IF THE ART OF FIGURE DRAWING has fallen into a decline — as it evidently has in the 20th century — certainly one reason is that few contemporary artists have deeply studied artistic anatomy.
Every artist represented in this book had a staggering knowledge of artistic anatomy compared with today’s standards. For no one can draw the figure really well unless he can draw every part of the figure, in any position, out of his imagination. Every artist reproduced in this book could do this.
Do you think that you can make an adequate drawing of a head well thrown back, or a hand coming directly at you, simply by copying the model? You cannot. You cannot really draw these things unless you can draw them out of your head, before the model takes the pose. And there is no way under the sun to draw the figure accurately out of your head without a thorough study of artistic anatomy.
How are you going to discover the important axis line of the hand — the axis which runs from the proximal end of the metacarpal of the little finger to the proximal end of the metacarpal of the thumb — by squinting at the hand of a model fifteen feet away from you? Especially if you do not know that metacarpals exist!
There is so much detail in books on artistic anatomy that the student is often unconscious of a number of the controlling ideas that prove so helpful in the end. I should like to stress a few of these ideas and suggest that you bear them in mind when you study the subject of anatomy.
There is nothing mysterious about artistic anatomy. It is all in the books for anyone to learn. Of course, medical anatomy has advanced a great deal since the time of Leonardo, but artistic anatomy remains about the same.
One thing that Leonardo had — and every artist in this book had — was a nice collection of bones. And that is the basis of the whole thing.
It must be understood at once that the form of the body is dictated by the bones. Tap yourself all over. Whatever parts are hard are essentially bone. Your head, your hands, your feet, your joints: the form is primarily influenced by bone.
The influence of bones on the rest of the body is more subtle but just as strong. The base of the column of your neck is founded on the circle of your first ribs. The shape of the important mass of the external oblique is forced by the ribs and the pelvic crest. The inside of the thigh is a reflection of the pelvis, etc.
Essentially, the body is a machine, with the bones in compression and the muscles in tension.
Pull off your muscles, like Hercules in his death throes, and scatter them about. They are so much shapeless meat unless attached to the skeleton. But your skeleton will remain as before, unchanged in form and proportion.
Therefore, the first thing to do is to get a collection of bones. They may be ordered from any medical supply house. I know that bones are expensive, and that art students are poor; but remember, they will last for a lifetime, and it is possible that you will be giving your lifetime to your art.
You cannot learn the true shape of bones from pictures, however accurate. You must have the real, three dimensional bone. Even in my classroom, a misguided student will copy pictures of bones when the real skeleton is hanging right before him.
It is better to buy the separate bones, rather than the whole skeleton (which is often put together by ignorant mechanics). The shape of the important ends of the bones is forced by places where they touch each other; these places cannot be nicely observed in the assembled skeleton. When you have acquired your bones, study them until you can draw them by heart from any position. Then draw them together as a full skeleton.
As you learn the bones, memorize the exact origin and insertion of the necessary muscles. The origins and insertions are clearly given in any good medical book on human anatomy: Gray’s Anatomy, for example. The necessary muscles are listed in any decent book on artistic anatomy.
Artistic anatomy uses but a small part of the data of medical anatomy. Should you be tempted to actually dissect, wait until you are aware of the restrictions of your subject matter. Otherwise, you will be horribly confused.
But if you learn the origins and insertions of the muscles, I assure you that figure drawing becomes quite simple. Half the time, you are simply putting your pencil on the origin of the muscle and moving to the insertion, or vice versa. If you wish to draw the sternomastoid, what could be easier than to put your pencil on the mastoid and spiral gracefully down to the sternum?
In studying the artistic anatomy of man, it is valuable to keep in mind the artistic anatomy of animals and the place of man in the whole scheme of evolution. You can then see the essential simplicity of the skeleton, head, rib cage, backbone, pelvis, fore and hind limbs. In fact, the wonder is that things have altered so little since our most remote ancestor first stood on four legs. The six basic anatomical elements appear again and again in various but recognizable forms, to the point of monotony, as if the cosmic designers lacked the imagination to think of anything else. And the muscles of animals are all much like our own.
Thus, we can study almost any animal and learn a great deal about ourselves.
Furthermore, elements that are important — but perhaps small or insignificant on humans — may be of great size on other animals. If we study these animals, we are not likely to forget the existence of these elements. For instance, if you draw a horse’s skull a number of times, you will become very conscious of the huge nasal bone. Then, perhaps, when you draw the human skull, you will not forget the little human nasal bone.
In other words, bear in mind constantly that man is but another animal. His forms have been altered and changed by the immense forces of evolution, but essentially he is the same. His lungs are the lungs of the whale; his teeth are the elephant’s tusks; his arms are the bird’s wings; and his nails are the claws of the tiger.
Man is the only animal that stands fully erect on his two hind legs. If we consider a four-footed animal as man’s remote ancestor, and then consider the forces that would play upon this animal if it attempted to stand erect, we will be greatly helped in understanding the characteristic construction of man.
The four-footed animal, like the Arc de Triomphe, is firmly planted on four legs, an ideal situation for contending with the force of gravity. As for the animal’s backbone, the neck is an S curve, and the rest of the backbone is a flat C curve, in the form of a flat arch. The rib cage hangs suspended, in a sense, from the backbone. The pelvis is at the foot of the arch, in the rear. From the pelvis come the supporting rear limbs. The shoulder blades are on each side of the rib cage, the important spines of the shoulder blades pointing downwards. The serratus magnus muscles, coming from the shoulder blades, hold the rib cage in a sort of sling, so that the front legs, which are inserted in the shoulder blades, can support the front of the animal.
Now let us consider the changes that would be forced on such an animal if, through the course of evolution, the animal should stand fully erect.
First of all, we must realize that maintaining balance on two legs alone is difficult; to a large extent, man’s body is designed to meet this problem. In other words, the student must at all times be conscious of the force of gravity. Almost the first construction line an artist draws — in creating a standing figure — is the so-called gravity line, which is directed, of course, to the very center of the earth.
The animal, in attempting to stand erect, will of necessity attempt to rotate its pelvis to the upright. The point of rotation is where the rear limbs are inserted. Since the backbone is firmly inserted into the pelvis, the rotating pelvis carries the backbone, rib cage, and skull with it.
In the fully erect position, which is that of man, the typical animal backbone (S curve and C curve) is not the most efficient to carry the weight of the head and rib cage. Therefore, the backbone of man has been developed so that it curves under the head and under the rib cage. This creates the typical curvature of man’s backbone, which you should certainly memorize, as this curvature has such a compelling influence on man’s shape.
The back profile of man is but a reflection of these curves (though they are inhibited by the protrusion of the dorsal spines). On the front profile, the neck retains the curve of the backbone. Even the abdomen may be thought of as a reflection of the backbone curving under the rib cage.
If man, in his erect position, retained the protruding rib cage of the animal, man would be in danger of falling forward. So, unlike the animals, the greatest width of man’s rib cage is from side to side. Man’s shoulder blades, instead of being on the sides (as in the animal) are more towards the back. And the important spines of the shoulder blades are almost horizontal.
Practically all of man’s muscles engage in the task of holding him erect. If you think of muscles in this relationship, their characteristic form becomes clearer.
It is gluteus maximus — the great buttucks muscle — that has the all-important job of rotating the pelvis and holding it upright. That is why this muscle is more fully developed in man than in any other animal. This is why Aristotle called gluteus maximus the distinguishing muscle of man.
What students call the “strong cords” on each side of the small of the back — the muscles that rise from the pelvis to the rib cage and hold the rib cage erect — are of necessity well developed. So is the opposing muscle (rectus abdominis) in front.
The student should carefully consider which muscles or muscle masses hold man erect, and which muscles lock the joints (so to speak) in the upright position. The student will then not only understand why the shapes of identical muscles differ so much in man and the animals, but he will come to understand man as the delicately balanced apparatus that man truly is.
Function is another aspect of great importance in the study of artistic anatomy. Function has to do with the special kind of activity which the organism (or any part of it) performs. This applies to a muscle, a bone, or the animal itself.
An understanding of function leads at once to a better understanding of form. For instance, certain muscles perform the function of rotation and have the feel of a spiral; such muscles are the sternomastoid, the external oblique, and the sartorius. A greyhound is built for speed; his bones are long and light, and his muscles are slender. A workhorse is built for heavy work and looks it.
But perhaps the conception of function helps the artist most as soon as he can understand the following principle: namely, that if two or more adjacent muscles have approximately the same function, they may be grouped together by the artist.
Let us take an example. Clustered around the bones at the top of the lower arm are so many muscles that when the average student starts to study them, he is tempted to give up art altogether. But a cursory investigation of all these muscles will reveal that they break down into three groups. One group, the so-called supinator group, rotates the hand. Another group — the flexor group — flexes the hand. And another — the extensor group — extends the hand.
If your artistic anatomy book does not stress this point, simply take three colored crayons and color the supinator group red; the flexor group blue; and the extensor group green. Then you will clearly see the three groups on the lower arm; you will not have to draw details of the individual muscles that compose these groups.
Another functional group is the famous hamstring group at the back of the upper leg. There are three muscles in it: semimembranosus and semitendinosus on one side and the biceps of the thigh on the other. The anatomy books present a deep cleft down the middle of this group, although this cleft does not exist in the fleshed figure.
Further, an understanding of the functional grouping of muscles will help you to solve the difficult problem of where to place lines on the figure. A beginner cannot understand how an artist often creates lines on his figure though these lines are not present on the model. Sometimes these lines are placed at the meeting point of two functional groups of muscles. Artists call these lines “the lines between the functions.”
Let me tell you just a few of the terrible things all students do because they have not studied artistic anatomy. They cut off the back of the head on the profile because they are so fascinated by the face that they forget the back of the head entirely. They bring the neck out of some strange part of the shoulder, forgetting that it must rise from the first two ribs (otherwise we could not swallow or breathe). They take enormous bites out of the solid rib cage under the breast. They pull the rib cage far away from the pelvis, or push it right down into the pelvic basin. They run the split of the buttocks right through the impenetrable bone of the sacrum.
This brief catalog of art students’ sins (there are thousands of others) is presented simply to persuade you to study artistic anatomy and study it hard.