The structure of the human body

Understanding the parts that make up the body is useful to putting the pieces together in an accurate and proportionate way. Knowing the different ways the joints can move and the bones underneath can help me to accurately depict the body as a whole or separately.

I began by looking at the feet, firstly the structure with the bones. Then the shape. Before moving to study the ankles, legs and hips. I studied images both off of Google but also from a book, ‘Nudes’ by Daniel Maidman, which looks at studies of the body. I can see how the parts fit into shapes and certain measurements, like the length of toes compared to one another and where the ankle is positioned.

On the next page I began looking at the thighs, how they connect to our hips and waist, and how the torso is formed. I am happy with how these came out but the top right drawing looks disproportionate and inaccurate. I chose to focus on the female torso as I haven’t had much chance to look at it with my model being male. I wanted to look at the natural curves and bumps the female body often has with help from the studies from Maidman’s book on the nude. I enjoy drawing the female torso as there is a lot more going on tonally with the shadows that are cast from the breasts, the way light affects each breast differently.

For these drawings I looked at the other side of the torso, the back, then to looking at the shoulders, arms and hands and those parts of the human figure all connect. You can see the shading of where certain muscles are on the back and the arms, and the proportions. I looked at the lengths of fingers, how the middle finger is always the longest and where the other fingers fall in length, this is useful to know for drawing hands. Looking at the bone structure of the hand helped me to identify where the knuckles should be which can sometimes be a bit tricky.

For the final sketches I looked at the neck and head, I chose to focus on the structures that make them up underneath the skin. The top two sketches were very useful in looking at how the head connects to the neck, a vital part of a drawing as this connects the two important parts of a portrait, the head to the body.

Understanding the body and its many parts is crucial for creating an accurate and proportionate depiction of the human body. Body parts for different people don’t all look the same, my model for instance is a tad short so his leg proportions may not look like a 6ft mans legs proportions. But there are rules that are generally the same for many people, for instance toe and finger lengths, the ratios of limbs. But having a good general understanding, which this exercise helped me develop, will help make tackling drawing the many bodies out there a lot easier.

References

Nudes, by Daniel Maidman- (Maidman, D. (2017). Nudes. [online] California, USA: Griffith Moon Publishing, p.120. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Daniel_Maidman_Nudes.html?id=TTzGtAEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y [Accessed 11 Dec. 2020].)