Manniken Fail and the Ribcage

This week we started by looking at our Mannikens and the spinal erectors we built over the weekend.  I had a hard time visualizing where the muscles go and what thickness they should be.  I made mine really thick and they were falling off of the skeleton.  It helped to look at everyone else’s Mannikens and the teacher’s as well.  I think when we start building the abs I will know how to look at the body from every angle and how that way of building muscles is actually helpful.  I’m still contemplating whether or not I want to sign up for the muscle website, I can’t decide if it’s worth it or not.  I still have some time to decide.

Also this week we did some more gesture drawings to get more comfortable with that.  I am still working hard on using my whole arm in the drawings and changing line thickness and pressure.  I feel like doing a lot of gesture drawings will help and pretty soon these things will become second nature to me. 

On Thursday we spent the beginning of class learning about the ribcage and how to draw that piece of the body.  I never would have guessed the simplest way to draw it was in the shape of an egg.  Granted, eggs aren’t so simple as I soon learned when I had to apply it myself but near the end I felt like I was getting the hang of it.  I really like the mix of anatomy and that sort of thing with the artistic aspect.  It’s a really neat approach to learning. The only thing I don’t like is that we have to sit on that hard floor for close to an hour when we have lectures.  It would be nice if we could find a room to go to and talk about things like we did last week.  Anyways, the last drawing we did in class on Thursday was another contour which I’m not sure if I have a grasp on those yet, but again, I’ll just keep working on it.