Anatomy of the Human Muscles

We were given the task by Steve to discover the anatomy of a Human Being. This time instead of looking at the skeletal structure of the human, we would have to look at the muscles and their groups.What is required of us was to label the pictures that we did, to look at a full anatomy picture and try to replicate it. The whole reason that we were going to do this task was so that when it comes to drawing a character, we can identify which muscle is being used when then are in a certain stance.

I did feel that when I started with this task, that it was very much going to be like that of the skeleton project.I thought that I was going to struggle, the image was already stuck in my head. I also felt that for this project I would be a bit scrapped for time, not having enough to complete the task.

I said to myself that I was going to start the task off by looking at different muscles of the body and start to sketch them out. 

Sketch of the "Trapezius"

The first image that I decided to look at was the "Trapezius". It's the muscle that carries over from the back of your shoulder to the bottom of your spine and its very important when it comes to manual labour. When I tried to draw this, I had tried to look at the different styles that it could be drawn it in. This had got me thinking for a while. It wasn't until I had my regular life drawing sessions, that I had a rough idea in what style this first drawing would be.

In the session, I created a style of just using lines to make up the model, with my teacher being quite impressed with it. As I wanted to carry it over, I started to draw like this. The problem that I had was that I wasn't as happy with the way that it came out. It doesn't anyway look realistic and looks very half done. I wasn't impressed with myself and knew that I had to do so much better to the next one.

The muscles in the underarm.

I knew that after the last drawing, I had to do better. I decided that I would have to find a new way of drawing the muscles as the last one was not good enough. I decided to experiment and go with a more traditional drawing style, without any outline. This time I was really proud of the way that this came out as I know that I had put the time and effort into it.

The part that I drew was the muscles that are under the armpit. I also managed to label every part of the muscle there. I thought that I got the shading on the piece pretty well done and I really do lie the way that the image looks without the use of bold outlines, something that was completely new to me.

Full body image of the muscles.

The last drawing that I had done was of a full body sketch of all the muscles that are in the human body. I also managed to label all the parts that you could see. With this drawing I thought that I could of done better but overall I was happy with what I had done. This time I had used bold outlines.

Something that I was not happy with, was the body proportions. I couldn't get the shape right on the picture and that's something that annoys me every time I see the picture.

I found the task quite difficult when I had started but it has defiantly given me an insight as to what parts appear where on the body and how to draw different sections of the body, so this has been a good experience.