Ossicles – Incus
Lateral View of the Incus
AKA the Anvil. Unlike the Yves Tanguy Stapes and the Jaws like Malleus who have been quite camera shy, finding images of the incus has not been a problem at all.
In fact I have decided, it is the Lindsay Lohan of the Middle ear. My drawing is a composite from diagrams from my anatomy booka and the photographs I came across on the web.
One of the nice things about the photos, I was able to get a lot clearer idea of the surface. One of the sites I came across was the Otolaryngology Houston Texas website which has some great pictures (ironically there are pictures of the stapes and malleus there as well, but did not come across this site when I was searching for those terms)
Just a note on doing the composite drawings, is I am aware of getting something horribly wrong which is where being able to refer to diagrams in my anatomy books help. But I have noticed that a lot of anatomy illustrations will tend to stress a certain part of the picture to fit the context of the article or topic they are discussing. It is subtle but I think it is something you need to be aware of.
I dis start this drawing with a 3B just to see what difference that would make, but quickly abandoned the pencil – it seems superfluos and doesn’t really add anything, so I was back to the usual set of 6B, 2B, B and 4H. I was also using the 135gsm paper again which I am getting more used to blending on. With the extending blending properties of the heavier paper, I have come across a negative; it is more vital to keep finger grease off the drawing and along the short process if you zoom in , you may see how I found that out.
