Volume & Structure / Learn the Art of Dynamic, 3D Figure Drawing

1. Welcome & Orientation: Figure drawing is the most sought-after skill of artists and creative professionals, but it's also the most challenging subject you can learn. In this course, you're going to learn one of the most essential figure drawing skills; how to draw the figure as a three-dimensional object. In this course, you'll learn how to draw the figure as a collection of dynamic three-dimensional volumes that occupy deep space. This technique is called volumetric drawing. Volumetric drawing is a dynamic form of three-dimensional drawing that breaks that figure down into it's fundamental volumes. This is a technique that master artists have been using for centuries. In this course, we'll be drawing using a vocabulary of basic volumes, including the sphere, the cylinder, and the cube. You're going to learn how to combine these more basic volumes into the more complex hybrid volumes that the human body is made of. You're going to learn the essential skill of doing geometric drawings of the human figure. So instead of focusing on the complex, fleshy, organic forms of the figure, you'll first do drawings that simplify the body into volumes. These geometric drawings are a powerful tool that will ensure that you see and draw the figure as a dynamic three-dimensional object moving through space. Once you've learned how to draw the body geometrically, you'll then learn how to incorporate a dramatic sense of volume into more realistic and naturalistic drawings of the figure. To make sure that you have a deep understanding of how volume works, this course includes some unique and exciting projects. You'll be led step-by-step through the process of making your own anatomical models,so in addition to drawing from still images of a model, you'll leave this course with a number of physical drawing resources that you can turn, and flip in different directions to make sure that you always have help understanding what the volumes of the body are doing. In this course, you'll use different kinds of drawing to help you better understand the body. You'll have the opportunity to do more technical drawings, geometric drawings, and of course, more naturalistic, realistic drawings of the figure. You'll also learn from numerous diagrams, as well as detailed demonstration drawings. This course includes downloadable, fully nude still images of the human figure, as well as time to practice poses to help you draw more efficiently and to bring a sense of dynamism and energy to your drawings. This challenging and engaging new course in the Art and Science of Figure Drawing series offers more of the award-winning instruction, that has made my other drawing classes best-sellers. So if you're ready to learn how to bring a dramatic sense of three dimensionality to your figure drawings; enroll now in the art and science of figure drawing, volume and structure.Welcome to the volume and structure course in the Art and Science of Figure Drawing series. I'm your instructor, Brent Eviston. Volumetric drawing is a dynamic form of three-dimensional drawing that breaks the figure down into it's most fundamental volumes. When doing volumetric drawings, you'll draw using a vocabulary of volumes including the cylinder, the sphere, and the cube. In this course, you're going to learn how to combine these more basic volumes to create more complex hybrid volumes that better describe the forms of the human figure. By understanding and drawing the figure in terms of its volumes, you'll bring a heightened sense of three dimensionality to your drawings. Volumetric drawing has been used by master figurative artists for centuries, and it's still used today by master artists as well as creative professionals in numerous fields. Now before we get to the lessons, I want to introduce you to the course; talk about how it works, and cover some key concepts that you need to understand before you get started. If you're enrolled in this course, you've probably taken some of my other courses in the Art and Science of Drawing series or the Art and Science of Figure Drawing series. But if not, here's how these courses work. Every day you're going to watch one video lesson that includes lectures, demonstrations, diagrams, and photographs. Once you've watched the lesson, you're going to do the recommended practice. Once you've done with the practice, come back and you're ready for the next lesson. In these courses, it's important that you understand that I'm giving the minimum amount of practice. One of the best things you can do to increase your rate of improvement, is to double, triple, or even quadruple the amount of practice you're doing. Beyond good instruction, practice is the most important component for getting good at figure drawing. Now, I want to be clear about this. This is not a beginning drawing course, and this is not even a beginning figure drawing course. So if you're in this course, I'm going to assume that you have a decent foundation and more basic drawing skills, including how to craft basic volumes, how to shade basic volumes, how to measure a subject into terminates proportions, and how to describe a form using dynamic mark making and contours. I'm also going to assume that you've taken my gesture course, which is the first course in the art and science of figure drawing series. This volume and structure course is the second course in that series. In this course, we're going to be building on a lot of the ideas that I talked about in the gesture course. Although there's no requirement that you've taken these other courses, I would highly recommend taking the gesture course before you take this course. But if you haven't taken these other courses, and you already have a strong foundation in basic drawing skills as well as gesture drawing, and you want to go ahead and take this course, that's fine too. Throughout this course, I'm going to be giving you reminders on which courses you can revisit to refresh the skills necessary to be successful in this course. Because I'm assuming that you've already taken some of my basic drawing courses, as well as the gesture course, I'm going to assume that you already have some materials that you're comfortable using and the setup that you figured out that works for you to watch these video lessons and draw from the practice images. For the most part, I'm going to be using the same materials that I've used in previous courses; including oil-based colored pencils, 18 by 24-inch drawing paper on a drawing board, I'm going to be using some clips, I'll be using a kneaded eraser, and I'll be sharpening my pencil just using a basic electric pencil sharpener. But as always, the materials that you use are pretty open. If you found something that works for you that differs from mine, that's great. Remember, the concepts that I'm teaching are fundamentals. These concepts work with all kinds of different materials. Really learning the ideas that I'm presenting is much more important than using any particular kinds of materials. Just like the gesture course, this course comes with some timed practice reels. These practice reels are a way for you to learn to draw efficiently so you're not stretching out a drawing over hours. It's not that there's anything wrong with longer drawings, but one of the things I'm trying to do is prepare you to draw from a life model and life models can only hold poses for so long. This means that when the model takes a 20-minute pose, you'll be able to get much more done than those 20 minutes. But this course does also come with some downloadable still images to make sure that if you want to, you can draw at a slower pace. Although I think it's important for you at least to try to complete the practice in the allotted times and the practice reels, it is okay to pause the videos if you truly feel like you need more time. In this course, we will be working from photographs of fully nude female and male models, so I want you to keep this in mind and try and be mature in this course. In the Q&A section in particular, it's important that you are being respectful and not making any inappropriate comments. If you're not sure whether or not a comment is inappropriate, you probably shouldn't make it. In addition to the basic materials that I talked about, this course also includes some pretty unique projects. In this course, I'm going to show you how to make some anatomical models using basic household materials. In addition to the basic drawing materials, you'll be instructed in a few lessons in this course to get some extra items as well. For the special projects, you'll be asked to get scissors and some eggs. But I'll talk more about the materials necessary when we get to those projects. In this course, you're going to be doing traditional drawings, geometric drawings; you're going to be working with some physical objects to create some three-dimensional anatomical models, and you'll be doing a little bit of technical drawing. During the technical drawing process, you'll see me using a straight edge and a T-square. These are optional materials, but it can make this process easier. Remember, for all of these special projects, I'm going to lead you step-by-step through them to make sure you really understand what to do. With all of this in mind, let's explore some of the key concepts that you need to understand before you start the lesson. In this course, you'll learn how to draw the figure as a collection of dynamic three-dimensional volumes that occupy deep space. This technique is called volumetric drawing. Volumetric drawing is a dynamic form of three-dimensional drawing that breaks the figure down into it's fundamental volumes. This is a technique that master artists have been using for centuries. Take a look at this drawing by Luca Cambiaso. In order to figure out the light and shadow pattern on these figures, Cambiaso has drawn each figure as a collection of boxes and cylinders. This is a common technique used by many masters, because what every master knows is that the details only make sense when properly related to the larger volumes and shadow patterns. Even the greatest masters at figurative art needed to simplify their subjects into their most basic volumes, so they could understand how the forms of the figure moved through space. One thing you may have noticed is that Cambiaso uses a collection of primarily boxes, while I use more rounded forms like ovoids and cylinders. Now I do use boxes for the lower section of the forearms. But the important thing here to note is that there is no single correct way to break the body down into volumes. Different artists use different collections of volumes, and depending on the model and the pose; I will use mostly boxes for a volumetric drawing should the situation called for it. But the vast majority of volumetric drawings done by past masters as well as current masters contain all three of the basic volumes. In this course, we'll be drawing using a vocabulary of basic volumes, including the sphere, the cylinder, and the cube. Before you begin this course, you should already be comfortable drawing these volumes both from observation as well as out of your head. This means that you should be able to invent these volumes on the page in different proportions and at various orientations in space. In this course, you're going to learn how to combine these more basic volumes into the more complex hybrid volumes that the human body is made of. You're going to learn the essential skill of doing geometric drawings of the human figure. Instead of focusing on the complex, fleshy, organic forms of the figure; you'll first do drawings that simplify the body into volumes. These geometric drawings are a powerful tool that will ensure that you see and draw the figure as a dynamic three-dimensional object moving through space. Once you've learned how to draw the body geometrically, you'll then learn how to incorporate a dramatic sense of volume into more realistic and naturalistic drawings of the figure. When doing geometric drawings, we want to make the volumes of the body explicit. To do this, we'll often separate the volumes of the body and will even leave some sections of the body out. By removing slices from the body, we can better see the specifics of the volumes that it's made up of. To make sure that you have a deep understanding of how volume works, this course includes some unique and exciting projects. You'll be led step-by-step through the process of making your own anatomical models. In addition to drawing from still images of a model, you'll leave this course with a number of physical drawing resources that you can turn and flip in different directions, to make sure that you always have help understanding what the volumes of the body are doing. Well, congratulations on enrolling in this course. I'm thrilled that you're here. When you're ready, let's begin the first lesson. 2. The Shape of the Rib Cage: Welcome to the first lesson of the art and science of figure drawing volume and structure. In this first lesson, you're going to learn how to draw the basic volume of the rib-cage. We're starting with a rib-cage because it's the largest single volume in the human body and numerous other volumes will attach to it. Now instead of focusing on individual ribs, we're going to focus on the basic egg shape that the ribs make when they come together as a whole. When drawing an egg, I'll first draw a simple circle because the base of an egg is essentially spherical, and of course, an egg narrows toward the top. But remember, this is just a flat shape until we indicate volume. There are two ways will indicate volume on the shape of the rib-cage. The first is by drawing a longitude line. This gives us the impression that the egg is turned toward our left. The next indication of volume will come from the ellipse that occurs at the opening of the neck or the cylinder of the neck attaches to the rib-cage. So in this lesson, you're going to learn how to take a simple volume of an egg and turn it into a human rib-cage. To do this, you'll use some landmarks that should already be familiar to you, like the suprasternal notch in the zygote process. You'll also learn how to draw some new anatomical features, including the thoracic arch. By the end of this lesson, this is what you should be able to draw - a simplified rib-cage based on the volume of an egg. Now remember, it's only possible to draw what we know. So before we start our demonstration drawings, it's critical that you understand the anatomy behind what we're drawing today. Let's start off by taking a look at an actual rib-cage. As you can see, I've removed to the arms for my skeleton to give you a better view of the rib-cage. Hopefully, you can clearly see why we think of the rib-cage as an egg. Remember, as with any subject, when drawing the figure, we must start off with the biggest forms and work our way down to the smaller forms. So when learning how to draw the rib-cage, we must ignore the individual ribs in favor the shape they make as a whole. You'll notice however, that the rib-cage does not occupy the very bottom of the egg, but nevertheless, the basic volume of the egg is an important starting point. We'll come back to this idea in just a few minutes. In order to turn this simple egg shape into the volume of a rib-cage, we need to begin adding the essential anatomical landmarks. We'll start with the suprasternal notch. Now it's important to remember that this is not a beginning figure drawing course. Hopefully, you're already familiar with the suprasternal notch for the gesture drawing course. If at any point you feel that the ideas or the anatomy that we talk about in this course are too advanced, I would highly recommend that you revisit that gesture drawing course in the art and science of figure drawing series. From here on out in the course, I'm going to assume either that you've already taken the gesture drawing course or that you have enough that you're drawing experience to recognize the anatomical landmarks and the concepts that I'm referring to. The suprasternal notch or what some people refer to as the pit of the neck, can be found at the top of the sternum and descending straight down from the suprasternal notch will imagine a line that runs right down the center of the sternum. This line will make up an important part of the longitude line as we draw the rib-cage. To see why this is important, let's take a look at the rib-cage from a three-quarter view where we can see both the front and the side of the rib-cage at the same time. Although the line for the sternum appears straight when it's viewed head on, you can see here that it neatly follows the longitude line as it curves over the surface of the egg. Next, we're going to locate the elliptical opening where the cylinder of the neck meets the top of the rib-cage. When we view the rib-cage from above, we can clearly see the elliptical shape of this opening. But from the front view, this ellipse goes into perspective and appears more closed. To arrive at this ellipse, I want you to imagine that we chop off the top of the egg, leaving us with a circular opening at the top of the rib-cage, where the neck will eventually attach. When we look at the rib-cage from the side in just a few minutes, you'll be able to see that the back of this opening is slightly higher than the front of this opening. This means that even though the rib-cage is at eye level, the ellipse is tilted up and we can see into it because the back of the ellipse is higher than the front. Now let's direct our attention to the bottom of the sternum where we find the Xiphoid process. It's important to note that of course, the Xiphoid process also sits on the longitude line that runs down the center of the rib-cage. Now we're going to find the bottom of the rib-cage. To arrive at the bottom of the rib-cage, we're essentially going to chop off the bottom of the egg. But before we do, I'd like you to note that the Xiphoid process falls exactly halfway between the suprasternal notch and the bottom of the rib-cage. This can be an important proportion to know when drawing the rib-cage at eye level. However, it is important to note that this ratio will change as soon as the rib-cage tilts towards us or away from us. Now I'd like you to direct your attention once again to the bottom of the rib-cage. You'll notice that at both sides of the bottom of the rib-cage, we see the edges of the rib-cage turn in and head upward toward the Xiphoid process, creating an arch shape. This is called the thoracic arch. You can see why it has this name. When you look at the Xiphoid process, which is at the center of the arch, on each side, you'll see the arch curve and descend downward before changing direction and meeting the bottom of the rib cage. This completes the volume of the rib-cage from the front. It's important to note that the exact size and shape of the rib-cage will vary greatly from model to model. The shape of the thoracic arch will also vary greatly, but understanding the basic forms and volumes of the rib-cage will allow you to more accurately find and draw the rib-cage when you're working with a real model. Now let's take a look at the rib-cage from the side. The first thing you should notice is that when viewed from the side, the rib-cage appears much narrower than when it is viewed from the front. Just like before, the best way to understand the shape of the rib-cage when viewed from the side is as an egg. But of course, you can see, this egg is narrower. You should also note that this egg is at a tilted axis with a top of the egg leaning to our right. Although it's difficult to see directly from a side view, the suprasternal notch is located here. The seventh cervical vertebrae is located here. Notice that it is slightly higher than this suprasternal notch. If we cut a line between these two points and remove the top of the egg, we once again arrive at the opening where this cylinder shape of the neck will eventually attach to the egg shape of the rib-cage. It's important however, to note that from this view, the elliptical opening where the neck will attach appears just as a straight line. We are not seeing into it as we did from the front view. Now to complete our transition of a basic egg shape into the more complex shape of the rib-cage, we need to remove a good portion of the bottom half of it, starting where the Xiphoid process is. From here, the rib-cage cuts inward toward the bottom corner of the rib-cage, which you should remember from the view of the front of the rib-cage. From here, we'll complete the bottom of the rib-cage by attaching a line from the corner of the rib-cage back to the location where the bottom rib emerges from the spine. I'd also like to note that the curve that makes up the back of the rib-cage is derived from the curvature of the spine. We'll talk much more about this spine in future lessons. Now let's take a quick look at the back view of the rib cage. Hopefully, you can clearly see the egg shape that's created when we view the rib cage as a whole. Even without a diagram, hopefully you can also see where we would cut the bottom of the egg shape off to arrive at the bottom of the rib cage. Near the top of the rib cage, we find the seventh cervical vertebrae and descending down from there is the line for this spine. Now, just like the line for the sternum appears straight when viewed head on, you can also see that the line for the spine appears straight, when viewed directly from the back. With all of this in mind, let's get to our demonstration drawing. What you're going to see me demonstrate here is what you're going to be doing for your practice today. So pay close attention and feel free to watch this as many times as you need. First, you'll see me draw two horizontal lines using a ruler. The exact distance between these lines is not important, just as long as they're around 3-5 inches apart from one another. On the far left, you'll see me draw an egg shape. I usually begin eggs with a basic circle at their base. From there, you'll see me rock my pencil back and forth to create the narrow or upper section of the egg. You'll notice that I'm not pressing too hard with my pencil. I want to keep these lines faint. You'll see me go through the steps necessary to turn this simplified egg shape into the more complex volume of the rib cage. As you're watching, it's important to note that the order of these steps is not nearly as important as including all of the elements that I'm about to show you. Hopefully you'll remember from the diagrams that we just looked at that the bottom of the rib cage is created by cutting off the bottom of this basic egg shape. Here you'll see me make a line indicating where that cut will be. You'll also remember that at the top of the rib cage, there was an elliptical opening where the cylinder of the neck will eventually attach. You'll see me draw that ellipse here. Before we go any further, I'm also going to draw the rib cage from the side view, working back and forth between these views will help you better understand how the two views relate to each other and how they work together to communicate the idea of volume. Again, you'll notice that this egg is narrower and it's at a slanted axis. When comparing these two views side-by-side, it should become apparent why we see into the ellipse for the opening of the neck from the front view and not from the side. Here, you can clearly see that the front for the opening of the neck is lower than the back of the opening for the neck. This tips the ellipse for the neck forward so we can see into it from the front view. Here, you'll see me extend the bottom of the rib cage from the front view over to our side view. Now you'll see me indicate the suprasternal notch at the base of the opening for the neck. I'm simplifying it into a V-shape. On the side view, the suprasternal notch will be located here. But again, because we're viewing the rib cage from the side, it's difficult to see. Hopefully you recall that from this view that the xyphoid process is located about halfway between the suprasternal notch and the bottom of the rib cage. After drawing a vertical line for the sternum, you'll see me locate the xyphoid process. Once again, I'm indicating it using a V-shape. Once again, because the sternum in the xyphoid process are on the front plane of the rib cage, they're difficult to see from this side. With all of these landmarks in place, I can now draw the thoracic arch. I'll start by drawing the arch on either side of the xyphoid process, curving outward and downward before changing direction and curving toward the bottom of the side of the rib cage. This completes the front view of the rib cage. You should note that the shape of the thoracic arch, as well as the shape of the rib cage itself will change dramatically from model to model. Let's complete the side view. First, we'll locate the xyphoid process by pulling a line over from the front view, even from the side view, it's still halfway between the suprasternal notch and the bottom of the rib cage from the side, that thoracic arch appears to come in just slightly from the contour of the basic egg shape that we started with. You'll notice that from the side view the complex and changing curves of the thoracic arch that we see on the front view are not really visible. I'll now locate the front corner of the bottom of the rib cage. Notice that it's in line with the bottom of the rib cage of the front view. From there, we'll draw a line arching slightly upward toward the spine. Generally speaking, the back of the rib cages covered by so much muscle, you don't need as deep of an understanding of it as you do the front of the rib cage and the thoracic arch. This simplified version will serve you well in most situations. This completes the rib cage from the side view. Notice that there are no indications of volume from the side view and minimal indications of volume when we view the rib cage directly from the front. The same is true with the view of the back of the rib cage. From the back, the rib cage appears as a simple egg shape with the bottom cutoff and a straight line for the spine with the seventh cervical vertebrae at the top. Although it's essential for you to understand these more basic views of the rib cage. It's not until we turn the rib cage into a position where we can see both the front and the side or the back and the side that we start to see it as a volume. This is because when we view the rib cage directly from the front or the back, the longitude lines created by the sternum or the spine appears straight. It's not until we begin to turn the rib cage that these longitude lines appear to curve across the surface of the form indicating that it is a volume. To draw the rib cage from this three-quarter view, you can see that just like before, I've started off with a basic egg shape. Now that we're seeing it from a three-quarter view, the axis of this egg shape is not straight up and down, but it's also not as tilted as the side view. It's somewhere in-between. Hopefully, you can also see that this egg shape isn't quite as wide as the egg shape we used for the front view, nor is it as narrow as the egg shape that we used for the side view? Once again, it's somewhere in between. Before I draw any anatomy, you'll see me draw the curving longitude line that will indicate both the volume of the egg as well as its orientation in space. You can see that this egg appears to be turning toward our left. Using my ruler, you'll see me draw a horizontal line from the bottom of the ellipse of the opening of the neck, from the front view of the rib cage all the way over to this three-quarter view. Now I can draw the ellipse for the opening of the neck. Notice that this ellipse is slightly tilted. This is because unlike the view of the front of the rib cage where the suprasternal notch of the seventh cervical vertebrae are vertically aligned. In a three-quarter view, we must see the ellipse of the opening of the neck travel upward from the suprasternal notch back toward the seventh cervical vertebrae. Even if you don't fully understand this spatial concept yet, make sure it gets into your drawing with more practice and experience, you'll better understand how volumetric drawing works. Now, on the curving longitude line, I'll locate the suprasternal notch at the base of the opening for the neck, followed by design xyphoid process. As you can see, I've still located the xyphoid process halfway between the suprasternal notch and the bottom of the rib cage. Now, I'll draw the side of the thoracic arch closest to us by curving it downward toward the bottom of the rib cage, before changing its direction to curve into the sign of the rib cage. Finally, I'll curve the lines slightly upward as it curves around the back of the rib cage toward the spine. To complete this side of the rib cage on our left, we must understand what happens when we turn a form and it goes into perspective. You should already have a basic understanding of perspective. Which should be obvious that this side of the rib cage on the right is closest to us, and this side of the rib cage on the left is further away, meaning of course, that this side on our right will appear larger and the side on our left will appear smaller. After drawing the opening of the thoracic arch on our left, it's time to indicate the bottom rib cage. Notice that I've drawn it higher on the picture plane than the bottom of the rib cage on our right, therefore, making it appear smaller. You'll also notice that the distance from the center line to the side of the thoracic arch on our left is much narrower than the distance from the center line to the thoracic arch on our right. This three quarter view of the rib cage is the most important view you can learn. Again, the specifics of the shape and proportion of the rib cage will vary model to model. You'll end up using this view of the rib cage more than any other. Hopefully you can see what an excellent job this three quarter view does of indicating the volume of the rib cage by revealing both the opening of the ellipse at the top of the rib cage, as well as the curving longitude line created by the sternum. Finally, let's take a look at a three-quarter view of the rib cage from the back. Of course, once again, we'll begin with a basic egg shape. From the back, the primary indication of volume is going to come from the longitude line created by the spine. Notice how it curves over the surface of the egg. At the top of the spine, we find the seventh cervical vertebrae. You'll notice that from the back, we don't usually see the opening for the neck. This is because the seventh cervical vertebrae at the back of the opening is higher than the suprasternal notch, which is at the front. Finally, I'm going to indicate the bottom of the rib cage. Notice how each side curves up toward the spine. When drawing an actual figure, the lower back ribs are usually covered up by muscle, so you don't need a deep understanding of how the lower back ribs connect to the spine. In future lessons in this course, you'll learn more about the rib cage and how to refine this volume. These are the essential views of the rib cage. With all this in mind, let's get you to your practice. For today's practice, I'm going to ask you to copy this diagram a minimum of three times. You're welcome to copy this diagram by pausing the video. I've also included a downloadable PDF that you can find along with this lesson in the course contents section. When I'm drawing bones, I often like to use white pencil on dark paper, but you're welcome to use dark pencil on white paper or whatever you have available. I would encourage you to re-watch this demonstration as often as you need before starting your practice, you can even draw right along with me. The goal of today's practice is for you to burn these basic shapes and proportions into your mind. These are the most common views of the rib cage and the ones you'll draw by far the most. By understanding how to draw these basic views on their own, you'll have a much easier time finding and drawing them from a real model. As always, if you are looking for more practice, you can try doubling or tripling the amount of times you're copying this diagram. It's important that you have a deep understanding of how to draw these basic forms before moving on to the next lesson, where you're going to learn how to draw the rib cage from any angle in proper perspective. Well, good luck with your practice today and I'll see you back here for lesson 2. 3. The Shape of the Rib Cage Continued: In this lesson, you're going to explore the basic volume of the rib cage by drawing from simplified versions of it. To do this, you're going to make two miniature rib cages. One you're going to make from an egg and the other you're going to make from paper. These basic rib cage volumes will provide the foundation upon which you will construct the more complex forms of the figure in the future. But before I show you how to make your miniature rib cages, I'd like to introduce you to an important concept, compound curves. To understand what a compound curve is, let's first draw a curved line on a flat piece of paper. The line, of course is curving, but the piece of paper remains flat. A compound curve occurs when the surface that a curved line is drawn upon also begins to curve. By bending this piece of paper, we have a curved line traveling over a curved surface. The thoracic arch of the rib cage is a compound curve. By drawing from the two miniature rib cage volumes that you're going to learn about today, you'll have a better understanding of the basic volumes of the rib cage, as well as the complex compound curves of the thoracic arch. I'm going to begin by showing you how to turn a real egg into a simplified rib cage volume. To do this, you'll need an egg and a pencil. I would highly recommend using hard boiled eggs for this project. You can also find wooden eggs at hardware stores. I would also recommend that you watch the preparation process all the way through at least once before attempting to prepare your own egg. The first thing you're going to do is find the very top of the egg where you're going to draw a small dot. Now, you want to make sure that this dot is centered so when you look down on the egg from directly above, the dot appears to be at the center. Next, you're going to do the same thing on the bottom of the egg, find the very bottom and draw a small dot. It's important that these two dots are centered so that if they were connected by an imaginary line, this line would run directly through the center of the egg. Next, starting with one dot, you're going to draw a line that travels all the way around the surface of the egg and connects backup with the dot from which you started the line. Although this line of course will curve over the surface of the egg as it travels from one dot to another, you'll notice that when the egg is viewed from directly above or directly from the side, this line appears straight. When you're drawing, if you're using graphite pencil, you may get graphite on your fingers and leave fingerprints or smudges on the surface of the egg. Luckily, graphite erases quite well from the surface of eggs. So, at any point in this process, feel free to clean up the egg with an eraser. Next, at the very top of the egg, which will be the smaller, more narrow end of the egg, you're going to make two marks, one on either side of the dot that you placed at the center of the top of the egg. Both of these new marks will be on the line that you just drew. When doing this, you'll want to make one of these marks closer to the dot at the center of the top of the egg and the other a little further away. You can see that the mark I've drawn on the right side of the dot is a little closer to the center dot, than the mark I've drawn on the left. Although the precise placement of these marks can vary slightly, you want to try your best to match as closely as you can the basic proportions and distances between the marks and shapes I'll be drawing on the egg. Now, I'm going to use these two new marks to establish the diameter of a circle. I'll draw this circle so that the two marks that I just drew establish the outermost edges of the circle at its widest points. And you'll notice that the line I've drawn bisects the circle, cutting it in half. Now, because one of the marks we drew was closer to the dot at the center of the top of the egg, and one was a little further away, you'll notice that the circle is slightly off centered. This circle represents the opening where the cylinder of the neck would connect with the rib cage. And the fact that it's off centered will ensure that the front of the opening for the neck will be lower than the back, tilting this ellipse forward, just as you saw in the diagrams that we drew in the previous lesson. Now, on the location of the mark that was a little further away from the dot at the center of the top of the egg, you'll see me draw a small v-shape pointing down toward the bottom of the egg. This of course, represents the suprasternal notch. This next part is optional, but sometimes I like to color in the opening for the neck. Now, I'll view this rib cage egg directly from the front. Hopefully, you remember from the diagrams In the previous lesson that the rib cage does not occupy the very bottom of the egg shape. So, here you'll see me make a mark just a little up from the bottom of the egg. Next, I'll divide the distance from this mark to the suprasternal notch in half. Hopefully, you already understand that this gives us the location of the xiphoid process. Now, we're going to draw the thoracic arch. So starting at the location of the xiphoid process, I'm going to draw two lines, one on each side of the xiphoid process. These two lines should mirror one another. Each of them should start at the xiphoid process and travel diagonally outward and down. You'll notice that both of these lines are just slightly curved, taken together, these two lines create a shape that is somewhere between an upside-down v or an upside-down u-shape. Now, before we go any further, we're going to draw a large circle on the bottom of the egg. To do this, we're going to need to view the bottom of the egg from directly above. Here, you should be able to see both the mark at the center of the very bottom of the egg, as well as the mark for the bottom of the rib cage. Now, on the line we see we're going to draw a second mark. These two marks should each be the exact same distance from the dot at the center of the bottom of the egg. Once both dots are placed. Go ahead and use them to create the diameter of a circle. This circle should be much larger than this circle that we drew for the opening of the neck. And when we view the bottom of the egg from directly above, this circle should appear to be perfectly centered with a dot at the center of the bottom of the egg, directly at the center of the circle. With a circle at the bottom of the rib cage in place, now, let's get back to the thoracic arch. You can see that as my slightly curving line for the thoracic arch approaches the circle that represents the bottom of the rib cage, the line for the thoracic arch begins to change direction and it curves right into the circle that represents the bottom of the rib cage. And of course, the line for the thoracic arch on the other side needs to mirror this. The next thing you'll see me do is connect to the back of the bottom of the rib cage to this spine. I'll do this by curving each line at either side of this spine upward where it will connect and flow right into the line for the spine. The very last things you'll see me do are to draw in the xiphoid process using a v-shape as well as mark the location of the seventh cervical vertebrae using the tiny circle at the top of the line for the spine. This concludes the drawing portion for the preparation of our rib cage egg. Feel free to use an eraser to clean up any smudges, fingerprints, or any excess lines that may have been accidentally drawn. You can also erase any construction lines that were used to draw the actual rib cage, but that aren't part of the rib cage itself. These lines include the front of this circle at the bottom of the rib cage, as well as the line that continues down below the sternum and xiphoid process. It's important to remember that this is not a perfect representation of a rib cage. A real rib cage is wider side to side than it is front-to-back. However, drawing from this simplified volume is a great opportunity for you to better understand the basic volume of the rib cage, as well as some of the complex and compound curvatures that move over its surface, including the sternum, the spine, and the thoracic arch. Hopefully, you can see what an excellent job this model does, standing in for the more complex volume of the rib cage. For this next project, you'll need to locate the paper rib cage PDF included with this lesson in the course content section. Just like the preparation for the egg, you'll want to watch this demonstration all the way through before you attempt to build your own paper rib cage, you'll need to print this PDF on a standard sheet of 8.5 by 11 inch paper. I've printed mine on 8.5 by 11 inch card stock, but regular paper will do just fine. The preparation for this paper rib cage model is simple. First, you'll carefully cut along the dotted line using either scissors or an x acto blade blade and a cutting mat. Once the shape is cut out, you'll overlap and align the tabs on either side, creating a cone shape. Tape these tabs together. I'm using archival Artist's tape, but regular scotch tape will work just fine. Next, we'll need to flatten the cone shape. Place two fingers in the small opening at the top and gently place a flat hand on top of the larger opening at the bottom and gently roll the form back and forth, being careful not to crease or folded. This will help flatten out the cone shape, making sure that the width from side to side is wider than the depth, just like a real rib cage. This paper rib cage model is great because unlike the egg, you can actually see into the opening for the neck. You can also clearly see how the opening for the neck, as well as the bottom of the rib cage angle upward as they approach the spine. Also, this hollow, flattened, cone-shaped gives you a better sense of the compound curve of the opening for the thoracic arch. Obviously, because of its straight sides, this is not a perfect representation of a rib cage either. But just like the egg, this will provide some excellent practice drawing the simplified elements that we will find in an actual rib cage and how they relate to one another as the volume moves through space. Now this last step is optional, but it can be helpful when you're trying to draw from your paper rib cage. You're going to essentially create a handle for your rib cage model using a dowel or even a pencil. I'm using a white pencil, so it will match the color of the rib cage. Place the pencil inside the paper rib cage aligned with the tabs on the back and go ahead and tape it. This will enable you to turn the rib cage in space and stabilize it while you're drawing it, while keeping your hands away from the rib cage itself so they don't obscure any part of it. Now before we get to today's drawing demonstration, I'd like to remind you about the shapes and elements we'll be focusing on. First, of course, is the large egg shape of the form as a whole and of course you'll want to pay attention to its axis. The next simple shape is the ellipse at the top of the egg for the opening of the neck. You'll want to pay close attention to both its axis and its width to height relationship. You'll also want to pay close attention to the distance and directional relationship between the suprasternal notch and the xiphoid process. This will help you establish the line for the sternum. You'll also want to pay close attention to where the contours of the thoracic arch and the bottom of the rib cage meet the outside contour of the basic egg shape. You'll also want to find the corner where the thoracic arch meets the bottom of the rib cage. It's critical to remember that each of these points has a specific distance and directional relationship between them. For example, if we look at the two bottom corners of the thoracic arch, we get a sense of how far apart they are from one another, as well as the fact that the corner on our right is lower than the corner on our left. I find that one of the most useful measuring strategies is to triangulate between three points. Any three points will work. And of course, you can measure the distances and directions between any conceivable points on the egg. For a refresher on angle citing, triangulation and measurement, I would encourage you to revisit the measuring and proportion course in the original art and science of drawing series. Now, let's get to our drawing demonstrations. Let's start with a paper rib cage. First, I'll select the position. One note about this paper rib cage is that it really only works to draw it from the front. Because of its straight sides, it doesn't offer a good representation of the spine. When you're drawing today, you don't need to follow the exact order that I'm using to draw the various elements. Remember, the order of operations is not as important as getting all of the elements into your drawing. But I'll start with the straight edge of the paper rib cage on our left. And I'll establish both the distance and direction between the left side of the ellipse at the opening for the neck and the location where the bottom of the rib cage meets the side of the rib cage. Next, I'll draw the ellipse at the opening for the neck. I'm paying particular attention to the width to height relationship of the ellipse, as well as its axis. You'll notice that the side of the ellipse on our right is higher than this side of the ellipse on our left. Next, I'll establish the side of the rib cage on our right. Now, even though the signs of a real rib cage are curved, these straight line relationships between the sides of the ellipse at the top of the rib cage and the bottom corners at the sides of the rib cage are essential, if we want to get the basic proportions of the rib cage correct. That's one of the things I love about this paper rib cage model. It forces us to focus on relationships that are easy to miss when we're drawing from an egg shape or a real rib cage. With these four outermost corners established, now I'll place the suprasternal notch. Notice that it's closer to the side on our right than it is to the side on our left. Next, I'll drop a line down for the sternum. Now of course, on this paper rib cage model, the sternum appears straight. When you draw from the egg that you prepared, it will appear curved. How straight or curved a real sternum appears, largely depends on the model. Next, I'll look at the xiphoid process. To do this, I'm paying close attention to both the distances and the exact direction between the xiphoid process and the bottom corners of the rib cage. It's only once I'm certain that all of the various points we've drawn so far are properly placed, that I will begin to carefully craft the complex curves of the thoracic arch. Now once again, it's critical that you understand that the edges of this paper rib cage do not represent a real rib cage. The real rib cage has curved sides. However, once you've accurately drawn the paper rib cage is you've observed it. Its easy to modify this form into something closer to a real rib cage by simply bowing out the sides. Now for your practice today, this last part is optional, but it can be good practice to visualize and then modify your drawing of the paper rib cage cone into the volume of an egg with the sternum located on the curving longitude line. Now I'll demonstrate how to draw from the egg. The process is very similar to the one you just saw me demonstrate using the paper rib cage. First, you'll select the position you want to draw it from and then stabilize it with your free hand. We'll start off by establishing the basic shape of the egg. Now it's very possible that the egg you prepare will be a slightly different shape than mine. So you'll want to pay close attention to not only the axis that the egg is tilted at, but also its width to height relationship. With the basic shape established, I'll now draw the longitude line, paying particular attention to the distance between each side of the egg. For example, this longitude line is closer to this side of the egg on our left than it is to the side of the egg on our right. In fact, you can see that the distance between the longitude line and the side of the egg on our right is about twice as large as the distance from the longitude line to the side of the egg on our left. Again, you should always be looking for these kinds of relationships. With the longitude line properly placed, I'll now draw the ellipse for the opening of the neck, paying particular attention to both its axis and its width to height relationship. Here, the location of the suprasternal notch nearly takes care of itself, because it's found at the intersection between the bottom of the ellipse for the opening of the neck and the longitude line. Next, I'll locate the xiphoid process. Now it's important to note that because the top of the egg is tilted towards us, the sternum begins to appear larger, which places the xiphoid process closer to the bottom of the egg than it would normally appear. Next, I'll begin to craft the thoracic arch. I'm paying particular attention to the angle between the xiphoid process and where the thoracic arch intersects with the outer contour of the egg. Now, even though the side of the thoracic arch on our left would eventually travel down and meet the circle that we drew for the bottom of the rib cage. We don't see this because of the way the egg is turned. This is a great example of how drawing from a rib cage made from an actual egg will help prepare you to locate and draw the volume of the rib cage of a real figure. Now we'll complete the thoracic arch, paying particular attention to how it curves and how it connects with the circle that represents the bottom of the rib cage. Now you'll remember, that the signs of the paper rib cage where too straight to represent the actual sides of a rib cage, which are more rounded. But the signs of an actual rib cage are actually a little flatter than what we would find in most eggs. Now this is optional in your practice today, but to help correct for this, you'll see me slightly flattened out the sides of the egg. In future lessons, you'll derive the exact shape and proportions of the rib cage from actual figures. But for now, let's get you to your practice working with your paper model of a rib cage as well as the egg you've prepared. So for your practice today, I'm going to ask you to position and draw both your paper rib cage model as well as the egg you've prepared, a minimum of 12 times. Make sure that for each drawing you do, the subject you are working with is in a different position. And just a reminder that the paper rib cage model should only be drawn from the front, but the egg, you can position and draw from any angle, front or back. Feel free to fit as many drawings as you can on a single page. At the end of your practice, you should have a minimum of 24 drawings. 12 of the paper rib cage and 12 of the egg. But as always, if you're looking for more practice, feel free to double, triple or even quadruple the number of times you're drawing each subject. If for any reason you don't have access to a printer with paper or eggs, I've included some PDF's of the egg that I've prepared for you to draw from. Well, good luck with your practice today, and I will see you back here for the next lesson when you're going to learn how to locate and draw the rib cage while observing real human figures. 4. Locating the Rib Cage: Welcome to Lesson three. Today you're going to learn how to locate and draw the basic volume of the rib cage while observing photographs of a real model. This is a powerful and essential technique and one that I use in nearly every figure drawings that I do. Now in order to look at a real figure and deduce the size, shape, and position of the rib cage. You're going to need to develop what I like to call your x ray vision. Being able to look at a living figure and deduce information about the bones and muscles underneath the skin is an essential skill and one that you'll use nearly constantly from here on out. Let's get started. In order to deduce the size and shape of the rib cage, as well as its position in space, we must first locate all of the visible landmarks. Now it's important to realize that you obviously won't see every landmark in every pose, but most poses will reveal enough landmarks for you to successfully derive the size, shape, and position of the rib cage. We'll begin with one of my favorite landmarks, the suprasternal notch. If I can see the suprasternal notch, it's one of the first landmarks help put in a drawing, and below the suprasternal notch running between the pectoral muscles, we can see the line for the sternum and above the suprasternal notch, we find the opening for the neck. Now the opening for the neck can be a little tricky to find. Sometimes its shape and how open it is will seem obvious and in other times you may struggle to capture it. But for now, just do your best. Your skill will improve with more experience. Just keep in mind what this opening actually represents. It is the bottom ellipse of the cylinder of the neck. Later on in this course, we'll focus much more heavily on this cylinder, so you'll get more experience drawing this ellipse. Now I'd like you to focus your attention on the side of the torso, on our right where we see the indention created between the bottom of the rib cage and the top of the pelvis. This indention gives us a clue as to where the bottom of the rib cage is and where it dives inside the torso. It's important to remember that we don't know exactly where the rib cage is here, but these visible landmarks give us clues and with enough of these clues, will be able to successfully draw the basic volume of the rib cage. Now the evidence for the rib cage on the other side of the model will be even trickier to find, but it is there. Now I'd like you to carefully look at the side of the model on our left, directly below the pectoral muscle is where the rib cage comes to the surface. Below that, we see the abdominal column. The more figure drawing experience you get in and the more you learn about anatomy, the easier it will be for you to observe these anatomical landmarks. But again, for now, just try your best and know that the ability to visualize and draw these various anatomical landmarks comes with time, practice and experience. Let's pause here for a moment. I want you to look at the anatomical landmarks that are shown in the diagram. This is actually enough information to deduce the size, shape and position of the rib cage. Here is how it's done. Let's start with the side of the rib cage that comes to the surface on our left. Now I'd like you to visualize a slightly curving line. They runs between this landmark and this side of the ellipse for the opening of the neck on our left. Even though the actual contour of the shape of the rib cage is buried deep underneath the pectoral muscle, among other things. Because we know the basic shape of the rib cage, we can visualize where this line would be. Try and visualize this line on your own before I show it in the diagram. Now assuming you've done the practice from the previous two lessons, hopefully it's clear to you that the sign of the rib cage on our left would look like this. Now let's do the same thing with this side of the rib cage on our right. Once again, before I overlay the diagram, I'd like you to visualize the egg shape that would be created by the rib cage in this pose. Now let's complete the rib cage. As I've mentioned, not all landmarks will be visible on all models or in all poses. For example, on this particular model, we don't see the xiphoid process coming to the surface. This is where all of the practice from lesson number two comes in, even though we can't see the xiphoid process directly, hopefully it's approximate location is clear to you. In some poses, the thoracic arch will be clearly visible, but that's not the case with this pose. However, the indention here gives us a clue as to where it is. This intention occurs where the thoracic arch and the abdominal column meet on the side of the rib cage on our left. We don't get much visual indication of the thoracic arch, but it should be clear from your practice in lesson two that just like we saw with the egg, we simply need to draw a line that arches out from the xiphoid process and connects with the outer contour of the rib cage. Again, take a moment to see if you can visualize the thoracic arch before I lay down the diagram. Again, this will take practice, but hopefully you can see that the thoracic arch would look something like this. At this stage, many students ask if so much of the rib cage is covered up, why do we need to learn how to draw it? There are two answers to this question. The first is that not nearly as much of the rib cage is covered up as you might expect. The more you draw the figure, the more you'll realize that this basic egg shaped volume is the foundation for all of this smaller anatomical details of the upper torso. The second answer is that even when it's difficult to see the rib cage directly, the elements shown here help organize the various muscle groups of the upper torso. For example, the line for the sternum is also the medial edge of both pectoral muscles. By locating and drawing the rib cage, not only are you giving the torso a more realistic sense of volume, you're also taking your first steps toward attaching the muscles. Next, let's take a look at another model. This time, instead of me pointing out every landmark using a diagram, I'm going to ask you to visually locate the landmarks on your own. First, I'd like you to let your eyes come to rest on the suprasternal notch. Hopefully at this stage, this landmark is obvious and easy for you to find. Next, I'd like you to visualize the line for the sternum. Next, I'd like you to visualize the elliptical opening for the neck at the top of the rib cage. Ask yourself what visual clues you can find to help you understand the axis in the width to height relationship of this ellipse. Next, take a look at this side of the model on our left, see if you can find any visual indication of where the side of the rib cage is. Now, move your eyes over to the side of the rib cage on our right. In this pose, you can even see the lower ribs on our right pushing out from underneath the skin. Finally, see if you can visualize the xiphoid process and the thoracic arch, you'll notice that in this pose, the thoracic arch is much more obvious. Now before I lay down the diagram, see if you can visualize the shape of the rib cage as a whole. Here's the diagram of the completed ribcage. How did you do? How close was your visualization to the diagram? Now it's important to note, it's nearly impossible to arrive at the exact size and shape of the ribcage, particularly when it comes to the thoracic arch. But hopefully you can clearly see how close we can get by finding visual clues on the surface of the body into reducing the size, shape, and position of the ribcage. Now, I know this is challenging, but trust me, with practice, you'll get better and better at developing what I like to call your x-ray vision. Now before we get to our demonstration drawing, there's one more thing I'd like to note. Compare the ribcage of this model to the ribcage of our previous model, the female models of ribcage seemed taller and more narrow, while the male models ribcage seems wider and more barrel shaped. These differences will naturally occur in your drawings as long as you're properly finding and placing the various landmarks. Now, let's get to our demonstration drawings. Once again, I'd like to remind you that the order you use to draw the elements of the ribcage is not as important as all of the elements that are visible getting into your drawing. In fact, because different poses will obscure the various landmarks in different ways, even if you had a specific order you want it to follow, you wouldn't be able to. So I tend to find that the order I use to draw the various elements of the ribcage changes depending on the model and the pose but if I can't, I usually like to start out with this suprasternal notch. Placing the suprasternal notch pins the ribcage down in a particular location. When you're drawing the ribcage on its own, you don't have to be to mindful about placement but when you're drawing, get in relationship to the rest of the figure, you'll want to make sure that you're relating the ribcage to other landmarks that you've already drawn but we'll get to full figure drawings later on. Next, I'll drop a line down from the suprasternal notch to represent the sternum and of course, you'll want to make sure that the line for the sternum is at the correct angle, which is derived directly from the model. So at this stage we have the suprasternal notch and the line for the sternum but you'll notice that the line for the sternum does not yet have a definitive length, but as soon as we place the xiphoid process, we've determined the length of this sternum, and therefore, we've determined the scale of the ribcage as a whole because all of the rest of the elements must be in relationship to the length of this sternum. Next, still draw the ellipse for the opening of the neck because the rib cages turned toward our right the ellipse for the opening of the neck is not centered on top of the suprasternal notch. The distance from the suprasternal notch to the side of the ellipse on our right is shorter than it is from the suprasternal notch to the sign of the ellipse on our left. When we're drawing complex subjects like the figure, it's important to remember them on basic drawing skills that hopefully you've learned earlier on. So in order to draw this ellipse, you must determine its width. This width should be compared to the length of the sternum. You should also remember that you're unlikely to capture the exact proportional relationships between the different elements on your first try, you should always feel comfortable going back and making any changes necessary. Once I'm reasonably confident that the width of the ellipse for the neck that I've drawn has the same proportional relationship to the length of this sternum that I see in the reference photograph. I'll move on. Now we know that the overall basic volume We're trying to arrive at is that of an egg. We also know that the width of the upper torso, particularly at the waist, is largely determined by the width of the ribcage. So let's take a look at the active site of the models torso, which is of course on our left. So now I'm going to draw a curving line that goes from the ellipse at the opening of the neck down toward the active side of the waist. Although I'm not seeing any visual indication of exactly where this line ends, I can infer it by roughly doubling the distance from the suprasternal notch to the Xiphoid process. Now as we discussed earlier, the thoracic arch in this pose is very visible. So I'll lightly make my first attempt, now I'll construct the other side of the ribcage. I'll start by dropping a line down from the ellipse at the opening of the neck and because the ribcage is turned toward our right, the side of the ribcage on our right will be smaller. This means that the distance from the line for the sternum toward the side of the ribcage on our right will be smaller than the distance on the left. It also means that the bottom corner of the ribcage on our right will be higher than the bottom corner of the ribcage on our left and once again, I can clearly see the curve of the thoracic arch on our right. Before we move on, there are a few things I'd like you to notice. The first is how well this basic ribcage shaped fits in to a basic egg shape. Now as I've mentioned before, there's no correct order of steps when you're drawing the ribcage. However, I will often begin my drawings of the ribcage with this basic egg shape before drawing the landmarks during your practice today, if the basic egg shape of the ribcage is clear to you before you draw the landmarks, try this strategy to see if it works. Now that we have the entire basic volume of the ribcage drawn, I'd like to point out all of the locations where the ribcage is visible on the surface. I'll do this by darkening the areas in my drawing that are visible on the surface in the reference photograph, although we don't see the very bottom of the corner of the ribcage on our left, we can see the ribcage coming to this surface on much of its side and on the passive side of the Torso we can see the bottom corner of the ribcage here on our right. We can see the sign of the thoracic arch on our left very clearly and of course we can clearly see the suprasternal notch. Of course, these aren't the only places the ribcage is visible on the surface, but these are the most prominent. Now before we get you to today's practice, I'd like to do one more demonstration drawing this time from the back of the figure. Now from the back, I cannot see the opening for the neck. This is because this ellipse is higher in the back than it is in the front. So even though it's difficult to see, I'm going to begin this drawing by placing the seventh cervical vertebrae, which is at the top of the thoracic section of the spine. Now I can clearly see the curvature of the spine nearly all the way down the back and as the egg shape of the ribcage begins to curve underneath as it approaches the bottom of the ribcage, the light on this volume begins to dim. One clue as to where the bottom of the ribcage is, is the shift in light near the waste. Hopefully it's obvious to you that the light source in this photograph is coming from the upper left. Therefore, as the rounding form of the ribcage curves around and away from the light as it gets down to the lower right section of it, the light begins to dim. The ribcage is at its darkest, near the bottom of it and right underneath the rib cage you can see the muscles that attach the ribcage to the pelvis bulging back out into the light. Now I'll draw the side of the ribcage on our left. Notice how close it is to the line for the spine. I've only drawn the portion of it that I can see coming to the surface. Next, I'll draw this section of the ribcage coming to the surface on our right. Hopefully you can see the corner of the ribcage pushing out from underneath the skin. Now I have enough information to begin to draw the basic egg shape. It's important to remember that this egg shape is narrower from the side than it is from the front end, even though we can see a section of the back of the ribcage, this is primarily a side view. I'd also like to point out the elements that we are not drawing from this view. We're drawing the volume of the ribcage on its own. That means we're ignoring both the scapulae as well as the arms. You'll learn how to draw the volumes of the shoulders and the arms later on in this course but for now, we just want to understand the large volume of the ribcage. We're also ignoring the breast. From this view, it should be clear that the breast is sitting on top of the ribcage but all too often, students draw the breasts as if they're part of the ribcage. So here is the completed simplified volume of the ribcage from the back. During your practice today, once you reach this stage, you should still feel free to make any adjustments you think are necessary. With all of this in mind, let's get you to today's practice. For today's practice, you're going to be drawn from the practice rails created specifically for this lesson. Now hopefully, you've taken my gestures cores, so you're already familiar with how this works. But if you're new to the art and science of figure drawing series, here's how to use the practice rails. Each practice rail contains a series of timed poses selected specifically for the lesson that they accompany. Today, you'll be drawing from two different practice rails, each containing three poses. Each pose has been selected to give you the ideal practice experience, both finding and drawing the ribcage. Each of the poses in today's practice rails are five-minutes. Five minutes should be plenty of time for you to locate and draw the simple volume of the ribcage. If this task is taking you much longer than five minutes, you're probably getting mired in detail. But as always, if you truly feel that five minutes is simply not enough time, you're always welcome to pause the practice rails, but remember part of what we're developing here is speed. The faster you can draw, the more you'll be able to do with the time that a model can hold a pose and the more efficient your drawing process will become. You'll want to be sure that before you begin the practice rail, you're all set up to draw with all of your materials at hand. One thing I would highly recommend while doing today's practice is trying to orient your ribcage models made out of egg or paper into the same position that the rib cages in the reference photos. Now remember, this is a challenging project and it'll take a good amount of time and practice before you're comfortable observing and drawing the ribcage, keep your expectations reasonable and know that particularly when you're first starting off, it's going to feel like a struggle. This is perfectly normal and will go away with time and experience. I wish you the best of luck with your practice today and I will see you back for the next lesson when you're going to learn how to draw the basic volume of the pelvis. 5. Locating the Rib Cage Practice Reel 1: one more minute. - 10 more seconds. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. 6. Locating the Rib Cage Practice Reel 2: one more minute. - 10 more seconds. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. 7. The Shape of the Pelvis: Welcome to lesson four. In this lesson, you're going to be introduced to the basic volume of the pelvis. Once again, you're going to start off by watching me do a series of demonstrations and after that, you get to practice. The volume you're going to learn about today for the pelvis is extremely simplified, but it does an excellent job of really communicating the volume of the pelvic region. It's versatile enough that you'll be able to incorporate more anatomical details, the more you learn about the pelvis. To simplify the volume of the pelvis, we're going to think of it as an ovoid. This ovoid is wider side-to-side and narrower front-to-back. To arrive at this simplified volume of the pelvis, we're going to cut off the top of this ovoid, creating an ellipse. I'm going to draw this simplified pelvis as if it were turning toward our right. To create this illusion, all of course, draw a longitude line, curving upward from the underside of the pelvis. Just like with the rib cage, by the end of this lesson, you'll understand how to add anatomical details to this simplified volume, such as the anterior superior iliac spines, the symphysis of the pubis and the inguinal ligaments, and of course, you'll also learn about the important anatomical landmarks on the backside of the pelvis. Just a reminder, that if at any point, I'm using anatomical terms that you haven't learned yet, I would highly recommend that you revisit the gestures course in the art and science of figure drawing series. The gestures courses, the first course in this series, and will give you a foundation in both basic figure drawing techniques as well as basic anatomy. So here is the simplified version of the pelvis that we'll be working with today. Just like with the rib cage, we're going to begin by learning to draw the essential views of this volume. After this lesson, you should be familiar enough with the basic volume of the pelvis, to be able to locate and draw the pelvis while observing a real model. Before we learn about the volume of the pelvis, first, let's study the anatomical landmarks that we'll be using to construct it. The first thing you'll notice, is that the pelvis has a very strange and complex shape. When drawing it, it often feels more like a piece of architecture than a piece of anatomy. Fortunately, most of the pelvis is buried deep underneath layers of flesh and muscle. For now, we're just going to look at the landmarks that are visible at this surface. The two most prominent bony landmarks at the front of the pelvis, are the anterior superior iliac spines. These landmarks were introduced in the axis lesson in my gestures course. But here you can see what they look like underneath the flesh. The next landmark on the front of the pelvis is the pubic symphysis. It's where the two halves of the pelvis fused together. You'll notice that it's near the bottom of the pelvis, but it's not at the lowest point. Next, we have the inguinal ligaments. A ligament is a band of connective tissue, which in this case, runs between our two bony landmarks, the anterior superior iliac spines and the pubic symphysis. Again, in the following lesson, you'll learn how to spot these on the surface of the figure. But for now, we just need a basic understanding of what we'll be working with today. Now let's take a look at the back of the pelvis. Once again, we find some familiar landmarks that you were introduced to in the gestures course, the posterior superior iliac spines. Finally, we have the triangular shaped bone called the coccyx, or what is commonly known as the tailbone. If we connect these three landmarks on the back of the pelvis, we get a triangle. We call this the sacral triangle because the bone of the sacrum can be found within it. One important note, is that you'll notice if we've looked at the sacral triangle from the side, it curves along with the sacrum, the bone underneath. We'll talk more about this triangle when we get to our demonstration drawings. Any of these bony landmarks can be visible on the surface of the body. But it's important to remember that depending on the pose and the model, sometimes you won't be able to locate all of these landmarks. That's perfectly fine. With all of this in mind, let's get to today's demonstration drawing. As I mentioned, the pelvis is a weird and complicated part of the skeleton. But today you're going to learn how to simplify it into a very useful volume. Let's start with an ovoid shaped volume. We're going to cut the top, off of this ovoid. To do this, I'm first just going to draw a simple horizontal line. Notice that it's closer to the top of the ovoid. It's about two thirds of the way up. I'll use this horizontal line as the axis for an ellipse. I'm envisioning this volume at eye level. However, the pelvis tilts forward, which is why we can see into the top of this volume. Next, I'm going to draw the anterior superior iliac spines. You'll notice that I'm using slightly curved marks to indicate them. Notice that they are placed on the front of the ellipse. I'd also like you to notice that they're slightly in from either side. They're not right at the edge of the volume. Next I'll indicate this symphysis of the pubis with a small horizontal line. Just as we saw in the photographs of an actual pelvis, the symphysis of the pubis is located near the bottom of the volume, and of course it's located on the vertical center line. Finally, we'll connect the anterior superior iliac spines to the symphysis of the pubis by drawing in the inguinal ligaments. You'll notice these lines are slightly curved. This completes the front view of our simplified volume for the pelvis. Next, using a T square, you'll see me draw parallel horizontal lines. As we spend the volume of the pelvis, these lines will help us keep the proportions of the volume we've established. Most importantly, the highest point of the volume, the front of the ellipse of the pelvis, the symphysis of the pubis, and the lowest point of the volume. Now you'll see me draw the same volume from a side view. One critical difference you should immediately notice, is that the pelvis is wider side to side, than it is back to front. From the side view, the ovoid we'll begin with, will appear narrower. You should also immediately notice that it is a slanted axis, tilting down toward the front. The front of the pelvis, which is on our left, is lower than the back of the pelvis, which is on our right. Because the pelvis is at eye level from this point of view, the opening at the top will appear as a straight line. We don't see into the ellipse from this side view. It's important to note, that the top horizontal line represents the back of the pelvis at its highest point, where the line underneath it represents the front of the pelvis. We can use these lines to get the exact angle of the opening. Of course, from the side view will only see one anterior superior iliac spine. We'll use the third horizontal line down to pull over the location of the symphysis of the pubis and next connect the symphysis of the pubis to the anterior superior iliac of the spine using a curved line for the inguinal ligament. That's it for the side view, as I mentioned in a previous lesson, remember, the more you work with these kinds of drawings, the more they make sense, even if you don't understand the exact reason that I'm drawing these elements the way I am by watching me draw these diagrams and by copying them during the practice, you'll be able to make more and more distinctions and with time, they'll make perfect sense to you. Next, you'll see me draw this volume from the back. We'll start the exact same way that we began the view of the pelvis from the front with a basic ovoid shape and an ellipse, we can derive the height of the ellipse from our horizontal construction lines. But because the pelvis tilts forward from this back view, we will not see into the ellipse. We will only see the back of it. At the top of the back room of the bowl of the pelvis. You'll now see me indicate the posterior superior iliac spines. You'll notice that they're much closer together than the anterior superior iliac spines on the front. You'll also notice that I've used similar marks to indicate both the anterior and posterior iliac spines. I'll indicate the location of the coccyx or the tailbone. You'll notice that these three elements form an inverted triangle. This is known as the sacral triangle because underneath the flesh is the location of the large bone called the sacrum. We don't see this bone directly on the surface. It's not yet important that you understand how to draw it, but from here on out, you will hear me refer to this triangle as the sacral triangle. Let's take a look at the vertical axis. The coccyx, which is at the bottom of the sacral triangle, is also located at the top of the crease between the buttocks. This is an extremely fleshy area on most people, the specifics of this crease will vary widely. At some point near the bottom of the pelvic bowl, this crease will fork in either direction to finding the bottom of the buttocks. Now that you've seen me draw this basic volume of the pelvis from the front side and back views. You'll see me draw from a three-quarter view. This is one of the most common and useful views of the pelvis. When drawing the volume of the pelvis from a three-quarter view, you'll notice that it's not as wide as the pelvis from the front view, but it's also not as narrow as the pelvis from the side view, it's somewhere in between. You'll also notice that the pelvis is slightly tilted. More tilted, of course, than the vertical axis of the pelvis from the front, but not as tilted as the pelvis from the side view. Once again, it's somewhere in between. This makes sense, of course, because when we view the pelvis from a three-quarter view, we're seeing both the front and the side at the same time. This three quarter view is a combination of the front and side views, we will be able to see the top of the ellipse of the bowl of the pelvis. You'll notice that from this view, the ellipse appears to be tilting. This is because the back of the ellipse is higher than the front of the ellipse. Now I'll place the anterior superior iliac spines. This pelvis is turning toward our left, you'll notice that the anterior superior iliac spines also travel to the left when compared with a front view of the pelvis we drew earlier. The spine on our right, is moved inward toward the center of the pelvis and the spine on our left has moved all the way over to the far left edge of the volume. You'll see me place the synthesis of the pubis. You'll notice that it's slightly closer to the anterior superior iliac spine on our left. This of course, is due to perspective. I'll draw the center line of the pelvis. But because the pelvis is turned, the center line will not appear straight as it did in the back and front views of the pelvis we drew earlier. It needs to appear to curve over the surface of the volume. To properly draw this line, you'll see me draw the axis as well as the ellipse of the entire ovoid shape. I only need to emphasize the part of this line that would be visible on the volume. Finally, I'll connect these bony landmarks with the inguinal ligaments. Here we have our finished drawing of the pelvis from a three-quarter view. Hopefully you can clearly see that it appears to be turning toward our left with the center line curvy go for the surface. Let's draw a three-quarter view of the pelvis from the back. We'll begin of course with the ovoid and then draw the ellipse at the top. This view of the pelvis is tilting away from us, will only see the back rim and will not see the front of the pelvis. I'll draw the center line curving over the surface by first starting with the axis of the entire ovoid and then constructing an ellipse around it. I'll emphasize only the section of the ellipse that curves over the surface of the volume. I'll place the posterior superior iliac spines, the coccyx, and finally connect these three landmarks into a triangle. Notice that you can see the subtle curve of the sacral triangle as it curves over the surface of the ovoid. This completes the five essential views of the pelvis. The three-quarter views of the pelvis, are the ones you'll use most often. They're the views that give the best sense of volume because the center line curves over the surface, revealing which direction the pelvis is turned. The orientation of the ellipse reveals the tilt of the pelvis. In the next lesson, you'll see that the shape of the pelvis, as well as the shape of the rib cage vary greatly from model to model, to make sure you're prepared to modify this generic version of the pelvis to meet the actual body of the model. I'm going to ask you to practice drawing this volume out of your head from different viewpoints and at different sizes. Drawing these basic volumes out of your head is a great way to test yourself to see if you truly understand how this volume operates in space. You want to understand what happens when you tilt the pelvis further forward or further back, or what happens when it tilts to one side or the other. You want to have a strong enough conception of this basic volume in your mind then you can draw it out of your head from any angle. Or at the very least, be able to use visual cues on the surface of the model to be able to construct an accurate pelvic volume. The five essential views of the pelvis that you learned about today will take you pretty far. It's important to remember that in practice you'll rarely see these exact viewpoints at these exact proportions. You need to be prepared to capture what you actually see on the model. If drawing this volume out of your head in different orientations in space seems too complicated, You're welcome to copy the pelvis drawings shown in this image. Here's your project for today. I'm going to ask you to draw this diagram of the five essential views of the pelvis, a minimum of three times. You're welcome and encouraged to go back to the beginning of this demonstration and follow along with me. After you've copied that diagram of the five essential views of the pelvis, a minimum of three times. You're ready to test yourself to see if you truly understand this volume by drawing it out of your head in different sizes and at different orientations in space. If this is too advanced, try copying this drawing that you see here. Both the diagram of the essential views of the pelvis as well as this image will be included as a PDF attached to this lesson. I wish you the best of luck with your practice today, and I will see you back here for the next lesson where you're going to learn how to locate this volume on an actual model and how to draw it along with the rib cage. 8. Locating the Pelvis: Welcome to lesson five. In this lesson, you're going to learn how to locate and draw the volume of the pelvis while observing a real model. To do this, you'll need to learn how to find evidence for the landmarks that you learned about in the previous lesson on the surface of the model. The very first thing I'd like to remind you about is that when the model stands upright, the rib cage tends to tilt back while the pelvis tends to tilt forward. This is the case unless the model bends forward or sits in a way that tilts the pelvis the opposite direction. It's important to keep this in mind while you're observing a real model, because it will help you remember that from the front, you're usually going to see into the ellipse at the top of the pelvis and that the rib cage tends to tilt away from you at the top. Of course, the opposite is true when you observe these volumes from the back. With this in mind, let's practice finding landmarks. To start, let's quickly go through the landmarks of the rib cage that you should have already memorized from previous lessons. For each landmark I mention, try and find it on the surface of the model all by yourself before I point it out. This is great practice because all of these landmarks tend to manifest differently on different models and in different poses. Let's start with a suprasternal notch. Hopefully, you know that it's located here. The suprasternal notch, of course, is at the top of the sternum, which is located here, and underneath that we have the xiphoid process, which is located here. Were you able to find them all before I pointed them out? Remember, not every landmark is going to be obvious in every pose and with every model. But if you're struggling to find a landmark, just try your best. Over time, you'll get better at seeing the subtle indications of bony landmarks underneath the skin. With practice, what seems nearly invisible to you now will seem obvious later on. See if you can find evidence of the side of the rib cage on our left. Hopefully, it's clear that most of the left side of the rib cage is visible underneath the skin. Try and find the side of the rib cage on our right. Here, there's not much, just a small indication under the breast, but it's enough to establish the width of the rib cage from this point of view. See if you can visualize the thoracic arch. Due to the lighting and the flexing of the abdominal muscle on our right, the thoracic arch is a little difficult to see, but it's located approximately here. Hopefully at this point, all of these landmarks are familiar to you. Let's move down to the pelvis. First, see if you can locate the anterior superior iliac spines. Depending on the model and the pose, these can be a bit tricky. Let me point them out to you, and then once you know where they are, I'll point out some things that will make it easier to find them. First, let's take a look at the spine on our right. Fix your eye on the dot on our right, and then I'll remove the diagram. With your eye on this location, I'd like to remind you that this is the anterior superior iliac spine. Anterior means it's on the front and superior means it's above. On this model, you can actually see some evidence of the anterior, inferior iliac spine down below. But remember, if you see more than one bump at this location, the anterior superior iliac spine is the one on top. Move your eye to the anterior superior iliac spine on our left. Keeping your eye there watch as I remove the diagram. It's very subtle, but you can actually see a highlight at the location of the anterior superior iliac spine on our left. This is the kind of subtle information that you'll get much better at finding with practice. Of course, knowing what you're looking for helps tremendously. Let's move down to the symphysis of the pubis. You can see the symphysis of the pubis pressing out from underneath the skin, right above the fold of the vulva. On the male figure, it's located right underneath the skin, directly above the shaft of the penis. On both sexes, there is some fatty tissue above this area, but hopefully you can get the distinct sense that underneath that, the pubis is pressing outward. Finally, we have the inguinal ligaments. Remember, the inguinal ligaments attach between the anterior superior iliac spines and the symphysis of the pubis. Let's try and visualize the ellipse at the top of the bowl of the pelvis. We know that the pelvis will be tilting forward and that we'll see into the top of this ellipse. So the entire bowl-shaped volume of the pelvis would look something like this. Notice that the center line starts near the top between the abdominal muscles and runs right down through the legs. The center line helps give the impression that the bowl of the pelvis is turning toward our left. If we add all of these landmarks together here are the simplified volumes that we arrive at. At this stage, one of the most common drawing errors I see is students elongating the distance between the pelvis and the rib cage. When the model is standing upright, there's usually not much more than an inch or two between the bottom of the rib cage and the top of the pelvis. Of course, we can see in this pose that the model is bent over toward our right. This decreases the space even more. Of course, as the space between the bottom of the rib cage and the top of the pelvis decreases on the side on our right, it increases on the side on our left. As I remove the diagram, take a minute and try and visualize the volumes of the pelvis and the rib cage. Next, let's move to the back. Here we'll just focus on the pelvis. Interestingly enough, the posterior superior iliac spines are seen as depressions in the surface of the model. They do not protrude like other bony landmarks. This is due to the way the muscles and flesh form around them. But even though they don't poke out like other bony landmarks, they are still pretty obvious on most models. Below the posterior superior iliac spines, we find the coccyx or the tailbone. You'll notice that it lies right at the top of the fault between the buttocks. Let's take a look at the ellipse at the top of the pelvic bowl. From the back view, we don't see into the ellipse. We just see the back of the rim of the bowl of the pelvis. Let's pull all of this together into the basic volume you'll be working with today. Notice that you can see the subtle curve of the sacral triangle, as well as the center line of the bowl of the pelvis running right down the fold between the buttocks and through the legs. As I remove the diagram, see if you can visualize the bowl of the pelvis on your own. With all of this in mind, let's get to some demonstration drawings. Let's start with a pose we just looked at. In today's demonstration drawings, you'll see that I'm actually going to work with both the rib cage and the pelvis. Understanding these volumes in relationship to one another is a critical skill you need to develop. This is what you'll be practicing today. As I've mentioned before, there's no one right way to start a drawing like this. In each of today's demonstration drawings, you'll see me take a slightly different approach. But in each drawing, my goal will be to construct the volumes of the pelvis and the rib cage in the right proportional and spatial relationships to one another. It's important to remember that not only is this not a beginning drawing course, it's also not even a beginning figure drawing course. In today's demonstration drawings, you'll see me use techniques that I laid out in the gesture course. If you haven't yet taken that gesture course, I would highly recommend doing so. First, I'll start this drawing off by making an attempt at capturing the basic two chambered shape with the upper chamber containing the rib cage and the lower chamber containing the pelvis. Of course, this is just a first attempt and will be modified numerous times as the drawing progresses. I'm paying particular attention to the indentation created on the right side of the figure where the bend occurs. You'll remember that we refer to this as the active side of the torso, as the muscles contract here and pull the rib cage down toward the pelvis. Now that I've placed the active site of the torso, I'll use it as an anchor point, referring all other landmarks back to it. Hopefully you can clearly see the back rim of the bowl of the pelvis. Remember, it's tilting away from us, so we're only seeing the top of this ellipse. Next you'll see me draw the curve of the left side of the rib cage. Notice how much of the rib cage is coming to the surface here. I'm paying particular attention to the relationship of this curve to the indentation at the active side of the torso. Next, I'll draw the thoracic curve of the spine. Again, you should already be familiar with this curve from the gesture course. Of course, at the top of the thoracic curve, we have the seventh cervical vertebrae. It's a little difficult to observe on the model in this pose, but remember, good figure drawing isn't just about drawing what you see, it's knowing enough about your subject to construct an accurate version of it, even when you can't see every landmark. I've paid particular attention to the angle between the seventh cervical vertebrae and the active side of the torso. Next, I'll place the posterior superior iliac spines. I'm paying particular attention to the relationship between the edges of the pelvis and each of the posterior superior iliac spines. Next, I'll draw the sacral triangle at the bottom of which we find the coccyx. From there, we'll pull this center line down in between the buttocks and have it disappear as it moves between the legs. Now that all of the major landmarks are placed, I'll make my refinements. Remember, you never want to assume that you've gotten it right the first time. You should always expect that small refinements can improve the drawing. You can see that I've better defined the glutes as well as the overlap in the active side of the torso. This is about as far as I want you to take your drawings today at this stage, drawing these volumes from the back is a little easier than drawing them from the front simply because there's less information you have to manage. Now, let's try it from the front. Just like before, I'll begin by drawing the two chambered shape of the torso. This simple form will definitely need to be modified as the drawing continues. Generally speaking, female rib cages are more narrow than male rib cages, although there are many variations, so you'll always want to check the proportions of the model you are drawing from. This basic two chambered shape already gives us an idea of the active and passive sides of the torso with a specific location for the indentation at the active side. Next I'll draw the corner of the rib cage that we can see poking out from underneath the skin on our left. I'm paying particular attention to the angle between the corner of the rib cage and the active side of the torso. Next I'll establish the front of the ellipse of the bowl of the pelvis. The way this model has her hips positioned, you can see how far down the pelvis is tilted. Next, I'll place the suprasternal notch. I'm paying particular attention to the angle between the suprasternal notch and both the corner of the rib cage on our left and the active side of the torso on our right. Although I initially just use my eyes to make my first attempt at the suprasternal notch, you'll see me checking it using triangulation. Hopefully, you're already familiar with the triangulation technique that I've taught in previous courses. For a refresher on triangulation, I would highly recommend taking the measuring and proportion course in the original Art and Science of Drawing series. Next I'll draw the slightly curving line of the sternum. You'll notice that it is closer to the site of the rib cage on our left, giving the distinct impression that the rib cage is turning toward our left. After triangulating the location of the xiphoid process using just my eyes, I'm ready to draw the thoracic arch. You can actually see quite a bit of the thoracic arch on the side of the rib cage to our right. The thoracic arch is not as visible on the left side, but because I've practiced drawing the rib cage so many times, I can infer where it would be. Hopefully you can see how well these elements of the rib cage come together to give the distinct impression that the rib cage is tilting back and turning toward our left. We haven't drawn much, but the rib cage is all ready gone well beyond a flat shape on the page. It's all ready starting to appear volumetric. Next, I'll place the anterior superior iliac spine on our right, on the front lip of the bowl of the pelvis. I'll give a quick indication of the corresponding inguinal ligament as well as a quick indication of the center line. These are just first attempts and will almost certainly be moved as the drawing continues. I'll now take a moment to refine the volume of the shape of the pelvis, including the ellipse. It's important to note that of course, we would not be able to see the back edge of the ellipse on a real model, but when you're learning how to draw these volumes, drawing the complete volume, even the parts that you don't see, will help you better understand how these volumes are operating in space. Remember, we are training your brain to see everything in terms of volume. Next, I'll indicate the location of the pubic symphysis. Because of how far the pelvis is turned toward our left, we can't really see the iliac spine on our left. But because we've practiced, we should be able to infer its location and along with it, the inguinal ligaments. On this model, you can much more clearly see the inguinal ligaments. Compare what I've drawn to the surface of the model. Hopefully, you can see these subtle indications as well. If not, don't worry, it will come with time and practice. Now, you'll see me take a moment to refine and emphasize the volumes of the pelvis and the rib cage, as well as all of their landmarks. This is an excellent representation of the kind of drawing that you're going to be doing during your practice today. Hopefully, you've all ready taken the gesture course. From here on out, I'd like you to feel free to incorporate any and all ideas that you learned in the gesture course into your volumetric drawings. Here, after some visual triangulation, you'll see me place the naval. This allows me to connect to the pelvis and the rib cage with a center line. I can also connect these volumes using the contour that stretches between the rib cage and the pelvis on the passive side of the torso, and of course, I can use overlaps to define the active side of the torso. Hopefully you can see how well all of these elements pull together to give the illusion of a three-dimensional and anatomically accurate torso. You can see that in this pose, the pelvis is tilting dramatically forward while the rib cage is tilting dramatically back. These are more extreme angles than you've dealt with thus far. I wanted to include a demonstration to show you how to start to deal with these kinds of foreshortened volumes. Instead of beginning this drawing with the shape of the torso, instead, I'm going to begin with the center line. Remember, the order of operations is not as important as making sure you're drawing contains all of the proper elements. My order of operation changes depending on the model and the pose. With time and practice, you'll figure out what works best for you. After drawing the center line and placing the suprasternal notch, I'll begin constructing the shape of the torso around it. I'm paying particular attention to where the center line falls between the two sides of the torso and how it changes on the way down. In some areas, it appears closer to the left, in other areas, it appears closer to the right. You'll also notice that I'm very quickly establishing the active and passive sides of the torso, paying particular attention to the location of the indentation at the active side. After indicating the ellipse of the bowl of the pelvis, I'll place the anterior superior iliac spines. Next I'll draw the pubic symphysis as well as the inguinal ligaments. I'm always comparing the location of these elements to the location of all of the other landmarks I've drawn thus far. Again, if you need more practice measuring, I highly encourage you to revisit the measuring and proportion course in the original Art and Science of Drawing series. Now let's talk about foreshortening. As I mentioned, the rib cage is dramatically tilting back, allowing us to see into it from the bottom. Because of this, you'll notice that the sternum appears much shorter than it otherwise would. Due to for shortening, the length of the sternum appears shorter. With the rib cage tilting so far back, it also opens up the thoracic arch. From this angle, it almost appears as if we're looking up into a cup that's been turned upside down. After indicating the naval, I'm going to move back down to the bowl of the pelvis. I want you to notice how open the ellipse is for the rim of the bowl of the pelvis. This is because the pelvis is tilting so far forward. Now I'll add some details and refinements, incorporating techniques that hopefully you learned about in the gesture course. I want you to pay particular attention to the subtle twist in the torso. Again, this is an excellent example of the kind of drawing you're going to be doing today during your practice. This torso does not simply lay flat on the page. I want you to notice that it truly looks as if the rib cage is looking up and to our left and that the pelvis is looking down and to our right. Although we're only focusing on the rib cage and the pelvis today, you can see how well these volumes lay a foundation for the rest of the figure. It only takes some simple gestural indications of the arm, legs, and head to create a dynamic sense of movement. Now, let's get you practicing. Today, you'll be drawing from two different practice reels. The first practice reel has only two poses. Each pose is eight minutes long. I want you to draw the pelvis and the rib cage, just like you saw demonstrated today. If you have time, feel free to incorporate some of the techniques that you learned in the gesture course. The second practice reel contains three poses. Each pose on the second practice reel is six minutes long. I want you to produce the same kind of drawings that you produced in the first practice reel, but now you have less time to do it. In addition to teaching you specific drawing skills, I'm also teaching you how to draw efficiently. I know six minutes doesn't seem like a lot of time now, but remember, this is just one small step in a finished figure drawing. Ultimately, you want to get to the point where you can draw the pelvis and the rib cage as you saw demonstrated today in about one minute. Remember, both the poses and the time limits for each practice reel are very intentionally selected to give you the best educational experience you can get. So get practicing and I will see you back here for the next lesson, when you're going to learn how to draw the volumes of the neck and head. 9. Pelvis Practice Reel 1: one more minute. - 10 more seconds. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. 10. Pelvis Practice Reel 2: one more minute. - 10 more seconds. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. One more minute. - 10 more seconds. 11. Proportions of the Head: Welcome to Lesson 6. In today's lesson, you're going to learn about the shape and the proportions of the head, and in particular the face. Most importantly, you're going to learn how these proportions change when the head moves through space. We'll begin today's lesson by looking at a normal every day front view of the face. The face is facing us directly. It's not tilted up or down, and it's not turning toward either side. As with any form, we first want to understand the head and face as simply as we possibly can. From the front, the simplest way to conceive of the shape of the head is as an egg shape or an ovoid. You'll notice that the egg shape is inverted with the narrowest part near the bottom. As with every other feature of the human body, there is a wide range of variations of face shapes, but this upside down egg shape is a fantastic general way to start. Now watch as I place a vertical center line. Now just like our other ovoid shapes of the rib cage and the pelvis, later on when we turn this volume, this center line will curve, but for now it appears as a straight line. This center line bisects the face into two equal halves that mirror one another. Now, interestingly enough, if we send a horizontal line straight through the center of the pupils, this line falls halfway between the top of the skull and the bottom of the chin. Now it's important to note that as with all proportions you'll learn today, they can change model to model, but it's amazing how many people fit this proportion exactly. Now slightly above the line for the eyes, we can place the line for the brow. There's not an obvious proportion we can use here, but I do want you to take a moment and get a sense of where the brow line is in relationship to the line for the eyes. We'll talk more about the placements of the brow later on, but for now, let's shift our focus from the line of the brow down to the level of the chin. You can see that the bottom of the nose falls exactly halfway between the level of the brow and the bottom of the chin. Finally, let's now shift our attention from the level of the bottom of the nose down to the bottom of the chin. You can see that if we divide the distance from the bottom of the nose to the bottom of the chin into thirds, that the line where the two lips meet is one-third of the way down. Once again, there is variation from model to model, but it's remarkable how many people fit these exact proportions and the variations that you find will be subtle. Here are all of the most important proportions for the face. I highly recommend that you memorize these proportions. This course includes these diagrams in PDF form. Now let's take a look at the head from the side. Now from the side, the front of the head, the part containing the face still simplifies pretty easily into a basic egg shape. But you will notice that we're ignoring the features of the face, like the protrusions of the nose, lips, chin, etc. But you'll notice that from the side, this simple egg-shaped does not capture the full volume of the head and the skull. For the volume of the cranium, which is the part of the skull that houses the brain, we need a second egg-shaped volume. Taken together, these are the basic shapes of the head from the side. Now a time and practice you'll get better at ignoring the model's hair to see through to the skull. But here are the basic generic shapes of the head from the side. To get a better sense of the shape of the cranium, let's take a look at the skull on its own. If it wasn't obvious before, hopefully now you can clearly see the egg shape of the volume of the cranium. You'll notice that the narrower end of the egg shape is at the front, and that the front is tilted slightly higher than the back, angling the entire egg upward as it moves toward the front of the skull. Let's take a look at the model once again to see if you can visualize the egg shape of the cranium. Of course, from this side view, all of the facial proportions that you'll learn about while looking at the front of the face still apply here. Knowing these proportions is essential, particularly if you're interested in portraiture, and I would highly recommend that you commit these proportions to memory. However, in figure drawing, you're rarely going to get a front or a side view of the face that isn't tilted or turned in some way. When the head changes position, particularly if it tilts back or forward, all of these proportions begin to change. Although it's important that you understand these basic proportions, it's more important that you understand how they change when the head changes position in space. For example, let's take a look at the head in this pose. First, I want you to notice how far the head is tilted back, because of this, you'll notice that the chin is no longer at the bottom of the egg shape. Next, take a look at the line for the eyes. You'll notice that it's curving around the head. Even though the line for the eyes appears straight when we're looking at the face from the front, when the head tilts back or forward, the line for the eyes begins to curve around the volume of the egg. You'll also remember that when we view the face from the front, when the head is not tilting back or forward, the line for the eyes is halfway between the top of the head and the bottom of the chin. But with a head tilted back, the line for the eyes appears to move much closer to the top of the head. Of course, the locations of the other features change accordingly. In fact, you can see that the tip of the nose now appears to be at the same level as the eyes. These kinds of proportional distortions are bewildering to new figure drawing students, but they all make perfect sense if you understand how the basic proportions of the face change when the egg-shaped volume for the head changes positions in space. To that end, I'm now going to lead you through the process of drawing the facial proportions that you'll learn today on an actual egg. Drawing from the simplified model of the head is one of the best ways for you to learn and understand how the proportions of the face change when the head tilts back or forward, turn side to side, or in most cases both. I recommend just watching the first so you can get a sense of the process, and then following along later on when you're getting ready to do your practice. For today's project, in addition to your regular drawing materials, you'll need an egg. You can most likely use the same pencil that you use to draw with, to draw on the surface of the egg shell. I'll be using a graphite pencil. Graphite erases pretty easily off the surface of an egg. So if you make any mistakes, corrections are easier. I would also recommend using a hard boiled egg. That way, if you drop the egg, it won't make such a mess. But this, of course, is not required. Once you have an egg, a pencil, and an eraser, we can begin. This egg is supposed to mimic the basic volume of the face, so we'll be working with the narrow side at the bottom. Of course, the narrow part of the egg at the bottom represents the chin. We're first going to draw the vertical center line that runs down the length of the face. This line should travel in a straight path that starts at the very top of the egg and makes its way down to the very bottom. As with any drawing, I recommend starting off lightly and only darkening the line once you're confident that it's going in the right direction and that it's in the right location. If it helps, you can try putting a dot at the very top of the egg and at the very bottom and draw the line in between them. It may take a couple of times before you get this line right, and that's fine. You only need to draw this line on one side of the egg. It does not need to go all the way around and meet back up on the other side. Your finished vertical center line should appear straight and should appear to bisect the egg down the center so that each side of the egg mirrors the other. For this next step, you want to be able to see the full length of the egg. You don't want it to be tilted up or down. We're going to be drawing the horizontal line for the level of the eyes. This is the line that travels straight through the center of the pupils. You'll remember that it is exactly halfway between the top of the head and the bottom of the chin. We need to divide the vertical center line in half. From this view, the halfway mark appears to be here. Once I figured out where the halfway point is, I'm going to draw the horizontal line for the eyes. Just like the vertical center line, the line for the eyes only needs to go about halfway around the egg. Now, even though we only have two lines drawn on our egg, you can already get a sense of how the proportions change when the egg tilts and turns in space. We only have two more lines to draw. We need to find the location of the bottom of the nose and then the line that runs between the lips. If you recall, the line for the nose is halfway between the level of the brow and the bottom of the chin. But we're not going to draw the line for the brow on this egg. Instead, let's focus on the level of the bottom of the nose as it relates to the level for the eyes and the bottom of the chin. You can see that the line for the bottom of the nose is slightly closer to the line for the eyes than it is to the bottom of the chin. Once again, viewing the full length of the egg, I'm going to find the halfway point between the level for the eyes and the bottom of the chin. But I'm going to place the line for the nose just slightly higher than the halfway mark. Hopefully you can see that this short line for the nose is just a tiny bit closer to the eyes than it is to the chin. Finally, I'll draw the line for the lips. If you recall, the line for the lips is one-third of the way down between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin. You'll also notice that the line for the lips is about twice as long as the line for the bottom of the nose, so there you have it. We've now transferred the basic proportions of the face to an egg. Now before I show you how to practice drawing from this egg, I want to point out a few of the common changes you'll see to these basic proportions when you move the egg through space. The first thing I'd like you to notice is that when we view the egg from the front, all of these lines appear straight. When we tilt the head up without turning it side to side, you can see that the line for the eyes gets closer to the top of the head and it begins to curve. The line for the eyes is no longer halfway between the top and bottom of the egg, and of course, the lines for the other features rise as well. You can even see them starting to curve slightly. Although because these lines aren't as long, the curvature is not as obvious. When we tilt the head down, you can see that the line for the eyes now travels downward as well, getting much closer to the bottom of the egg than to the top. Once again, we see it begin to curve. Now take a look at the lines for the nose and the mouth. They too have lowered. In fact the line for the mouth is just barely showing. It's just a slight bit above the bottom of the egg. Now watch as I bring the egg back to its original position and then tilt it back again, you'll notice that the more the egg tilts, the more the line for the eyes becomes curved and the closer to the top of the egg it gets. Of course the same is true when we tilt the egg down. But the more you tilt the egg down, the more the line for the eyes curves in the opposite direction. Now when we're only tilting the head upward down and not side to side, you'll notice that the vertical center line remains straight while the lines for the eyes, nose, and mouth curved around it. But when we turn the head side to side, you'll see that the vertical center line also begins to curve. Now if we only move the head from side to side and do not tilt it backward or forward, you can see that the line for the eyes now remains straight. But the illusion of volume is best achieved when the head is both tilted forward or back and turned to one side or the other, and of course we can tilt the axis of the entire egg. Now that you have a sense of the changes to look for in the facial proportions when we move the egg through space. Now, let's show you how to draw them. First, you'll see me start off with the basic shape of the egg. The easiest way I've found to draw an egg is to first start with the circle and then to add on the narrower section. Remember, when viewed directly from the top or bottom, an egg appears as a circle. When the egg is tilted back, as in this position, you're not going to see the full length of the egg. You want to pay close attention to how much you need to add to your initial circle to capture the position of the egg that you're drawing. Because the egg I'm drawing from is tilted so far back, I don't need to add much. It's easy to elongate your eggs. Before you add any of the lines for the features, you want to make sure you've got the right shape. Once you're confident that you've accurately drawn the basic shape for the egg, you're ready to add the features. I would highly recommend starting with either the vertical center line or the line for the eyes. Here, you'll see me start with a line for the eyes. Notice how close it is to the top of the head and also how curved it appears. You'll also want to pay close attention to where the ends of the line for the eyes come in contact with the contour of the egg. It's important here to note that because of the position of the camera, I'm positioned to the left. So the view of the real egg that my camera is seeing is slightly different from the view that I'm drawing from, because I'm position to the left in the view that I'm seeing, the vertical center line is straight. Next I'll draw the line for the mouth. From my position, it appears to fall about halfway between the line for the eyes and the bottom of the contour of the egg. Finally, I'll add the short line for the bottom of the nose. You'll notice that it appears to be slightly closer to the line for the mouth than it does for the line of the eyes. Once you have all of the features placed on your egg shape, it's important to look back and forth from your egg to your drawing and compare the shape and the proportions, make any adjustments you feel are necessary. This of course, requires that you hold the egg steadily and in one position. Moving it even slightly will change all of these proportions. One of the biggest mistakes I see beginners make is that they try and draw the features of the head before they even understand how the basic volume and proportions operate when the head occupies different positions in space. Let me tell you, you cannot hope to accurately draw the features of the face without understanding how they operate in perspective. Drawing from this simplified model of the head is one of the best ways to become an expert in how the basic shape and proportions of the head and face operate in perspective. So here's your practice for today. First, you're going to prepare your egg as you saw me demonstrate today. Feel free to go back and follow along with my demonstration. Once you've drawn the facial proportions on a real egg, I want you to draw this egg from observation a minimum of 20 times. Try and turn the egg in as many different positions as possible. But remember, this only works when all of the features you've drawn are visible.Trying to draw the backside of the egg that doesn't have all of the markings and features isn't useful because it doesn't take into account the cranium. You'll learn more about that in the next lesson. It's okay if some of the positions you draw are only slightly different from the others, it's all great practice. Once you have a good understanding of how the shapes and proportions of the head and face change as the head occupies different positions in space, then I will see you back here for the next lesson, when you're going to learn how to draw the rest of the head, the neck, and how to incorporate them into the torso. 12. The Head & Neck: Welcome to Lesson 7. Today's lesson is going to be a continuation of the head and neck. In this lesson, you'll learn how to apply the skills you developed when drawing from the simplified egg shape model of the head. Most importantly, you'll learn how to attach the head to the rib cage by drawing the neck. So let's start with the neck. You can think of the neck as a pedestal that the head sits on top of. Most of the motion of the head is derived from the neck. Now, at this point, you should already be familiar with the elliptical opening at the top of the rib cage. Take a moment to visualize it before I overlay the diagram. Hopefully, you're already getting comfortable visualizing these basic volumetric indications. Of course, we only see indications of the front of this ellipse as the back of it is hidden by the neck itself. This ellipse is at the bottom of the cylinder of the neck. You can see that this cylinder rises up from the ellipse at the top of the rib cage, but like most volumes of the human body, it's not quite this simple. We need to modify this cylinder so that it better represents the neck. So instead of the ellipse at the top of the cylinder being perpendicular to the axis of the cylinder, imagine it being cut at an angle. So this gets us closer to the volume of the neck. That being said, it's important to note that at this stage you don't need to resolve the exact connection between the top of the neck and the bottom of the skull. We'll talk more about this during today's drawing demonstration. So here you can see the simplified egg shaped volume of the head sitting on top of the cylinder for the neck. Now so far, you haven't yet practiced drawing the cranium. Just a reminder, the cranium is the egg shaped part of the skull that contains the brain. Now, from the front view of the head we don't really see the cranium, it's only when the head turns to the side that it becomes visible. How far the head is turned to the side determines how much of the cranium we see. In this pose, the head is slightly turned so we just need to add a small amount to the back of the egg shaped volume of the head to indicate the volume of the cranium. So here the simple volumes we have so far. Now, let's talk about adding some more details. At this point, you should be very familiar with the suprasternal notch located here. Hopefully, you can see that the suprasternal notch not only helps indicate which direction the rib cage is facing, but also helps us indicate which direction the neck is facing as well. At this stage, you're also welcome to include any anatomical indications that you learned about in the gesture course including the sternocleidomastoids. The sternocleidomastoids won't always be obvious, but if they are, they're a great element to include. We'll talk much more about the sternocleidomastoids during today's drawing demonstration. You may also remember the trapezius muscles. These muscles extend from either side of the neck toward the deltoids. Now, it's a little early in your figure drawing career to start studying these muscles more specifically, but indicating them as basic volumes or gestures is a great way to include them in your drawings and to add some lifelike details. So here's what all of these elements look like together. Remember, we're trying to train your brain to simplify the complexities of the actual model into more basic volumes. It's only once we understand how these basic volumes operate in space that we can understand and draw the more complex anatomies that will come later on in the process. Now, let's take a closer look at the skull and in particular, the jaw bone. You can see that it simplifies into two straight lines. The location where these two lines come together is called the angle of the jaw. We're going to focus quite a bit on this angle during today's demonstration drawings. In particular, we're going to focus on how it changes when the head tilts and moves through space. So let's take a look at the jaw on a real model. The jaw starts near the bottom attachment of the ear. You can see that the jaw moves down from the ear in more or less a straight line until we get to the angle of the jaw. Here, the direction of the jaw changes dramatically and heads toward the chin. Of course, at the chin we can see the jaw begin to curve around and head away from us. We can also see an indication of the jaw on the far side of the head. You'll notice that I didn't connect these two lines. This gives the jaw as sense of thickness, similar to the rim of a cup. Another element that you'll see me use during today's demonstration drawings is this subtle angle near the eye. If it's visible, the small detail works wonderfully with the jaw to give the head a sense of shape and direction. There's one last thing I want to talk about before we get to today's drawing demonstrations, and that's proportion. You should already be somewhat comfortable relating the proportion of the rib cage to the pelvis because the basic volume we've been using for the pelvis includes fat and muscle. It varies greatly from model to model, and it's difficult to nail down a specific proportional relationship. But I do want to address the proportional relationship between the head and the rib cage. Generally speaking, the height of the head is about two-thirds of the height of the rib cage. Whenever you're dealing with an upright pose where neither the rib cage nor the head are tilted dramatically back or forward, you want to check for this proportional relationship. But as you'll see today, this proportion will change dramatically as the head and rib cage tilt and move through space. So with all of this in mind, let's get to today's demonstration drawings. In this first demonstration, we'll just be focusing on the head and neck. Once again, there is no specific order of steps that I would recommend. As long as your drawing includes all of the visible elements of the head and neck, the order that you draw them in can change. In this pose, the head seems to flow naturally right out of the neck so you'll see me begin with the suprasternal notch and then move up the left side of the neck. My line will flow right into the head and then curve over the top of it. Now, this is just a gesture and will almost certainly be changed as the drawing progresses. Remember, a gesture line is more of an indication of direction than anything else. In gesture drawing we're not drawing the subject itself, we are drawing what the subject is doing. Now, I'll lock the location of the suprasternal notch. From here on out, the whole rest of the drawing will be referred back to this position. Now, you'll see me craft the ellipse at the bottom of the neck. This is, of course, the same ellipse that's at the top of the rib cage. I'm being careful to capture the correct width, axis, and openness of this ellipse. You'll notice that I'm drawing the full ellipse even though I can't see the back of it. Drawing through your subjects like this is a great way to train your brain that these are indeed volumes, but you'll notice that the visible part of the ellipse at the front has been darkened. Notice that on our left, this ellipse extend slightly beyond the suprasternal notch. Next, I'll indicate the right side of the cylinder of the neck. Notice how much shorter it appears than the side of the neck on our left. So, now, I've addressed both sides of the cylinder as well as the bottom where it meets the rib cage. To address the top of the cylinder, I'll need to draw the jaw. Now, we haven't talked much about the jaw yet, but we're going to address it quite heavily in today's drawing demonstrations. Notice that from the top of the neck on our right, we can see the jawline jutting outward. If you look closely, you can see that this is the angle of the jaw. Next, I'll indicate the angle of the jaw on our left. I'm paying close attention to the specific direction between the two. I'm also paying close attention to both of their directional relationships to the suprasternal notch. I find that visualizing the triangle that these three elements make helps quite a bit with these three elements in place, I can see that I need to readjust this side of the neck on our left, bringing it closer to the angle of the jaw. The more specific we get with our drawings, the more frequent these kinds of adjustments will be. I'm also paying close attention to the size of the head in relationship to the neck because the head is slightly turned, we can see a slight indication of the cranium. Now the shape of the head is really coming together. Next, I'll complete the jaw. You'll notice that the line for the jaw moves upward because we're seeing the underside of it. This is an excellent way to indicate that the head is tilting back. Now you'll see me indicate the ear. At this stage, the ear is optional, but it can help give the illusion of the direction of the head. In this case, the head is tilting back so the ear appears lower than it otherwise would. Next, I'll indicate the line for the eyes. You'll notice that it's much closer to the top of the head than it is to the bottom. Once again, of course, this is because the head is tilting back. Next, I'll draw the vertical center-line, paying close attention to the direction it's slanting, its curvature, as well as how close it is to either side of the head. In this pose, it's closer to the side of the head on our right. Next, I'll place the line for the mouth. It's slightly closer to the chin than it is to the line for the eyes. Finally, I'll place the short line for the nose, which is just about halfway between the line for the eyes and the line for the mouth. Now I can add some refinements. You'll see me draw the angle for the eye. As well as add some mass to the back of the head. Now it can be difficult to figure out exactly where the skull is underneath the hair. But for now, just do your best. Just try and remember that the hair does add some mass and you want to think of it as separate from the volume of the skull. Next, I'll add a subtle indication of the sternocleidomastoid on our right, you can see that it appears to curve around the cylinder of the neck. And finally, I'll add the trapezius muscles. Hopefully, you can see how well these elements come together to give the distinct illusion that the model is looking up into our right. Now, drawing the head from the back is pretty straightforward because we don't see many indications of the face. Most of what we see is the cranium, the cylinder of the neck, and the trapezius muscles. After crafting the basic volume of the cranium, you'll see me add the angle near the eye as well as the ear. This is an excellent opportunity to draw the overlaps of the trapezius muscle on our left, it creates the distinct illusion that they are twisting, enhancing the illusion that the head and neck are turning toward our left. Now even though it's difficult to see on this model, you can see that I've subtly indicated the seventh cervical vertebrae. Remember any and all anatomical features that you've learned about in this course or on that gesture course are okay to draw. In this final demonstration, I'll show you how to pull everything that you've learned thus far together. In order to craft the drawing of the three primary volumes, the head, the rib cage, and the pelvis. I'll start with a simple gesture line that captures the relationship between all three volumes. Of course, this line will likely change as time goes on. But it's a great starting point because it gets me thinking about the figure as a whole, not just in pieces. The first elemental place is the suprasternal notch, followed by the line of the sternum. Next, I'll make my first attempt at the ellipse at the top of the rib cage and at the bottom of the neck. With every new element that I draw, I'm comparing it back to everything else I've previously drawn. Next, a lightly draw in the egg-shaped volume up the rib cage. I know I've been reminding you about this a lot, but it's important for you to understand that figure drawing is not a system. The order that I'm using here will not work for all poses. For example, in many poses, you won't even be able to see the suprasternal notch or the sternum. What I am doing is starting off with a gesture line and then locking down a few key elements of the figure. Next, I'll build the larger volumes around them. You can see I'm very lightly placing the elements of the figure that you've learned about so far, you can see that I'm starting to indicate the volume of the pelvis. The pubic symphysis is the lowest landmark in the drawing. So as I'm figuring out where it is, I'm comparing its placement back to the suprasternal notch, which was the first element in this drawing. Then I locked in place. Next, you'll see me readjust the center line, even though I haven't drawn much. Hopefully, you're already starting to see the simple volumes starting to appear on the page. Hopefully, you can see the original intention behind my gesture line. Remember, there's no single correct way to draw gesture line, but hopefully, you can get a sense of what's possible by looking it what I've drawn, it follows the sternocleidomastoid on our right. Down to the sternum and then follows the center line all the way down to the symphysis pubis and down between the legs with the two larger volumes drawn, I'm now ready to draw the volume of the head. Again, it's important to remember that many artists do this differently. Many of them start with the head, but I prefer to start with the biggest volumes first and work my way down to smaller volumes. It's your job to figure out what works best for you by practicing over and over again. Now before I draw the head, I need to get a sense of how big it is in relationship to the rib cage. Of course, at this stage, you should already be familiar with numerous measuring techniques and you're welcome to use whatever measuring techniques work best for you. I found that the distance from the top of the head to the suprasternal notch is similar to the distance from the suprasternal notch down to the naval. After marking the location of the top of the head, I'll begin to construct the volume, beginning at the chin. I'll simplify the features of the face into a single line running up toward the forehead and over the top of the head. Next, I'll begin to construct the jawline, paying particular attention to the angle of the jaw with every anatomical landmark I draw, I'm thinking about its distance and directional relationship from other landmarks I've drawn. Even though you don't see direct evidence of this, I'm always triangulating points using my eyes. Here, you'll see me send the sternocleidomastoid up from the suprasternal notch toward the ear. Here you can see that I'm making a second attempt at the ellipse at the top of the rib cage. These kinds of corrections are common. You should be making many of them while drawing. Remember, even for masters, it's difficult to get it right the first time. Now we'll find the location of the facial features beginning with the eyes. The head is tilting up toward and away from us. So the line for the eyes will be slightly closer to the top of the head than to the bottom. Here, you can see that the eye on our right is slightly higher than the eye on our left. And my line reflects that. Next, I'll place the location of the lips as well as the bottom of the nose. From this view, the center line is just barely visible, but it does give us the sense that the face is slightly turning towards us. Remember at this stage of the figure drawing process, it's much more important to conceive of these forms as basic volumes were not yet interested in the details of the face, but it doesn't make sense to even attempt to draw the details. If you can't even figure out where they are once the features are placed, I'll draw the ear, which for our purposes is just as simple, C-shaped. Now that I have the basic volumes down, the rest of the drawing is going to be all about refinement. I never assume that I've gotten it right the first time every drawing I do goes through multiple iterations. You'll also see me adding more information like the thoracic arch. Next, I'll locate and draw the navel. I loved the naval because it calls attention to the center line of the torso. As I move down the body, I'm constantly comparing the size, shape, and placement of the main volumes, as well as the smaller details. And I'm realizing that the pelvis is a little too big. It's very important to consider how you change something to make the pelvis smaller. I could move the ellipse at the top of the pelvis downward or I could bring the bottom of the pelvis upward. In this case, the location of the ellipse at the top of the pelvis looks correct. So I'll move up the bottom of the pelvis, thereby shrinking the entire volume. Again, at this stage, I'm assuming that you're already competent at numerous measuring techniques. So I'm not going to take time to explain the fundamentals of measuring here. If you need a refresher on measuring. I highly recommend going back and taking the measuring and proportion course in the original art and science of drawing series. But whether you see physical evidence of it or not, you need to know that I am constantly using proportional measuring techniques as well as triangulation in order to find the correct location and proportions of the forms. You can see that I've now added the anterior superior iliac spines, the symphysis pubis, the inguinal ligaments, as well as the sternocleidomastoid. This is a great example of the kind of drawing that I want you to produce by the end of your practice today. So let's get you practicing. Today you'll be drawing from three different practice reels. In the first two practice reels, you're just going to draw the head and neck. Each of these to practice reels contains three poses. In each pose is five minutes long. The third and final practice, reel, only contains two poses. Each pose is nine minutes long. In the third practice, real, you're going to be drawing the volumes of the head, neck, rib cage, and pelvis. You want to pay close attention to their relative sizes. Look back and forth from the practice images to your drawing, asking yourself if the sizes and placement of the volumes in your drawing reflect those in the reference photos. I know that to some students this time to poses are going to seem short, but drawing quickly is one of the most important skills you can learn, particularly if you want to be a creative professional of any kind. Also, drawings that are done more quickly have a vitality and energy that cannot be replicated in longer drawings. You want your drawings to be fresh and vibrant. You want them to have a sense of movement and dynamism in the best way to do that is to draw more quickly. This time to practice poses are my best attempt at replicating the kind of positive pressure that one feels in a real figure drawing studio. If you truly need a little extra time to finish your drawings, it's okay to pause the practice reels, but I would highly encourage you to embrace this time to practice reels and challenge yourself to complete the practice in the allotted time. Well, good luck with your practice today, and I will see you back here for lesson eight when you're going to learn how to draw the volumes of the legs. 13. The Head & Neck Practice Reel 1: 14. The Head & Neck Practice Reel 2: 15. The Head & Neck Practice Reel P3 : 16. The Volumes of the Legs: Well, congratulations, you've made it to lesson eight. In today's lesson, you're going to learn about the cylinders that make up the legs. But although the volumes you're going to be learning about today simplify the shape of the legs, they are not simple cylinders. The volumes we're going to be working with today are variations on the cylinder. So to help you understand these volumes, let's start with a simple cylinder, and then modify it until we get to the volumes we'll be using for the legs. Now if you're enrolled in this course, you should already be familiar with how to draw basic cylinders at any proportion, in perspective, out of your head. Remember, this is definitely not a beginning drawing course. If you need help with how to draw basic cylinders out of your head, I highly recommend revisiting the Form and Space Course in the Original Art and Science of Drawing Series. But assuming you have this skill, let's move on. Now imagine we take this basic cylinder and make it wider at one end. We'd arrive at a volume that looks like this. You can either think of it as a cylinder that tapers or you can think of it as a truncated cone. In the next iteration of this volume, we'll start with the same ellipse at the narrow opening of this cylinder. But let's imagine that the ellipse at the wider end of this cylinder is cut at an oblique angle. So now we're getting pretty close to the volume we'll be using for the leg. The wider end of this form with the oblique ellipse is where it would attach to the pelvis. The knee would be just underneath the ellipse at the narrow end. Now from this view, we can see that the narrow end of this form is tilting toward us because we can see into the top of the ellipse at the narrow end. But let me draw the same volume from a slightly different perspective in space. Let's tilt the wide end toward us and rotate the form so that we see into the ellipse at the wider end. We'd get something like this. Hopefully you're starting to really get a sense of this basic volume. Now there's one more iteration we need to go through to turn this volume into the volume for the upper portion of the leg. Imagine this volume is slightly curved. So once again, from this view, we can see that the narrow end is pointing toward us, which is why we can see into the top of the ellipse at the narrow end. And just like we did before, let's tilt this volume so the wider end is coming toward us and also rotated a little bit so that we see into the ellipse at the wider end. Now I hope you can see that these aren't just flat shapes. Each one of the volumes on this page appears three-dimensional. Each of these volumes appears to occupy a specific orientation in space, tilting toward us or away from us. So here you'll see me drawing what are called cross contour lines. While a normal contour illustrates the visual edge of a shape or form, a cross contour line runs over the surface of a volume, helping to accentuate it's three-dimensional characteristics. You can see here that these cross contour lines run perpendicular to the long axis of the volume. Hopefully you can also see that these cross contour lines reinforce the volumetric quality of the form that was first established with the ellipse at the narrow end of the volume. Of course, on the volume below, the cross contour lines will curve in the opposite direction. Once again, a cross contour line runs over the surface and reinforces the volumetric qualities of a form. We'll be using cross contour lines quite a bit from here on out. So let's explore this volume for the upper leg in a little more depth. I actually practice drawing simple volumes like this quite a bit. The two forms on the upper left of this page are pretty similar to what you saw me draw on the last page. On the lower left, you'll see me drawing a pretty common view of this volume. So let me take you through a couple of the key points you need to learn. The ellipse at the bottom, we can imagine would be created by cutting the leg right above the knee. We can see into this ellipse which tells us that the lower part of the form is tilting towards us while the top is further away and tilting back. If we were looking at a figure, which we're going to do in just a few minutes, this would be the leg on our left. You'll see that the top left-hand corner of this form is much higher than the top right. This is where the leg will connect with a pelvis. Now let's say that the model raised his or her leg. The volume will get shorter overall, the ellipse will open up quite a bit, and the bend of the leg will become more apparent. In fact, you can even see a subtle overlap on the right. Now in some poses, when the leg straightens out, the curvature of the ellipses can become quite subtle and difficult to see. In some positions it's just more difficult to communicate the volume of a form and that's okay. But in most positions, particularly if the leg is tilting toward you or away from you, you will be able to find indications of volume. Now with a basic cylinder, you'd only ever be able to see into one ellipse or the other, but not both at once. But with this form because it's curving and because the ellipse at the wider end is cut at an oblique angle, there are some positions where you'd be able to see into both ellipses. But familiarizing yourself with how this basic volume works before attempting to apply it to the figure is an essential step. So now that you've been introduced to the volume we'll use to simplify the upper leg, let's take a look at the volume we're going to use to simplify the lower leg. So you can imagine this ellipse being right below the knee. Below the knee, the calf muscles swell outward. We're going to simplify this into a basic egg shape. From there, this volume will narrow into a more traditional cylinder as it heads down towards the ankle. Hopefully you can see that this entire volume has a subtle curve to it. Now in most poses, particularly standing poses, the lower leg will be far below eye level, which means that even if it's not tilting toward us, we'll still be able to see into the ellipse at the top. But of course, in many poses you'll still find views of the lower leg, where the lower section tilts towards you and you'll be able to see into the ellipse at the bottom. Again, practicing these volumes on their own before you attempt to apply them to the figure is a critical step. So now let's apply these volumes to an actual figure. Even though we're focusing on volume in this course, gesture drawing should still play a foundational role. Remember, a good gesture drawing will add a sense of dynamism and movement to your drawing, as well as pull all of these different volumes together into a dynamic hole. When the leg is straight and viewed from the side, we'll often find this beautiful S curve. Hopefully you can see this curve clearly displayed in the models actual leg on the left. It's so easy to miss these kinds of relationships if you're too concerned with either tracing contours or focusing too much on individual volumes at the expense of the whole. After this initial gesture line, you'll see me construct the simplified volume for the pelvis. Hopefully this volume is very familiar to you now. From here, I'll transition that gesture line into the volumes for the leg. Now even though I did not intend for this gesture line to be an outside contour, it functions pretty well as the basis for the contour of the right side of the leg. But it's important here to note that gesture lines often cut through the center of the form and that's fine too. The main goal of a gesture line, of course, is to describe the directions of the forms. But it can be convenient when you discover that a gesture line is well-placed for a contour. Now using proportional measuring, I've discovered that the width of the pelvis is the same length as the distance from the pubic symphysis to right above the knee. I've also discovered that it's the same distance from just below the knee to the ankle. It's important to note that I am approximating here, and these proportions only apply to this particular view. For example, if the model were turned more toward us or away from us, the width of the pelvis would change. But these kinds of happy accidents, even if they're approximate, are very useful. With these basic proportions marked, I'll now focus on attaching the volume for the leg to the volume for the pelvis. You can see that the high side of the ellipse at the top of the volume for the leg is what is most visible. You'll be surprised how obvious this ellipse is in many poses. Although in this pose it's a little challenging to see, but hopefully you can see that there is some subtle evidence of this connection on the model. As you learned about in the Gesture Course, the connection of the leg to the pelvis follows a similar line to that of the leg hole of a bathing suit. In fact, that's why bathing suits are designed to the way they are. Now I'll craft the rest of the volume of the upper leg. You can see that I'm imagining cutting this volume right above the knee. The knee itself is an incredibly complex anatomical form, and we're not going to be focusing on it in this lesson. At this stage, it's much more important for you to understand the cylindrical volumes of the legs, and how to properly orient them in space. This photograph of the model is cropped to focus on the legs, but the leg is below eye level, so we will not be seeing into the bottom of this ellipse, we'll only see the outside rim. You'll see me leave some space for the knee. Now I'll draw the volume for the lower leg. The lower leg is even further below eye level, so we'll be able to see into the ellipse at the top and the curvature of the ellipse at the bottom will be even more pronounced. So there are two things I'd like to note here before we move on. Hopefully you can see that the proportions for the leg that I've drawn match the proportions of the model, but exactly where you decide to cut the ellipses for these volumes in your drawing is up to you. If it's a little higher or lower, that's fine. The other thing is that evidence of how these volumes are oriented in space is often very subtle and difficult to see. Being able to figure out how a form is oriented in space does take some practice. But hopefully you can see that by emphasizing these ellipses, the drawing actually appears more volumetric than the photograph. That's because the drawing is communicating in the language of volume. I'd like you to notice how volume and gesture work together in this drawing. The gesture establishes this beautiful S curve and really shows how these two distinct volumes flow into one another. The volume for the upper leg seems to bow outward and the volume for the lower leg seems to bow out in the opposite direction. But it's these ellipses that really give us a sense of volume. The gesture line moves up and down across the surface of the page. But it's these ellipses that seemed to go back and forth to come toward us, and then move away from us as they travel around the volumes. Let's take a look at another standing pose. You'll see me start at the same way with a simple gesture. Notice how this gesture attempts to capture both the directions of the different parts of the legs, as well as the basic proportions. Next, I'll capture the tilt of the pelvis, starting with an axis line, and then by constructing the basic volume for the pelvis. Next, I'll make my first attempts at connecting the volumes for the upper legs to the pelvis. In this pose the ellipses where the legs connect to the pelvis are little more obvious. Next, I'll go through and construct the basic volumes using the same methods that I demonstrated in the previous drawing. I'm paying particular attention to the gesture of the legs as a whole, the proportions of the volumes, as they relate to one another in any indication of the ellipsis of the volumes, to show how these legs are oriented in space. After making some corrections here, the simplified volumes I've arrived at. Again, hopefully you can see that the connection points of the legs to the pelvis are much more obvious in this pose. I'd like you to look back and forth from the drawing to the photograph. Hopefully, you can see how I arrived at these ellipses. Hopefully, you can also see their relationship to the leg openings of a bathing suit. Now, even though these indications are more subtle on the surface of the model, in my drawing, I've really emphasized these ellipses. This is a great way to train your brain to see and draw the figure as a collection of volumes. Hopefully you can see how powerful this volumetric illusion is. Later on in this course, you're going to learn how to use these kinds of ellipses in much more subtle and sophisticated ways. But for now, I want you to be able to show these ellipses in a concrete way and train your brain to both see and draw the figure volumetrically. In a drawing like this, there is no ambiguity as to what these volumes are and how they are oriented in space. That is the goal of volumetric and structural drawing. Now let's take a look at a different kind of pose. In this pose, we're viewing the model from behind. You can see that the model has her right leg going forward and her left leg coming back toward us. You can see that as always, I'm starting with a basic gesture that establishes the direction and the basic proportions of the legs. Next, I'll craft the volume of the pelvis. Next, I'll set to work crafting the basic cylinders for the upper legs. I'd like you to notice that once again, I thought of the gestures as a potential outside contour for the legs. Now, this doesn't always work and I often have to change the gesture to accomplish this. But it can be a convenient strategy that I encourage you to experiment with in your own gesture drawings. But of course, this strategy only establishes one side of the leg. So the first thing I need to do is give the legs some width. As I'm doing this, I'm asking myself if the legs need to be thicker or thinner. I'm looking back and forth from the model to my drawing, always comparing the proportions. Once I've established the width of the upper legs, I can begin to draw the ellipses right above the knees. Now, the models left leg is coming toward us, which means that we'd be able to see into this ellipse, but the right leg is moving forward and away from us. So we can only see the back rim of this ellipse. Now on the photograph of the model, take a look at where the right leg connects to the pelvis. There's a shadow that mimics the ellipse that we just drew above the knee of the right leg. Now in the photograph the shadow is a little more jacket that I'm drawing it. But notice how it follows where the top ellipse would be for this cylinder of the right leg. This is the kind of information that you want to emphasize in your drawings. Volumetric drawing isn't just about drawing what you see. You want to look for evidence of volume on the model and emphasize it in your drawings. Once again, take a look at the photograph, this time where the models left leg connects to the pelvis. The left leg is coming toward us and you can see at the crease where the left leg meets the pelvis, the line seems to go up and over this volume, again, mimicking the ellipse at the other end of the upper leg on our left. This is a powerful indication of volume and I've exaggerated it slightly in my drawing. Of course, both sections of the lower legs are coming toward us, but I'd like to keep the focus on where the upper sections of the legs meet the pelvis. These ellipses that are at the top of the legs and the underside of the glutes really help establish the roundness of these volumes, and these ellipses really helped to establish that these cylinders of the upper legs are going in different directions and that the creases underneath the glutes must change direction in response to the cylinders. We have time for one more demonstration. This time, I want to show you how these volumes operate when they're more foreshortened. Now, in cylinders go into foreshortening, there are two things you need to look for. The first thing is that the ellipses at both ends are going to open up quite a bit. Remember, the more foreshortened the cylinder is, the more open the ellipses will be. The second thing you want to look for is the cylinder getting shorter. The more foreshortened the cylinder is, the shorter the shaft of the cylinder will appear. Now when students start trying to draw the volumes of the limbs, they often say that it's difficult to find evidence of these ellipses on the surface of the actual model, and it can be difficult. But more often than not, you can find it. Take a look at the model's leg on our left. The leg that's extending toward us. At the top of the leg where it connects to the pelvis, you can clearly see the ellipse. I've only exaggerated this ellipse slightly in my drawing. Now, still looking at the photograph, look for evidence of an ellipse right above the knee. Can you see any? Now this ellipse isn't quite as obvious as the one at the top of the leg, but you can see an indication of this ellipse going up and over the knee. Next, take a look at the photograph right below the knee. Hopefully, you can see the subtle indications that make up the ellipse right underneath the knee. Now the ellipse at the bottom of the leg, right above the ankle is a little more difficult to see, but I want you to try and visualize it. Again, with time and practice, you'll get better and better at finding and drawing these kinds of ellipses. So let's get you practicing. For today's practice, I've included four downloadable images of the poses that you saw me demonstrate from today. The only difference is that the photographic reference will not be cropped to focus on the legs. You're going to be drawing all of the volumes that we've studied thus far, including the head and neck, the rib cage, the pelvis, and the volumes for the legs. Of course, I want you to try and draw the volumes for the legs on your own. There's great value in grappling with these forms and to see if you can figure out on your own which direction each section of the legs are going. But it's very common for students to struggle with this the first time they try it. So you can always go back and re-watch this lesson to see where I've cut the ellipses, how open they are, and how the legs attach to the volume of the pelvis. Now at this stage for the course, I'm going to try and rely less on the time to practice reals, but I still urge you to try and draw efficiently. Try not to slow down too much. If these drawings are taking you more than about 25 minutes, you're probably overthinking it or getting mired in detail. Remember, the whole reason we started with the time to practice poses was to give your drawings a sense of urgency, dynamism and energy. I want you to try and maintain this sense of urgency and energy in your drawings, even though you're not being timed. Well, I wish you the best of luck with today's practice, and I will see you back here for the next lesson when you're going to learn how to draw the volumes for the arms. 17. The Volumes of the Arms: Welcome to Lesson 9. In today's lesson, you're going to learn about the volumes that make up the arms. You're also going to learn some basic strategies to attach the arms to the rib cage. So I'm going to start today by walking you through the basic volumes we'll be using. Let's start with the volume for the upper arm. This volume is similar to the volume you learned about for the lower leg, but there are some differences and I'm going to use this opportunity to introduce a new concept. Today we're going to be using what are called compound volumes or hybrid volumes. A compound or hybrid volume is a volume that is made up of two or more separate volumes that are fused together. Let me show you what I mean. Here we have a basic ovoid shape. You should already be very familiar with this volume, and here's a latitude line to show which way this object is tilting in space. A quick note here, in a previous lesson, we introduced the idea of cross contour lines which are essentially latitude and longitude lines that run across the forearm. This latitude line is of course a cross contour line. Now imagine that we sliced off the bottom of this ovoid. We would arrive at a volume that looks like this. Notice that we're looking up into the ellipse at the bottom of the ovoid. This is the simplified volume we'll be using to draw the deltoid muscles. We'll talk much more about the deltoids later on in this lesson. Now, imagine a second volume, a simple cylinder. Just like the ovoid volume above it, we can see into the bottom of this cylinder, and here is a cross contour line helping to reinforce the roundness of this cylinder. There is of course an important difference between these two volumes. If we look at the latitude lines of both of these forms, you can see that they're both curving in similar ways. But only the ovoid is also curving from top to bottom. We can see the curve of the ovoid in both the latitude and the longitude lines. The longitude lines on the cylinder remains straight because the shaft of the cylinder is straight and not curving or ballooning out like the ovoid above it. To arrive at the volume for the upper section of the arm above the elbow, we're going to attach this cylinder to the bottom of the ovoid for the deltoids. This gives us a volume that looks like this. Here are some latitude lines to reinforce the curvature of this volume. You'll notice that the latitude line on the ovoid is of course wider than the latitude lines on the cylinder. Now from this view, the bottom of this form is raised up towards us so we're seeing into the ellipse at the bottom. Now I'll draw the same volume from a slightly different viewpoint with the bottom of the cylinder pointing away from us. Let's take a look at some variations on this volume. Now this basic volume for the upper arm can change depending on the model, the pose, and which view you see it from. See you want to be willing and able to improvise using this basic volume in order to be able to account for the specifics of the model and pose in front of you. In the previous drawings, the ovoid was centered on top of the cylinder. But in this drawing, you can see that the ovoid is slightly off set. You can follow the contour on the underside of the cylinder as it flows right into the underside of the ovoid. But on the top of this drawing, you can see an indentation where the ovoid meets the cylinder. You can also see that from this point of view, this volume appears slightly curved. Let's take a look at another common variation. When the arm raises, it goes into foreshortening. When this happens, the ovoid can appear rather spherical and you'll often find an obvious overlap where the cylinder meets the ovoid. Hopefully you can see that in this drawing as well, we see the ovoid slightly offset on top of the cylinder, and that the overlap on the left does an excellent job showing the cylinder going in front of the ovoid. Hopefully, you can also detect a subtle curve in this volume. Let's take a look at one more variation. In this drawing, you can see that the volume for the arm is much longer and more slender. You can also see that the ovoid at the top is not as pronounced. Now of course, you'll be drawing from the model, so you don't have to invent these entirely on your own. But I wanted to show you a few common variations you'll see and prepare you to improvise with this basic volume making sure you're capturing the characteristics of this specific model and pose in front of you. Now let's take a look at the volume we'll be using for the forearm. At the top of the forearm, near the elbow we'll be working with another ovoid. Now we're not yet dealing with the joints, so we're going to slice the forearm right below the elbow. This slice on our simplified ovoid would look like this. Now, as the forearm moves towards the wrist it becomes more box-like. As you'll see on the model in just a few minutes, when you look at the wrist right before it transitions to the hand, you can clearly see evidence of a box. So to properly draw the volume of the forearm, we need to attach this box to the ovoid. We want to be able to draw a hybrid volume that appears a rounder near the elbow, and more box-like near the wrist. Now if for some reason you found yourself in this course but you don't know how to draw a box in perspective out of your head, I highly recommend revisiting the form and space course in the original art and science of drawing series. Now, assuming you're comfortable with perspective boxes, let's explore this hybrid volume. I'll start this drawing with the ellipse that we're going to imagine cutting right underneath the elbow. Next, I'll pull a line down one side of this volume. Now just like the volume for the deltoid of the upper arm, you'll also see this ovoid for the forearm offset. From this view, if you look at the contour on the left, you'll see that the ovoid smoothly transitions into the box. But on the right side you can see a strong indentation where the ovoid meets the box. At the very bottom of this forearm, I'm going to square off the volume. Now even though I'm not drawing the full box here, because I'm comfortable drawing boxes and perspective, I can tell when the box is properly formed. Now I'm sure you've noticed that this box is wider in one-dimension and narrower in the other. For example, take a look at the plane on our left. You can see that it's broader than the plane on our right. Next, let's apply some cross contour lines to better describe the forearm. Near the wrist, the forearm is all about flatness. By squaring off the volume at the wrist, we get a strong sense of the planes. We've also indicated where these two planes meet. Using cross contour lines, we can enhance the illusion of two planes coming together at a right angle. The location where two planes come together and change direction, is called a plane change or a plane break. These are common drawing terms that you'll hear from many different artists. Now as we travel up toward the elbow, the forum starts to shift. It's as if the box starts to inflate. The forum still has two discernable sides. But when the forum transitions between the box and the ovoid, the two planes aren't as flat as they were near the wrist. They start to bow outward and of course as we near the elbow, the distinction between the two planes disappears entirely and the forearm appears to be uniformly rounded. Now when you're practicing today, you don't have to draw these cross contour lines. But I want to make sure that I'm clearly describing these volumes to you. And if you want to test yourself, you are more than welcome to try and add these cross contour lines to your own drawings. Now, I'm going to draw some common views of the forearm. As I'm drawing, I'd like to point out a few things. You'll notice that just like the upper arm, this volume has a subtle curve to it. Now, so you can start to orient yourself, take a look at the top of the wrist in this drawing. This wider top plane represents the top of the wrist. This is the part of the wrist you would see while looking at the back of your hand. Here's another common view. Here, we can see the front plane of the box but we cannot see into the ellipse of the ovoid. Hopefully, you're really starting to get a sense of this hybrid volume and how it operates in space. Now, let's apply all of this to a real figure. You can see that the model has her arm bent, so the upper and lower sections of the arm are going in different directions. As always, I'll begin with a gesture drawing that captures the directions that these two parts of the arm are going. When gesturing the arms, I try and capture the lateral edge of the arms. That way, the apex where the two sections of the arm come together gives me the location of the olecranon process of the elbow. Which you should have learned about in the Gesture course. Just a quick terminology reminder, lateral means toward the edges or outside of the body. An apex is where two lines traveling in different directions intersect. The apex is at the angle they create. After gesturing the lateral edge of the arm, I'll give it some the thickness by making my first simplified attempt at the other side. Before we go any further, we need to establish the proportions of the arm. You can see that I've made a mark at the head of the ulna, which you also should have learned about in the Gesture course. This establishes the length of the forearm. Now we need to establish the length of the upper arm in relationship to the length of the forearm. By taking measurements off of the reference photo, I've discovered that the distance from the ulna to the inside angle of the arm is the same distance as the inside angle from the arm to the pectoral muscle we can see connecting the arm to the torso. With the basic proportions of the arm established, all now indicate the ovoid of the deltoid, which you should clearly be able to see bulging out on the model. Now I can begin drawing the box of the wrist. The most prominent edge of the box you'll usually be able to see is the line running from the ulna to the radius on the top of the wrist. If you look closely at the wrist, you can clearly see the plane change. Where the flat plane at the top of the wrist changes directions and goes down the side. You'll now see me indicate the side plane. For today, we're just going to focus on the wrist and imagined that the hand is gone. This means that we can clearly see the front plane of the box of the wrist, which of course, we wouldn't usually be able to do. Now I'd like you to take a look at the line I drew indicating the plane change where the top of the wrist becomes the side. Notice that as it heads toward the elbow, it fades out. This softening line will help indicate that the forearm is transitioning from flat planes to a single rounded forearm. Now I'll round out the forearm near the elbow. I'll also add a slight curvature to the forearm. It's important to note that this curvature is actually difficult to see in the reference photograph because the fabric is obscuring some of the contour. But remember, when drawing the basic volumes of the body were often going beyond what we can observe with the eyes, and drawing what we know. Next, I'll establish the ellipse at the bottom of the upper portion of the arm. Hopefully, you can clearly see how well the simple volumes communicate the basic forms of the arm. Now, I'll better map the transition of the box of the forearm to the more rounded ovoid shape near the elbow by adding cross contour lines. Again, you're not required to draw a cross contour lines in your practice today but it is one more tool that I wanted you to be aware of. Now before we move on to the next demo, I wanted to quickly show you how these basic volumes for the arm connect with and interact with other volumes that you've learned about thus far. Here, you'll see me drawing the acromion process and then tracing the clavicle from the acromion process to the suprasternal notch. We covered this in the Gesture course. Remember, everything I'm teaching you in this course is completely compatible with everything you learned in the Gesture course, and I encourage you to use your gesture drawing skills as much as you like when crafting the volumes that you're learning about in this course. Here you can see the basic volume of the rib cage as well as a gestural indication of the head. You'll notice that it's the clavicle as well as the pectoral muscle that really give the sense of connection between the arm and the rib cage. Next, let's take a look at an arm that is more bent. You can see that I am starting off the exact same way that I started off in the previous demonstration. I'm beginning with a gesture line, focusing on the location of the elbow. Next, I'm adding some thickness to the arm, and finally, I'll begin indicating volume. In this drawing, you can see that the deltoid is much more spherical. This is why it's so important to be able to improvise. Next, I'll draw the ellipse at the bottom of the upper section of the arm. You'll notice that I'm cutting this ellipse pretty high up the arm. I'm doing this to make sure I have room for the bulge of the forearm. The upper section of the arm is tilting slightly toward us. So we'll be able to see into the ellipse at the bottom. Next, I'll square off the wrist and indicate the ovoid at the forearm. Next, I'll cut the ellipse at the forearm. A great strategy that will help you discover which direction the forearm is tilting, is by looking at the box at the wrist. You'll notice that we cannot see the front plane of the box of the wrist. This means that the wrist is traveling away from us. Which means we'll be able to see into the ellipse at the other end of the forearm. Now let's take a look at another pose. In this pose you can see that the models arm is straightened. This means that the volumes that make up the arm are all traveling in the same direction. I'll start this drawing, of course, with a light gesture. You can see that at the top of the arm, I've hooked the gesture line up and over the deltoid and then down the side of the arm on our left. Next, I'll place the elbow. Even though we're not drawing the elbow, it's important to know where it is so we can establish the proper proportions of the arm. I could have placed the elbow a little higher or lower and it wouldn't have made much of a difference. But once I assign a definitive length to the upper section of the arm, I need to make sure that the lower section of the arm is in proper proportional relationship to it. So after taking a proportional measurement from the reference photo and establishing the length from the elbow to the wrist, I'm now ready to flesh out the drawing. I'll cut the ellipse of the upper arm right above the elbow. Hopefully at this point, it's clear to you that the arm is coming slightly toward us so we would see into the ellipse at the bottom of the upper section of the arm. On the right side of the arm, you can see that I've drawn a subtle overlap, where the cylinder comes in front of the ovoid for the deltoid. Now there's not much to this drawing yet, but hopefully you can clearly see how the simple drawing of the upper arm communicates both volume and orientation in space. The forearm is of course, traveling the same direction as the upper arm, which means that we'll be able to see the flat plane at the front of the box at the wrist, but not into the ellipse at the top of the forearm. Finally, I'll draw the line indicating the plane change of the box of the wrist. Hopefully you can see that even without the cross contour lines, we get a strong sense of the shape of these volumes as well as how they're oriented in space. We have time for one more demonstration before we get you practicing. In this final demonstration, I want to focus more on how to integrate the volumes for the arms into the rest of your drawing. After starting with the light gesture, I'll begin fleshing out the volumes of the torso. At this point, you should be very familiar with these volumes. Of course, generally speaking, it's best to work big to small, which is why I'm starting here. As you've seen me demonstrate many times, I'm paying very close attention to the relationship between the various landmarks of the torso. I'm always asking myself where they are in relationship to one another. And I'm frequently using angle citing and triangulation to place them properly. Once I'm reasonably happy with a larger form of the torso, I'll gesture the arm. I'm paying close attention to the relationship between the elbow and the corner of the rib cage that I can see a protruding from underneath the flesh. Hopefully, it's crystal clear to you at this point that there is no one correct way to do this. If the pose were even slightly different, I may have chosen different landmarks to measure from. There are even numerous ways to arrive at the correct proportions while working with the same pose. This is why it's so important at this stage of feature drawing that you're able to strategize and improvise on your own, using the tools and techniques that you've learned. From here, I'll go through the same set of steps that you saw me demonstrate during the last three drawings. When I do volumetric drawings, I look at every part of the body and translate it into a simple volume. The body is made up of cubes, cylinders, ovoids, and compound or hybrid volumes, which can contain elements of any of the three more basic volumes. Once I've decided upon a volume to work with, I ask myself, how is it oriented in space? What access lines can I find for this volume? And is it tilting toward me or away from me? And the most important question, how can I communicate this in a drawing? So here's your practice for today. Once again, you'll be drawing from downloadable images of the poses that you saw me draw from today. For each of these four poses, I want you to draw all of the volumes that you've learned about thus far, including the head and neck, the rib cage, the pelvis, the volumes for the arms and the volumes for the legs. As always, feel free to incorporate any drawing strategies and tools that you've learned from previous courses. In particular, you should be incorporating gesture drawing techniques and measuring techniques. Remember, this is not a beginning drawing class. And part of what I'm trying to do is empower you to solve these poses on your own in ways that make sense to you. I want you to take control of and responsibility for your own drawing process. Your goal should not be to draw the way I draw, but instead to understand the tools and strategies that I'm using. Your ultimate goal is to become familiar enough with these tools, so that you can use them without guidance. So with all of this in mind, it's time for you to practice. Good luck, and I will see you back here for the next lesson when you're going to learn how to draw the volumes of the hands and feet. 18. The Hands & Feet: Let's start off by taking a look at the basic volumes that make up the hand. In this lesson, we're going to be building on top of the hand drawing techniques that you learned about in the gesture course. You can see that I've started off with a basic gesture of the forearm and the hand. My initial gesture line runs up the side of the hand on our right, and runs all the way up the index finger to the fingertip. Next, I'll locate the line that runs through the heads of the metacarpals located at the base of the fingers. Now it's time to start transitioning this linear gesture drawing into a volumetric drawing. To do this, we're going to imagine a box placed around the metacarpals. If you look at the photo on the left, you can clearly see why we do this. You can see a clear division between the plane on the back of the hand and the narrow side plane to our left. Next, we'll construct the top plane of this box where we will eventually connect the fingers. The edge of this box closest to us is of course the line for the metacarpals, which is curved. This means that the entire top plane that we're drawing will be curved. While practicing, you may struggle to draw this curving flat plane of the box, but as long as you can draw the more visible planes, as well as the curving line for the metacarpals, you should be fine. Remember, volumetric drawing is challenging. You shouldn't expect that you're going to understand, and draw these elements on your first try. It will take many drawings, and lots of practice. With a curving top plane constructed, I'll now gesture the fingers. I've already gestured the index finger on our right. Next, I'll gesture the little finger on our left. This bookends the remaining two fingers. I am of course, paying close attention to the direction, and length of this finger. Now, instead of just rushing in and gesturing the remaining fingers, instead, I want to figure out where they're heading. So here, you'll see me use triangulation and angle citing to locate the ends of the distal phalanxes or the fingertips. Next, you'll see me gesture the basic shapes of the individual fingers. You'll notice that I'm not yet drawing them as volumes. Remember, your drawing should go from line to shape, and then once you're certain that the shapes are accurate, you can transition these shapes into volumes. You'll notice that as the fingers get closer to the tips, they begin to narrow, and the fingertips themselves are rounded. Before I go any further with volumes of the fingers, I want to craft the volume of the wrist. You can see that the volume of the wrist has its own orientation, and space that is quite different from the box of the hand. Sometimes, the box of the hand seems to flow right out of the wrist. But in this post, you can see that they're tilting in different directions. Now with the two biggest volumes figured out, I'll start breaking down the fingers into their volumes. The fingers are best thought of as cylinders. Each finger has three different movable sections, each with its own joint so we can divide each finger into three distinct volumes. You'll notice that I'm leaving a space where the heads of the proximal phalanxes would be. This is because the joints of the proximal phalanxes, are much larger than the joint near the fingertips. In this pose, the two most distal sections of the fingers are going the same direction so they can be unified into a single form, although I am indicating the ellipse between them. At this point, you should be getting more competent at figuring out how a volume is oriented in space so hopefully it's clear to you why we're seeing the top ellipses of some of these cylinders and the bottom ellipses of others. The final thing I'd like to note about the volumes that make up the hand is that the fingertips are rounded. As long as you've drawn the cylinder at the base of the volume of the fingertips, the rounded contours should be enough to give the illusion of a rounded volume. Next, let's take a look at the thumb. We can simplify the thumb into three distinct volumes. The first volume containing the metacarpal for the thumb simplifies into a triangular shaped wedge. This wedge attaches to the main box of the hand. It begins at the wrist, but it doesn't go all the way up the box for the hand. You can see that it stops short of the line for the metacarpals of the fingers. Now, unlike the fingers which have three segments, the thumb only has two segments. A basic cylinder, and of course, the rounded off volume of the tip of the thumb. So these are the basic volumes that make up the hand. Now you may have noticed that a single hand on its own contains nearly as many volumes as all of the parts of the figure you've studied so far combined. It's a highly complex collection of volumes, and this is a simplified version. When drawing the hand on its own, you should be able to break it down into these basic volumes. But when you're drawing the entire figure, the hand, and particularly the fingers, end up being small details and you should look for reasons to simplify these forms even further. Now, often, when I'm drawing the hand along with other parts of the body, I try and unify the fingers into this few volumes as possible. So here you can see that I've simplified all of the volumes of the hand into three volumes. You'll notice that the volumes for the hand seem to fold at the joints. This is a great strategy when you're doing quick volumetric studies of the body. Of course, when done properly, these more basic volumes of the hand provide an excellent foundation for the more complex volumes of the fingers. Remember, understanding these more basic volumes helps you understand the more complex volumes as your drawing progresses. Next, let's take a look at the basic volumes of the feet. The foot is a strange, complex volume. The foot is also a shape shifter, seeming to require different kinds of solutions depending on its position, and the view. But the basic collection of volumes I'm about to show you work for most poses, and most viewpoints most of the time. In order to understand these volumes, let's first take a look at the flat footprint these volumes would make on a flat plane. Imagine that we are viewing this flat rectangle from above. Let's place the shape for the heel at the bottom of this rectangle. You can see that the heel does not occupy the entire width of the rectangle. Next, I'll draw a slightly curving line that travels from the heel all the way up to the big toe, which is located in the top right corner of this rectangle. Next, I'll draw a curving line from the big toe over to this small toe. You can see that the small toe is lower down on the rectangle. It does not hit the top of the rectangle like the big toe does. To complete this simplified shape of the footprint, we just need to connect the little toe to the shape for the heel. Now we need to separate this basic shape into three segments. One for the heel, one for the toes, and one for what we will call the ramp of the foot. The ramp of the foot is the shape between the toes and the heel. You'll learn more about why we call it the ramp of the foot in just a few minutes. Now, I'm doing this next part of the demo just to make sure that you understand the volume of the foot. You are not going to be asked to draw the foot like this. Although if you're looking for a challenge, it is great practice. So here, you can see me drawing this flat rectangle in perspective. I'm going to draw the foot coming toward us, which would place the big toe here, which means that the curving line for the heel would be back here. Just like before, I'll connect the big toe with the heel using a slightly curving line. Next, I'll place the approximate location of the small toe, and complete the basic shape by connecting the small toe with the heel using a slightly curving line. Again, this is a generic shape that could change dramatically depending on the model, but it will give you a great sense of the basic volumes that we'll be working with for the feet. Next, I'll divide the foot into the three sections that you saw me draw in the diagram on the left using a straight line for the heel, and a curved line for the base of the toes. Now, you'll see me use this basic shape as a foundation from which I will extrude volumes upward, starting with the heel. Here, you'll see me draw a vertical line for the back edge of the heel, followed by two more vertical lines from the front corners of the heel. I am doing this drawing in three point perspective so I want to give the illusion that all verticals would converge at a distant vanishing point far below the drawing. I'll connect these three lines using the same shape that we used at the base of the shape of the heel. Hopefully, you can see that this volume closely resembles a cylinder that's been cut in half lengthwise. Next, I'll construct the ramp of the foot. To do this, I'll start by drawing a vertical line that comes into contact with the edge of our perspective plane. You'll notice that this line is much shorter than the lines for the heel. I'll now connect this vertical line to the volume for the heel using a diagonal line. Next, I'll draw a vertical line at the base of the big toe, where it comes into contact with the edge of our perspective rectangular plane. I'll connect these two shorter verticals using a curving line. This creates a curving plane that is similar to the curved plane that we find at the heads of the metacarpals of the hand. I'll complete this volume by connecting the vertical of the big toe with the volume of the heel. Hopefully now you can see why we refer to this section of the foot as the ramp of the foot, as it creates a ramp that goes downward from the volume for the heel to the volume for the toes. I'll complete this volume by pulling up a vertical from the front edge of the big toe and make the top plane by drawing the same shape that we used for the shape of the toes on the flat plane directly below. Again, there is no requirement that you use this method to construct the volumes of the feet. But I wanted to take the opportunity to clearly explain how the volumes of the feet work, as well as demonstrate what it looks like to think your way through a volume. Now let's take a look at how to use these volumes with an actual figure. To start, you'll want to find the basic shape of the foot. For the most part, you don't want to rush into volume. The feet drawing techniques that I taught in the gesture course are an excellent way to begin. Once you've laid in the basic two-dimensional shape of the foot, you can start searching for indications of volume. For example, you can see the toes coming toward us, which means would be able to see this front plane that represents the front edge of the toes. Unlike the fingers, each of which can bend and point in different directions, the toes tend to stay in one group. Generally speaking, we're not interested in drawing individual toes, we want to focus on this volume that they make as a whole. Now you can see that the volume for the toes is coming toward us, but the ramp of the foot is tilted up dramatically. Of course we can see the division between the volume for the toes and the ramp of the foot. You can also get a sense of the front or top of the ramp up the foot versus the side plane. Now I want you to remember that these volumes are simplifications of a very complex form and you won't always see direct evidence of these volumes. But as you're practicing, all I ask is that you try your best to understand forms as volumes, and not default to tracing contours or thinking about them as flat shapes. Now let's pull back a bit. Hopefully you can see that the volumes for the foot flow right out of the legs enhancing the gesture I established earlier. Remember, the gesture techniques you've already learned should complement these volumetric techniques. Let's focus on the feet of one more pose. Now, as we've talked about, you want to start to get comfortable improvising with volumes. Often, to make sense of a form, you'll need to deviate or alter the volumes that you've learned about so far in order to capture what is in front of you. Remember, figure drawing is not a system. No strategy will work for all poses and all models. You need to be willing to grapple with these volumes until they make sense. Often, that means erasing and re-working. I've been drawing the figure for over 20 years and I still come across parts of the body that I struggle with. Sometimes I need to try out two or three different volumetric solutions before I arrive at something that works. But generally speaking, with the feet, you want to differentiate the toes from the ramp of the foot and try and differentiate the top plane from the side plane of the foot. Hopefully you can see how well all of these volumes pull together to create a drawing that captures the dynamic position of the model, as well as create the illusion of three-dimensional volumes operating in deep space. There you have it. In my opinion, you have now learned the primary volumes of the human body. Now of course, there are numerous other volumes of the human figure, but the volumes you've learned about so far are the biggest and most fundamental volumes of the human form. Before you learn about any other volumes, you need to get competent and comfortable working with these fundamental volumes. Being able to work with these fundamental volumes is a critical first step to dealing with the more complex volumes of the figure. With that in mind, I'd like to demonstrate the process you'll go through from gesture drawing to volumetric drawing. You'll want to start off with a very simple gesture drawing. Remember, a good gesture drawing focuses on the direction the forms of the body are traveling, their placement on the page in relationship to one another, and the length of each of these forms. You'll notice that for many parts of the body, the gesture line that I'm drawing is a stand-in for what will eventually be a contour line. You can see this very clearly for the sweeping line of the side of the torso on our right, as well as the top of the leg that is closest to us. But I want you to note, that neither of these lines contain any detail. I'm not attempting to record the subtle curves and overlaps that will eventually cover these gesture lines on these parts of the body. But as I hope you remember from the gesture course, I don't always use contours for gesture lines. For example, take a look at the lower section of the leg that is closest to us. For the gesture of this part of the leg, I've drawn a slightly curving line that represents the visible part of the tibia, or the shin bone. Remember there is no single correct way to do a gesture drawing. You want to do a gesture drawing that makes sense to you. I know what works for me tends to change, pose to pose, and model to model. The best way to figure out what works for you is to practice. A good gesture drawing focuses on the dynamism and expressive qualities of the pose. But before we build on top of it, we need to make sure that it's accurate and in proportion. In this next phase of the drawing, you'll see me employing a series of measuring techniques. I usually use a combination of angle citing and triangulation, as well as proportional measuring. I usually start by locking down a skeletal landmark. In this case, I'm going to be using the head of the ulna on the models left-hand. I'll use this landmark as a staple pointing space that I can relate to other landmarks. You can see me finding the angle between the ulna of the wrist and the location of the knee, or the angle of the wrist to the shoulder. Of course, I can also find the angle between the shoulder and the knee. As I'm sure I've made very clear at this point, this is not a beginning drawing class, and this is not even a beginning figure drawing class. I'm expecting you to have basic skills, like measuring. If you need any reminders on how to measure, I would highly recommend revisiting the measuring and proportion class in the original art and science of drawing series. Once you've measured your gesture drawing and made any adjustments necessary, we can begin to flesh out the drawing. I'll start with the largest volumes, the rib cage and the pelvis. Remember, this isn't a hard rule, but generally speaking, you want to work with the largest volumes first, and then work your way down to smaller volumes. Of course, all of the landmarks and volumetric indications you're seeing me draw should be very familiar to you by now. With these larger forms in place, I can now start to work on the smaller volumes of the arms and legs. I'm always asking myself, what volume will best communicate what I'm seeing on the model? For the most part, this will be cylinders and ovoids. The best way to communicate those volumes is by looking for ellipses. Hopefully you can clearly see the ellipse where the leg that is closest to us attaches to the pelvis. Now I've talked a lot about improvising and modifying these volumes if needed. To see why this is so important, take a look at this side of the pelvis on our right, in particular, the bottom right, where the pelvis comes in contact with the seat. Because of the way the chair is pushing out the flesh of the buttocks, the pelvis here is a bit squared off. It's not as round as when the model stands. Remember, the idea is to make these volumes work for you, not to force every pose into a generic system of volumes. Next, I'll move up to the arm. Once again, these volumes should be very familiar to you at this point. The upper arm transitions from an ovoid to a cylinder, and the forearm transitions from an ovoid to a box. You can see that the way I've drawn the ellipses, as well as the square of end of the box, give us an indication of what direction these forms are traveling. Now I'm sure you've noticed that in some photographs, it's actually pretty difficult to tell if a form is coming towards you or away from you. This is one of the many reasons that I highly encourage you to join an actual figure drawing group, so you can draw from a real model. But when working with photographs, it may take you a couple of tries to figure out what works in the drawing. When doing volumetric drawings from photographs, even I have to often erase and redo a section because it's clear that the volumes weren't working the way I drew them. This is a normal part of figuring out volumes. You're welcome to take your volumetric drawings as far as you like. You'll certainly want to resolve the volumes of the most prominent parts of the body. For example, you can see that I've drawn both ends of both parts of the legs, and both parts of the arms. But there's no requirement that you draw every single volume that's the slightest bit visible. For example, you can see that I've left the leg that is furthest away from us, just suggested. Now let's talk about the hands and feet. Now, when you're drawing the whole figure, the hands and feet will often be too small to get very detailed with. In this drawing, you can see that I've just suggested the shapes of the hands, found a box of one of the hands where it was most obvious, and detailed out just a few of the fingers to give a sense of what the hand is doing. But I haven't gone through and figured out all of the cylinders for each finger. With the feet, I've just done a simple volumetric treatment, just to give the idea of what position they're in, and how they're occupying space. The goal here is that you have the knowledge and tools to think of all of the parts of the body as volumes. But you don't have to detail out every single volume that you see. The volumes you draw should make sense for the drawing. Finally, you can see that I've drawn a number of things we talked about in the gesture course, including the center line in indication of the basic shapes of the breasts and the navel. For today's practice, you'll draw from the four downloadable images included with this lesson. Apply everything you've learned up until now, and don't be afraid to experiment and adapt to these tools and techniques. I will see you back here for the next lesson when you're going to learn how to apply these techniques in more subtle ways to dramatically improve every figure drawing you do. 19. Communicating Volume Through Drawing: Over the last 10 lessons, you've learned how to simplify the human body into its most fundamental volumes. Understanding the body in terms of more basic volumes is an essential step to adding complexity later on, the volumetric practice I've been having you do is critical for you to understand the body in terms of volume. But in this lesson, I'm going to show you how to go beyond the more diagrammatic volumetric drawings you've been doing and apply these concepts to any drawing. In this lesson, you should get a clear understanding of why these concepts are so important to learn and how to apply them in much more subtle and sophisticated ways to create drawings that are beautiful and naturalistic, but also have a clear sense of volume, and three-dimensionality. The biggest difference between past lessons and today's lesson is that today we're only going to be looking at drawings, we are not going to be looking at reference photographs. This is because it is critical that you see how to communicate volume in drawing on its own, you need to see how the language of volume and drawing speak for themselves. Today we're going to be looking at three drawings in progress. These partially finished drawings are one of the best ways to examine and explore how these volumetric concepts work in drawings. On the right, you can see that I've drawn a simplified version of the two chambered shaped for the torso and crafted that basic volume of the rib cage using the landmarks that you were introduced to earlier in this course. You can see that I've paid special attention to the overlap at the indentation of the active side of the torso. In the drawing on the left, you can see how much this indentation has been amplified. I've used dark hard lines to showcase these overlaps in an otherwise bare area. They've really draw the eye. You'll notice that once these overlaps dive inside the contour and go over the surface of the body, they seem to lighten and soften. This is one of my favorite techniques that you'll see me use over and over again. Now I'd like you to focus on the thoracic arch. The thoracic arch in the drawing on our left has more anatomical detail than the drawing on the right. But all of these details have been organized on this simplified line that I've drawn in the drawing on the right. This is another critical concept for you to understand. The simplified versions of the volumes that you've been working with, help organize the complexity you will deal with later on. This is another concept that you'll see me use over and over again, starting with the simplest version of a volume and using it to organize complexity. Without doing this, most students end up drawing all kinds of awkward lumps and bumps all over the surface of the figure without understanding the underlying structure. Now you'll notice that there aren't too many indications of the rim at the top of the bowl of the pelvis and that's fine. As I've mentioned often in this course, you won't always see every element that you've learned about in this course. Now, take a look at the connection of the leg on our right. We know that the upper section of the leg is cylindrical, you can see that the line I've drawn beautifully curves up and over the volume of the leg, really communicating in accentuating its cylindrical qualities. When an indication of volumes such as this one is visible on the surface of the model, I'll usually make it one of the darkest lines in the drawing. Remember, that page at drawing sits on is flat. In order to create the illusion of volume, we need to go beyond what's observable and really amplify the indications of volume that are visible. Now let's move to the leg on our left. This is an excellent example of why it's important to be able to improvise with our volumes because the model is seated, the flesh of her upper thigh is being pushed out instead of appearing more cylindrical as it does when the model stands, you can see that this forms an egg-like shape at the top of the leg. Once this egg-like volume of fleshes drawn, I can attach the more traditional cylinder of the rest of the upper leg. You'll notice that I'm still drawing the full ellipse of this cylinder, even though it's very light, it's still giving us an indication of the direction the leg is going. In this demo, I'm exaggerating the ellipse beyond what I actually saw in the reference photo. This egg-shaped volume of compressed flesh isn't what the leg usually looks like, but the egg is a familiar volume. When you recognize it, you should be ready to draw it. This is just one of a nearly infinite number of reasons that the volumes of the body may be different from what you expect. Remember, figure drawing is not a system. The specific volumes of an individual body can change for a wide variety of reasons. You should always be asking yourself what volumes you see on the figure in front of you and how can you best communicate these volumes in a drawing. Now let's take a look at that knee on our left. I usually think about the needs as simple spheres. This works for me in most drawings most of the time. However, from some fuse and with some models, the knees can seem more like boxes with a clear front plane, top plane and side plane, it's essential that you understand that there is no single correct solution here. In reality, any human knee has some box-like attributes as well as some spherical attributes. Remember, your goal is to make a decision about what kind of volumes you're observing and what will best communicate the form in a drawing. Once you decide, don't be afraid to accentuate and even exaggerate the volumetric indications in a drawing. A well-executed volumetric drawing can actually appear more three-dimensional than a photograph. Let's talk about the breasts. The breast is an ovoid volume that sits on top of the egg shaped volume of the rib cage. As you learned about in the gesture course, breasts tend to pull toward the sides of the body. They do not hangs straight down, and the larger the breast, the heavier it is. In this drawing, we really want to give the sense of gravity as the breast curves around the side of the rib cage. This also helps accentuate the roundness of the rib cage itself. In contrast, the breast on our right is being pulled up by the raised arm. You can see that the volume of the breast on our right is more vertically oriented and does not appear to be hanging down into the left, like the breast on our left. Now let's talk about the head, in almost every figure drawing I do that includes the head, I start with the same volumetric indications that you've learned about earlier in this course, starting with this simplified volume and the basic proportions of the face is the easiest and most surefire way to successfully draw the rest of the features. Now this course is not about detailed facial features, but mastering this basic volume of the head is an essential first step. I would only recommend going further with facial features once you have mastered the basic volume of the head, which you learned about in this course. Now this drawing is more finished than the previous drawing. So in this demo, we're going to focus on how volumetric indications work with shading. Shading combined with a more contour-based volumetric drawing that you've learned about in this course, are a powerful combination. But unfortunately, most beginners focus on the shading and ignore other indications of volume. This demo is designed to help you avoid that mistake. You can see that I've crafted the basic volume of the torso. Let's focus on how the basic volume of the pelvis informs the more complex drawing of the pelvis in the drawing on the left. Here you can see the anterior superior iliac spine coming to the surface in both drawings. Although, due to the way that the drawing on the left is lit and shadowed, it looks a little different, but hopefully you can see where it's located. In the drawing on the right, you can see that I've drawn the simplified version of the inguinal ligament. In the drawing on the left, you can see that a number of anatomical details all line up on the line for the inguinal ligament. These kinds of details are so easy to miss if you don't understand the basic structure that organizes the more complex forms of the body. Now let's take a look at the rim of the ellipse of the bowl of the pelvis. Here we can see that the flesh over the abdominals once again organizes itself right on top of this line. In just a few strokes, we can communicate the center line of the abdominals, the flesh over the abdominals, as well as the ellipse at the top of the pelvis that communicates the roundness of the bowl of the pelvis. This is another excellent example of how you can take a simplified drawing of the volume of the pelvis and with a few anatomical details, turn it into a complex work of art. But it's not until you learn to think in terms of volume that you are even aware of how many opportunities for volume a figure can give you. Of course, you need to remember that every figure will offer different volumetric opportunities. Now let's apply this idea to the arm. I'll start with the basic gesture and then I'll draw the basic volumes of the arm just as you've been instructed to do in this course. These volumes for the arm should be very familiar to you. Let's focus on the box-like volume for the wrist. In a more finished drawing on the left, you can see that the body is casting a shadow over the wrist. You can see that this cast shadow falls over the plains of the wrist and clearly accentuates the box. In fact, when you compare the more finished drawing on the left to the more geometric drawing on the right, you can see that the lines used to draw the wrist are nearly identical. The only difference is that the wrist on the left has some shading added. Now let's focus on the forearm, right below the elbow. Look how subtly I've indicated the ellipse at the top of the forearm. It's just barely there, but it's enough to indicate the direction that the forearm is traveling. Ellipses like these work on an almost subliminal level and they're one of my favorite ways to use ellipses in drawings. In more geometric drawings, like the drawing you see on this page on the right, we're really accentuating the full ellipses even when we don't see them on the model. This is of course to train your brain to think in terms of volume. But in an actual drawing, you don't need much of an indication of an ellipse for the viewer to pick up on the volume you're trying to communicate. I've used a similar kind of subliminal ellipse where the cylinder of the upper arm meets the egg shaped volume of the deltoid. Remember, you don't need to complete an ellipse to indicate volume, you just need to imply it. Let's take a look at a few more implied ellipses. We know that the volume of the rib cage is an egg shape. If this egg shape had ellipses drawn over the surface of it, they would tilt in various directions. This rib cage is tilting back. In the drawing on the right, I'm going to cut the bottom off of the egg shape up the rib cage, which would look something like this. Of course, in a more finished drawing, we can't do this. But what we can do is look for opportunities to imply an ellipse. Now on the actual model, I could actually see an overlap at the active site of the torso. To help complete this ellipse, I've ghosted in the other side of it right below the corner of the rib cage on our left. This was not visible on the actual model. It's a drawing device to subliminally communicate volume. When I can't find the indications of volume that I prefer, I make them up and if they're drawn lightly enough, usually the viewer will never consciously notice them, but overall, your drawing will have a greater sense of three-dimensionality. Now let's move back to the arm. If you've taken any of my courses in the art and science of drawing series, you'll know that I tell students to work from big to small, from general to specific, and from simple to complex. Underneath many, if not most, of the finished figure drawings that I do are simple, lightly drawn geometric drawings, like the one you see for this arm. Once these basic volumes are drawn, without doing any erasing, I can go in and add the kind of complexity that I love my drawings to have, confident that my basic volumes provide an accurate foundation to build upon. Once the basic volumes have served their purpose and the more complex form has started to emerge on the page, I can knock back the basic volumes using an eraser. But the ghosts of these volumes remain subliminally communicating volume to a viewer. I could eliminate them entirely if I wanted, but I want these kinds of volumetric indications in my drawing, even though they would not be visible on an actual model. Remember, your drawing should not look like a photograph. You want to make decisions as an artist about what you want to communicate. A drawing can go beyond a photograph to communicate volume in a much more direct and visceral way. With the more complex contours drawn in, I can use the shading technique that you learned about in the gesture course, by first drawing the line of termination and then shading in the shadowed side of the forms. From here you can add as many subtle details as you'd like. Any anatomical knowledge that you learn about in the future, can easily be folded into this drawing process. Remember, indications of volume are everywhere. It's only once you've trained your brain to think and see in terms of volume, that they'll become visible to you. Linear indications of volume work with shading to communicate three-dimensionality. You need to be prepared to take advantage of the volumetric opportunities that a pose offers you. Again, these opportunities can change from pose to pose and model to model so, you need to be open and willing to improvise. In this pose, we can see the pectoral muscle traveling up and over the cylinder for the arm. Because of the musculature of the model, this indication of volume is much more visible than it would be on other models. We can see something similar in the arm on our right. But because the arm is raised, the pectoral muscle seems to rise and spiral around the back side of the cylinder of the arm. Now, in the drawing on our right, you'll see me enhance the simplified volume for the rib cage. Now when you look at the complex and jagged shadow patterns that we find in the thoracic arch in the drawing on our left, it's easy to get lost. But by understanding the more simple form of the rib cage, we can better identify landmarks. For example, here is the xiphoid process and on the side of the rib cage on our right, you can see the rim of the thoracic arch indicating the thickness of the rib cage. Even though the shadow patterns on the thoracic arch on our left are much more complex due to muscle attachments, flesh, etc. once again, they still organize themselves on top of this more basic line for the thoracic arch. But if you don't know this, you're much more likely to draw messy lumps and bumps on the body that don't make any sense. Here's this basic shading process in action. You can see that I'm starting with a simple version of the line of termination. After this first pass, I'll add a wash of value. On my second pass over the line of termination, I can add complexity at the core shadow. This is an opportunity to shade all of those small lumps and bumps on the surface of the body that I ignored during the first pass. Again, it is so much easier to work this way rather than try and capture all of the complexity in the first pass. Hopefully you're starting to get a sense of how the basic shading process and these linear indications of volume work together. For a refresher on shading, you can revisit the gesture course or the shading courses in the original art and science of drawing series. To wrap up this lesson, I'd like to leave you with this: Understanding and drawing the basic volumes of the body is the first step in understanding the complexities of the human body. The basic volume of an arm is a simple cylinder, and once we understand this, we can then ask, what are the secondary volumes that make up a form? The arm as a whole needs to maintain its cylindrical quality. But even without erasing, we can then sculpt the smaller volumes right on top of it, and of course, we can add contours that reflect the more organic quality of the body. By adding cross contour lines, it becomes clear that there is part of a smaller cylinder on top of the larger cylinder for the arm. Remember, every shift in value that you see is due to a shift in volume. So you should be constantly asking yourself, what volume am I drawing? What is the most basic volume of a form and what are the smaller volumes that add complexity to it later on? Remember, no matter how complex the forms of the body appear, they all simplify into ovoids, cylinders and boxes. By understanding how to draw these basic volumes, you'll be prepared to understand and draw the complex combinations of these volumes later on. So let's get you to your practice. In this course, you have access to numerous practice reels as well as downloadable images. For today's practice, I'd like you to select three images and do drawings that explore and experiment with the ideas presented in this lesson. Now is your opportunity to move beyond the geometric drawings that we've been doing in the rest of the course and do more realistic and naturalistic drawings of the body. Instead of doing over geometric drawings, I want you to explore implying volume using ellipses, overlaps and plane changes. Use today's demos as inspiration. Your drawings can be as simple or as complex as you're comfortable with. Remember, these don't need to be finished drawings, but this is an opportunity for you to bring all of your skills together, whatever they may be, in play with volumetric drawing. 20. Congratulations!: Well, congratulations on completing the Volume and Structure course of The Art and Science of Figure Drawing series. I'm thrilled that you've decided to share this time with me. And I really hope you've learned something about volume and the figure. In this course, I've really tried to provide a practical approach to volumetric drawing. But it's important to remember that as we talked about, figure drawing is not a system. No system of volumes will work for all poses or all models. So it's important that you get good at improvising with these volumes. So now that the course has concluded, I really encourage you to put all of these ideas into practice and feel free to try out different volumes than the ones I showed you. Now, I've tried to give you the volumes that will work for most models, in most poses, most of the time. But you may see some of these volumes differently. So I encourage you to get some practice, try out these volumes and experiment with other kinds of volumes. Sometimes a rib cage or a pelvis may look more boxy to you and that's fine. It's up to you as an artist to develop your own vocabulary volumes that work for you. Lastly, I hope you see that in these courses, I really try and bring you quality instruction, as well as try and provide you with numerous figure drawing resources including diagrams, timed practice reels, and still photographs. But I would still highly encourage you to find a local figure drawing group in your area. Drawing the figure from life is a really wonderful experience that as a figurative artist, you should be engaging in often. And drawing the figure from life is a really great way to see these volumes moving through space in reality, to see them right in front of you and to see how they change when the pose changes or you move your position. So once again, thank you for spending this time with me. Congratulations on completing the course, and I hope to see you in future courses in The Art and Science of Figure Drawing series.