Skeleton, Meet Muscles

          For the second round of working with muscles, we had to make our own skeleton and attach it to a base.  For this, we took wire that we bent first in the proper proportions for a skeleton, then bent them again until they were in a pose that we picked.  Then we added the main forms (the head, ribcage, and pelvis) before covering the whole mess with muscles.  After becoming more comfortable with the proportions of the muscles, individually and in their respective muscle groups, the end product comes out as a natural looking human being.

          Oh man, look at that strut.  That swagger.  Dem glutes!  That is one confident-ass (and confident-assed) muscle mannequin.
          I highly suggest that anyone that wants to make stronger drawings of people try this, or any way of building a person in 3D.  You don't have to go into crazy detail, but having the proportions directly in your hands DOES translate to how you draw it on paper.  Plus having a bitty little clay dude to pose is awesome.

Skeleton, skeleton, what are you wearing

          After a ridiculous hiatus due to finals and holidays, I am back with some stuff I've long been meaning to post up here.  I took a constructive human anatomy class not this quarter but the last, and have been waiting to post the photos of the crazy work I put into those projects.  This post is going to be part 1 of 2 posts about it.
          So the idea of this class was not only to draw the human body in proportion, but to be able to fully understand the way muscles move and interact.  To drive this idea deep into our skulls, each muscle was made in clay and then placed on a skeleton.  This was our first go at figuring out how everything pieced together.  Here's what it looked like when all of the muscles were finished and placed on the plastic skeleton provided for us.

 Ewps! He got a little torn up here, since I had to strap him to my back while biking him to and from class.

 As you can see I didn't add the dangly bits.  At least not when I was turning it in to the professor.

          So those of you with a keen eye might notice that these muscles are bulky and chunky and what the heck is going on with those thighs.  And you are right.  It seemed to be part of the learning process to over-exaggerate the size of the muscles as I was building them, but luckily we got a second chance at the process.  Tune in next time for the toned-down version that hits closer to the realism spectrum.