Starting the Skeletons

I was pretty excited to start working on these guys and it was pretty fun. I'm glad I did it with other people though, it was confusing enough as it is.  The neck muscles were easier to do than the back muscles, mostly because it was clearer where they are supposed to go.

On Monday we got our manikens and cleaned them which proved harder than expected. Looking back I should have taken this as a warning. We had to build the spinalis erectus muscles. It was very difficult to figure out what it was supposed to look like because the example model and the books were different. In the end we decided to use mainly the model as our guide and I think it is pretty good. I'll find out I guess.

In class on Wednesday we focused on drawing the spinal lines on the front and back. It was difficult to decide where the line should be when drawing the front until it was clarified what we were looking for. It was the line of the skin, not looking through to what the spine would be doing, as I thought.

Friday went better, I had my first real success in contour drawings. I got a handle on drawing the spine and I found thinking of the torso as a volumous shape helped figuring out the direction that the lines should be going in. Originally I drew the contour lines very lightly and then when I was happy with them I went over parts of them with softer charcoal to give line variation. Even with all of these steps I still draw too quickly. I do two or three drawings in the allotted time. I have to work on that. It's hard to make myself to draw slowly. The effort makes my drawings feel awkward. Besides this I feel like I'm improving, if only slowly.