The Inner Workings

Why does a body look the way it does? The answer is quite simple, really: because of what's inside the body. When you make a fist, the protrusions on the backs of your hands are caused by bones within the body; the lump on your bicep when you flex your arm is caused by the muscle under the skin, and so on. One of the key elements of drawing human anatomy is quite simple, yet nobody seems to think of it: the inner anatomy. Not just the exterior, what we see on the outside, but recognizing what is present and where it is on the inside.

Bridgman himself states that "the eye in drawing must follow a line or a plane or a mass...the line, in actual construction, must come first; but as mental construction must precede physical, the concept of mass must come first, that of plane second, that of line last" (Bridgman 7). What he is generally saying is that when actually drawing, the line will come first; however, when picturing what to draw, you must first know the mass of what you are drawing: to visualize the foot first in order to determine where draw your first line.

Instead of drawing a complete external view all at once, I will instead draw three separate drawings: one of the leg's muscles, one of the leg's bones, and one of the legs as viewed externally. By doing this, it will give me a much clearer understanding of why the leg is structured the way it is.

A very simple drawing. The main components here
are the femur (thigh bone) and the tibia/fibula (calf
bones).

Not forgetting what I learned from my last blog post,
I also used simple construction lines here to mark out
the placement of the knee and where the foot would
begin, as well as how long the femur and fibula/tibia
would be.

The bones are quite simple, and in this particular drawing, the muscles are of more importance, as it dictates what kind of dimension and shading we'll be applying to the leg. To clarify, I also purposefully started drawing the bones first, because it's the smallest layer of the leg. From there, I would build on it by drawing the muscles, and then the exterior of the leg.

I again start with construction lines, already noting that
the muscle drawing will be much thicker than the bone
sketch.

The completed muscle drawing, with labels to the
following muscles: rectus femoris, vastus internus,
sartorius, gracilis, semi-tendinosus, semi-membranosus,
gastrocnemius, and soleus.

It should also be noted that I purposefully chose not to remove my construction lines from the bone and muscle sketch, even though I will remove it from the final drawing. This is because those lines will help me to determine some of the contours of the actual leg, and will help show me where to put construction lines for the exterior drawing.

Even though this drawing by far doesn't depict every muscle in the leg, it still serves as a good guide in order to actually begin drawing a leg. When drawing the leg, Bridgman suggests dividing the lower limb into separate parts in order to focus on the unique aspects of each area, as opposed to just adding loose details to each area (Bridgman 138). I've personally chosen to divide the leg into three parts: the leg, knee, and calf. By doing this, it will help me concentrate on each part individually and to create an overall more detailed drawing.

Once again, I start off with construction lines, trying to
stay as close to the muscle sketch as possible in order to
maintain a similar size across all three sketches.

The overall completed leg! Instead of something like
my last post, I took a more realistic approach. It's a bit
difficult to see, but there was quite a lot of shading and
detail involved even though legs are rather simplistic to draw.

I chose to use a different drawing style for the leg, as the leg doesn't have as much detail as the hand does. I opted for a realism-oriented style. A major differences you'll notice is that there isn't an outline like in my previous blog post. This is because in life, there are no outlines; I've marked out the area of the leg by very lightly shading in all parts. In order to emphasize the leg muscles and bones and the shape of the knee, I've added shading to those areas to make shadows instead of leaving it as lines. For an extra touch, I also added a gradient shading from the back of the leg to the front, representing a light shining in front of the leg.

Even though the leg doesn't have as much detail as say, the face or the hands, you still have to take into consideration many things when drawing it. For example, the small, barely noticeable bump on the back of the knee, or how the heel comes slightly out at the bottom instead of just being a straight line. This is why knowing the inner structure of the body part you're drawing is so important: it helps you to correctly draw the basic structure of the body part. If the basic form of the body part is wrong, it throws the entire drawing off, even if you put the utmost detail into everything else.

Truthfully, I don't find myself completely satisfied with the end result, but I'm also not quite sure how to fix it despite spending quite a bit of time on it. As a whole, the three drawings probably took me about an hour each, resulting in a total time consumption of three hours, possibly more for the final drawing. Do you find that art is too time-consuming, or a good way to pass time? What do you think I could do to make it more realistic and lifelike?

Bridgman, George. Constructive Anatomy. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2016. Print.