I learned that a muscle MUST cross over at least one joint for our limbs to be able to function; and that tendons attach the muscles to bones, and ligaments attach bones to bones.


Friday-- We went over which parts we were to start building on our manikens for Monday. Then after, we started sketching in time increments of fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, one minute, two minutes, and two ten minute sketches. After that, we spent half an hour trying to sketch and perfect a drawing of what we could see of the spinal cord (on our nude body model). And then we drew cross contour lines over it perpendicular to the spinal line. And although this sketch took awhile, I felt that I was able to draw the spinal cord line fairly accurately. And it really helped me slow down, instead of sketch fast like I usually do