 |
© 1998, 1999, WetCanvas! |
[ Home: ArtSchool Online: Drawing and Painting Life Portraits: Lesson 7 ]
|
|
© 1998, 1999, WetCanvas! |
When we think of portraits we may automatically
think of the head alone, but nearly every portrait you'll ever
paint will include more of the subject's body than just the head.
There will be the neck, perhaps the shoulders, frequently the
torso, arms, and hands, and occasionally the legs and feet as
well.
The material in these next lessons will help you understand the
construction of the parts of the body, how these parts interrelate,
and how their construction determines natural movement. To get
to know the way the body moves, it's helpful, and even fun, to
draw from a jointed wooden mannequin. The adult-proportioned mannequin
can be arranged in nearly any pose the human body will assume.
If you can't find them in your local art store, you can buy them
from artist's supply catalogs.
The neck can be thought of as a cylinder,
a very strong column rising from the sloping platform of the shoulders,
as you see in the illustration. Study the drawings. There are
seven vertebrae in the neck, each capable of movement, like links
in a chain. This allows the head to turn and twist in every direction
except 360 degrees to the back. Notice that the neck isn't perfectly
straight. It projects forward even when we are setting up very
straight. The strength of the neck is at the back, where the trapezius
muscles rise from well below the shoulder blades, and extend out
to the shoulders and up to the base of the skull, as shown in
the illustration. These trapezius muscles hold the head erect.
The neck, at the back, begins at a point on a level with the ear opening and the base of the nose. From the front, the visible neck begins at the chin and extends this same distance downward to the collarbone protrusions. Study the drawings to the right. Descending from behind the ears to a pit at the base of the front of the neck are two slender muscles called "bonnet strings" or sternomastoid muscles. These pull the head forward and back and allow the head to turn from side to side. Between these muscles, at the front, you will see a man's larynx or Adams apple. Notice that the neck can be stationary and still allow the head to nod forward and be thrown back, as shown to the right.
Until a child is three or four months old,
the neck is too weak to support the head, which is proportionately
very large for the body. The neck in a newborn baby and up to
age two is hardly visible as such, but may be indicated by creases
in rolls of fatty tissue. As the child grows the neck becomes
more perceptible and
takes on a rather
slender delicate appearance.
When a boy of sixteen or seventeen becomes active in athletics, the neck thickens. As a portrait painter, you should watch for this, as the heavy, sturdier neck is a good way to indicate a young man growing out of boyhood. All professional athletes show great strength in the neck. Michelangelo gave all his people sturdy necks, both men and women. There is something heroic about a very strong neck in a painted image.
The pit at the front
base of the neck has two small bony protuberances rising on either
side. These are the inner ends of the collarbones, the clavicles,
which attach at this central point to the breastbone, or sternum.
The opposite ends of these collarbones extend outward to the shoulders.
The shoulders appear as round and full forms. One shoulder can
be raised independently of the other, but in most portraits the
shoulders are the same height or very near it, unless one elbow
is
leaning on the arm of a chair or something similar. As the elbow
is higher, so is the shoulder.
The upper half of the torso is the cone shaped rib cage called the thorax. This "cage" is constructed of the twelve curved ribs on either side which connect to the sternum in the front and the spine in the back. The upper back of the torso is relatively flat, for there is a flat shoulder blade, or Scapula, on either side of the spine partially covering the rib cage. The top edge of this scapula parallels the slope of the shoulder and is thicker at the outer corner where it forms the shoulder joint as a socket for the bone of the upper arm. As a person ages, the upper back becomes more rounded, less flat. The torso is capable of twisting, bending from side to side, and bending forward and backward, but all this movement occurs only at the waist. The chest and the hips are relatively stationary.
The
lower part of the torso is the pelvis, which is made up of the
flat sacrum at the base of the spine and a hip bone on either
side. The pelvis functions as one stationary unit and no part
is capable of movement independently of the other two parts. The
hip bones flare out at right angles to each other; each has a
ridge at the top called the iliac crest which travels from the
back to the front of the body. The lower front corners of these
bones meet at center front and form the pelvis, the lowest point
at the front of the torso. At the outer edge of each hip bone
is a socket fitted with the ball end of the femur, a neck-like
extension of the thigh bone.
Stand up and raise your leg to the side, as if you were getting on a bicycle, and feel with your hand where the leg swings out. This spot, the hipline, is critically important to the artist. When drawing the full-length figure, this is where the body divides in half vertically - that is, the distance from the top of the head to the hipline is an equal measure to the distance from the hipline to the soles of the feet. Also, when the arm is hanging straight down at one's side, the line aligns with the inner wrist.
An artist visualizes this complex machine
which is our body in terms of the most simple masses. Thus, blocking
in the torso is accomplished quite effectively by drawing the
thoracic area as an egg, the pelvic area as a block, and connecting
the two with the flexible spine. (note; Remember, the torso is
not really a flexible sausage. There can only be movement front
to back, side to side, and twisting movement AT THE WAIST, the
area between the rib cage and the pelvis.)
Just as the vertical centerline and the horizontal center, or
eyeline, are of critical importance when blocking in the head,
so the centerline of the torso, both front and back, is extremely
important in drawing your figure correctly. In anatomy, this is
known as the median line. It's a good idea to use this line as
a checkpoint if your figure drawing seems to be incorrect, particularly
in the three-quarter view when your figure is in perspective.
AND when you are painting portraits, the buttons of a shirt must
fall on this centerline.
By drawing a line across the upper chest through the mass of the
deltoid muscles, at the heads of the humerus bones and slightly
above the armpits, you'll discover the broadest part of the entire
body. The shoulders are NOT broadest at their upper corners! Study
the arm carefully; From this point of greatest thickness near
the shoulders, the arm begins to taper until it becomes smallest
at the wrist.
The arms are capable
of radical movement in any direction at the shoulder joint. At
the elbow, only side-to-side and forward movement is possible.
The upper arm is round and is made up of only one bone, the humerus.
Deltoid, biceps, and triceps muscles are prominent in the male.
These muscles are less pronounced in the female. The forearm is
made up of two long bones, the radius and the ulna. It is heaviest
near the elbow, where it is round. Two-thirds of the way down
it tapers to a flat mass at the wrist. Holding your hand flat,
palm up, the ulna is on the little finger side. This bone is larger
at the elbow and smaller at the waist. The radius is the bone
on the thumb side, and is larger on the wrist end, smaller at
the elbow end. When you turn your hand over, palm down, the position
of the radius and the ulna don't change at the elbow end, but
midway down the forearm the radius twists over the ulna, allowing
the hand to lie flat in this position as well. Try this; with
your hand, you can easily feel the interaction of these two bones.
There is a sharper angle at the outside of the elbow joint, a
rounder curve inside. When the arm is bent (hands resting in lap
or elbow leaning on arm of chair), the point of the elbow is found
under the CENTER of the upper arm, not in a line with the back
of the upper arm. Shown in drawing above right. (line A to A)
MAKING THE ARM TOO STRINGY AND WITHOUT FORM: This is really the
only major fault in drawing the arm. The bare arms on a muscular
man are easy to draw, but how many portraits of athletes will
come under your brush in your lifetime? Try to paint the bare
arms of an eight-year-old boy. Now there's a task to test you
mettle! And slender young women, too - not so easy. For one thing,
the arms DO look stringy, but you as an artist must add form and
solidity.
TIP: As you study that thin little arm, you really need something
to go ACROSS the form. This is where your artistry comes in. Put
the paint on across the form to indicate its roundness. This truly
is the answer. NEVER paint an arm with up-and-down longitudinal
strokes.
The most natural way to construct the arm is to block it in as two cylinders of approximately the same length: one for the upper arm, from the top of the shoulder to elbow; and one for the forearm, from the elbow to the wrist.
Well, that should give you some good stuff
to chew on until next week. Then we will start on the dreaded
HANDS.....See you then!