Drawing Skeletons – Curves
Fifth Metarcarpal Left hand
I noticed a lot of the traffic for my site comes from the search terms “how to draw skeletons” and variants around that.
To hopefully make this site a bit more useful, I thought I would start to put up some posts on a few observations I have made along the way about drawing anatomy.
To the left is the fifth metarcarpal left. Or to you and me, the lower part of your small finger on your left hand. There is an earlier sketch I did on the bones of the hand here , which has the position of the metarcparl marked.
One of the things I have noticed about bones, is they always have gracious curves. I decided to draw this bone, by simply flicking onto a random page in my anatomy book and I would put money on it that I could prove my point about curves with any of the bones in the human body.
Also, important to note is symmetry here as well never is the curve on one side, the same as the other, there are always subtle or not so subtle differences.
I think there is a temptation when drawing bones, to go the cartoon root and draw , two parallel lines with 3/4 of an 8 shape at either end. So a point to bear in mind is to think of the sides in curves.
The sketch to the left was done with a 4b, 2B and a @H to give it the texture.
To also justify my “gracious curves” statement, take a look at the hyperbola and Neiles parabola here , both of which I would call damn ugly curves ;- )
[...] bone) which amongst other things is another fine case of what I mentioned in my post about curves. It is also something I imagine wouldn’t be out of place in a Yves Tanguy [...]
[...] and have the primary function of providing support and strength. Examples of short bones are the Carpals and Tarsals which you would find in the hand and foot [...]