Quad Muscle Group + Missing Glute Pics

Newly Added Muscles: Quadriceps - vastus intermedius, vastus medialis, vastus lateralis,
rectus femoris. Adductors - pectineus, adductor longus, adductor brevis, adductor magnus,
gracilis. Hamstrings - semimembranosus, semitendinosus, biceps femoris. Sartorius - the
body's longest muscle.

When building the Hamstrings, Adductors, and Quadriceps, It felt as though I was trying to put together a complex puzzle. While I was building each muscle seperately, I also kept looking back at the finished muscle groups to make sure I kept the correct shape of the leg as a whole. After I got done with all the muscles that were assigned, it looked to me like I had left something out because much of the femur on the anterior side was visible, but I still have not figured out what that is.

The mannequin is finally starting to come together a bit more with the finishing of the thigh and upper leg. I believe that I have somewhat progressed in terms of creating a process for myself when molding and shaping each new muscle. I am still using the internet for a secondary source but perhaps I still need to find a great book that I can carry around with me on the anatomy of the human body, specifically on the muscles but I'm a bit stripped for cash at the moment. =(

All the attachments to the knee area and underneath the patella should be correct and to me, forms a believable shape on the mannequin that looks human. The most difficult part for me was correctly creating the attachments underneath the already build rectus abs. What I did was peel back the rectus abs muscle I had created, making work on the mannequin so much easier.

When first starting out on the mannequin I would build a muscle, take a second or third look at it, then never go back to it again. This next set of muscles was different. I am now finding myself more comfortable with the clay and the adding and subtracting process needed for the mannequin to be successful.

Good Website for finding the Functions of Muscles

I stumbled across this website that explains the functions of some of the muscles inside the groupings we have worked on so far. It's pretty basic but It helped me to see the functions of the muscles instead of having to read a ton of information just to figure out what the Gluteus Maximus or Latissimus Dorsi does.

Click here if you would like to check it out.

Group Discussion / Mannequin Building

When building the spinal erectors, our group discussed how we had trouble with the proportion of the muscle building with clay. We all had difficulty building them but were able to fix them by looking at outside sources and comparing our mannequins to one another's. Jim and Channa were able to see that their spinal erectors were too large compared to the books. Jim also compared his mannequin with mine and we discovered that his external obliques were too small. He was able to add clay to the top of it and see exactly where it connected. Channa was able to compare her mannequin and to see that she needed to add some more clay to the gluteous maximus on the bottom so that it attached correctly onto the femur. It wasn't long enough compared to mine and the muscle anatomy atlas.

I myself was confused by the book and I had trouble figuring out where the Tensor Fasciae Latae was supposed to be connected, which was the bottom of the knee. My other 2 group members helped me look at some outside sources and then talked to Amy and discovered where it connected.

Over all we discussed that even though sometimes we had inconsistency with the thickness of the clay or understanding exactly where the connections of each muscle went, we were able to look at outside sources or ask each other for help. We felt that building onto the mannequins is helping us to understand how the muscle forms actually work together and where their exact location is in the body. Clay muscle building has helped us in picturing where certain ones are and their functions.

TEN and FIFTY minute poses

Well, I wasn't sure

which pose was "the" 10-minute, so I just put up 2 of the ones that were before my 50-minute. When compared with Amy's drawing, my drawing seems much less planned and plotted out. Also, my atmospheric perspective is pretty good but isn't quite there yet. With Amy's drawing, it seemed very light, which makes sense considering in order to draw a figure, you should make sure you have the proportions and angles correct before you realize that its entirely wrong when you are done with the drawing. I'm not saying that mine are that bad, but that is one thing I will try to be more careful on, going from light to dark, not the other way around. Although I did put in some cross contour lines, they don't really seem to connect the forms on the figure to one another, but rather help to outline single forms.

I notice that I tend to have a darker outline on my figures which helps me to see the angles and perspective, but I should be more careful about outlining and just try to draw whats there. In terms of line variation I tend to have

the same line width in half the drawing and a different width in the

other half, but I think my line variation is improving
somewhat from drawing to drawing.

This is my 50-minute drawing and quite a difficult pose for me to draw I might add. At first you might notice that I attempted at drawing in the rectus abs on the laying down figure. I also included pelvic landmarks on both drawings but my rib cage landmarks were a bit weak. As far as the anatomical landmarks go, I think I did a pretty good job of maping out the points on the pelvis and bottom of the rib cage, in order to indicate the navel on the figure.

In the 50-minute drawing, the line variation and atmospheric perspective is much more planned and consistent throughout the figure. In the 10-minute drawings there doesn't seem to be a very good line variation which makes the figure a little more flat in space. In this 50-min drawing, the contours on the face, arms, and legs are nicely defined and help to push the curves of the figure around and back in space. This drawing feels much less coloring book like compared to the two 10-minute drawings that I did earlier that day.

Now, lets talk in terms of Composition how well the drawings look. Starting with the 50-minute drawing, I oriented my drawing surface to a horizontal plane so that I could extend the figure out into space more, with less restrictions on space while trying to draw the entire figure. The actual picture is zoomed in, but when zoomed out you would see that my figure sits nicely on the page but is a little bit small. This small thumbnail may seem crowded but that is not so on the original page that I drew this on. There is a nice relation with the negative space and the figure. You can see the taller negative space on top of the laying posed figure in the upper 10-minute drawing, which creates a much needed feeling of weight for the figure instead of giving it a feel as if it was floating in the middle of nowhere.

In the 10-minute drawings, the figure-ground relationship is pretty well reconstructed and the angle seems realistic to how the figure is positioned. The taller figure is oriented vertically while the laying down figure is oriented horizontally.

That's all for now.

First Attempt @ Muscle Sculpting

These are pictures of the progress on my clay mannequin so far in Life Drawing. First, in the front view you can see the one major muscle, the rectus abdominis. I also scratched in three segments, which show the distinction of the abs on a figure. The rectus abs show the long attachment of muscle from the side curve of the ribcage to the symphysis pubis and iliac crest.

In the picture on the far right, which is 3/4 back view, you can see the quadratus lumborum, which attaches the inner lumbar curve of the spine to the pelvis, and allows the twisting motion of the body along with the external obliques. If you look at the picture of the straight back view of the mannequin you can see the entire muscle grouping that make up the spinal erectors.

The cervicis, which is a muscle that runs along the dorsal surface, attaches the spinal vertebrae along the base of the neck at the skull to the bottom of the neck. This muscle is seen best from the back 3/4 view (second from right). The two neck muscles at the top (capitis and cervicis) twist together and run down to the upper back of the figure, blending into the the iliocostalis and longisimus, which are the larger portion of the back muscles in this picture, extending down to the lower spine (lumbar curve). The muscles connect the base of the skull and upper back ribs, down to the larger thoracic muscle, which lays slightly on top of the suface of the actual rib cage, connecting many of the upper ribs on the back of the figure.

While building the spinal erectors, I started with the muscles that ran along the dorsal and spine of the mannequin. Next I built up the longisimus, which ended with building the iliocostalis. The hardest part about building the muscles for me, was getting them to blend into one another, and make them look like they belonged to their specific muscle grouping. Also, the initial building of the longisimus was not correctly curved according to the curvature of the rib cage and there was a bit too much of a gap between the spine and ribcage, but in these pictures it shows the correct finished version.

I have never sculpted clay before, much less having to sculpt it into the many muscles that I was still unfamiliar with. Learning the muscles before sculpting helped quite a bit with getting a correct final form on the mannequin. At first, I would roll out the clay into a flat surface, and try to cut out the outline of the muscle, then from there paste it onto the mannequin and sculpt as needed to fit into the other muscles that were going to have to relate to the one I had just put on. I found out that this was not such a good idea, and started to just grab chunks of clay and start to mold and sculpt them into the muscles and muscle groupings, then scratched lines into them to indicate the different locations of the muscles out of the primary form. This approached worked much better for me, and I was able to see the connections quite a bit better.

I think the next time that I build my muscles, I will look at other sources than just the atlas, to get a clearer understanding of each muscle and its functions as I am building it. I guess some tips that I have for other people would be to first plot out where the muscle is going to be, and how to adjust its location based on the other muscles in that particular area or group. Also, the colder the clay is, the easier it is to twist and bend as needed on the figure, such as in the upper neck muscles that we have already built. When the clay is warm, the twists and curves that you make in the first place don't always stay that way, so its better to do those things last.

Building these muscles has not only allowed me to realize whats underneath a figure when I look at a person, but it also has brought to light that the muscles aren't always straight and cleanly seen as they are in a textbook, when a figure is a live human being going into dramatic, twisting poses. I think the next time I draw the figure, I will try to visualize where those muscle groupings are and try to draw the outer lines on the figure.

As the mannequin building goes on I can only get better..........right?

Pelvis Structure Tracings

Name: The Creation of Adam

Artist: Michelangelo

Medium: Fresco

Location/Time: Sistine Chapel Ceiling, Rome, c.1511

Name: Fighting Men

Artist: Raphael Sanzi

Medium: Red Chalk over leadpoint

Location/Time: Italy, 1510-1511

This first tracing is taken from "Fighting Men" and is of the reaching figure on the far right side. At first glance, the iliac crest and anterior iliac spine are the most visible parts of the pelvis in this drawing. The gluteal cleft and fold are also clearly defined by the artist and you can see the coming together of the muscles (glutes) down to the symphysis pubis. I drew in the sacrum, although it is buried under a hunk of muscle, by folowing the curves in the muscles which make that triangle shape. I had to imagine it a little bit but using the triangular shape made by the glutes and back of the figure helped me to draw it in.

The second tracing is somewhat a front and foreshortened view, and comes from the work "The Creation of Adam". From doing the drawings of the pelvis in class, I was able to imagine where the pelvis would be, because the pelvis was not as easily revealed as it was in "Fighting Men". First I figured out where the posterior and anterior points were on the iliac spine, and from there I drew a triangular form. Unlike the other tracing, in this one I was able to see and label the inguinal ligaments, which were easily visible in Michelangelo's figure of Adam. Because this was a frontal view, I did not label the sacrum or anterior inferior iliac spine.

The Structure of the Rib Cage

Image: The Creation of Adam

Size: 480 x 230cm

Artist & Date: Michelangelo, 1511, Sistine Chapel

Image: Nude Study

Size: 410 x 281 mm

Artist & Date: Raphael Sanzi, c. 1515

Image: Fighting Men

Size: 379 x 281 mm

Artist & Date: Raphael Sanzi, 1510-1511

This first Rib Cage study is from the work "Fighting Men". The figure in this view is somewhat foreshortened to the viewer. The thoracic curve is obviously behind the figure, but I still drew it to show behind the body. The figure is in an awkward positon, looking up and twisting at the waist, so the rib cage must be facing more towards the ground than the front or side. Because of this, the sternum and clavicles face in that same direction, they are somewhat hidden but are still visible from this view.

I used the next image for both the front and 3/4 view, so It contains 2 rib cage tracings on the figures. This tracing is derived from the Nude study by Raphael. The front view figure, which is the one on the left, isnt facing directly to the viewer but you can see front of his body. This figure is leaning on a staff, but the outline of the rib cage is still clearly visible, so the outline of the cartilage is easily visible as well.

The figure on the right is a 3/4 view. From this view, the thoracic curve is clearly displayed and has a rather dramatic curve to it. The shoulder blades are also clearly defined in this work, which means the figure is twisting a slight bit, showing the definition in his left scapula. The rib cage in this picture is visible, but the ribs are no so easily portrayed due to the muscular build of this figure, so the abs and obliques restrict the clear view of the ribcage such as in the other figure.