My Left Eye
My Left Eye
Not quite my left eye… I took a photo for reference and ended up with a fair bit of barrel distortion on one side of the photo. I think when drawing this, I over compensated in trying to correct the barrel distortion. The photographer part of mind was in conflict with the drawing part.
I am not a keen fan of drawing eyes. When doing storyboards or concept art, as you can see in some old storyboard drawings here. I find the moment you start drawing eyes, you start defining the character and I’m not arty enough to go down that path.
One tip that has been engraved in my mind, from yonks ago. Is the whites of the eye are never ever pure white. and if you zoom in, you should just be able to see a fine shade over the eye white. This is the third drawing I have done of part of myself, and over at my other blog, I have stitched the three together as a self portrait WIP which you can see here
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Latin Rock #2
Latin Rock #2
Back to the Latin Rock for a warm up. This time, I used just an HB and and a 2H pencil in this sketch, concentrating more on the detail. In fact, went to town a bit and it would be fair to say I overdid it.
It interesting, though at a slightly different angle from my first latin rock sketch, which concentrated on the shading.
I can see in my mind now, how if i was going to do a proper drawing of the rock, I would combine the two. Where I would use detail and where I would shading.
Well worthwhile exercise in doing the two separate drawings.
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Categories: Warm Up Excercises Tags: 2H, HB, Latin Rock, Shading, Warm up
My Left Ear
My Left Ear
After drawing all the ossicles I thought I would come outside the body for a change and voila! My left ear. Considering it was back in Frebruary I drew my left foot , you can expect an entire self portrait by 2056.
One word of advice to anyone taking a close up picture of their ear, DO NOT USE A REALLY STRONG FLASH!
The drawing itself was done with the usual culprit of pencils, but to note; the skin around the ear I did with a HB and used bluetack to lighten it – a tip I have seen on a couple of websites.
Again, a word of warning about keeping finger grease of the paper, it really can be a pain. If you zoom into the top of the helix you might be able to make out where I have tried to hide it. I’m struggling to do this on an A5 pad and when you look at artists working a lot bigger than I, such as Clive Meredith the mind boggles.
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The Ossicles
Anterior View of the Ossicles
After sketching all the individual bones, here are all three of them together in situ, but what do they do ? These three small bones (the hammer. The Anvil & Stirrup) carry sound waves from the ear drum to the Cochlea and its a nice bit of mechanics.
First of all, sound waves hit the tympanic membrane (AKA as the Ear Drum) , the vibrations are then carried through the Malleus, Incus and finally the stapes which then takes these vibrations to the inner ear. They effectively act as a lever and give a mechanical advantage, by not just the lever effect, but also my reducing the area of force. If the sound waves went direct from the ear drum to the inner ear, they would be a lot weaker – Its a nice bit of design.
There are also muscles attached to the ossicles which can control the extent of movement which is believed to protect the inner ear from loud noises. Interestingly in Bats, these muscles are highly developed and seem to be crucial in their sonar and echolocation senses.
So there you have it ladies and gentlemen, the Ossicles. As for the drawing itself, I’m not too happy with it. Not just because I used my old pad after the luxury of using the heavier a5 pad, but because after mentioning last week about looking at other areas when it comes to shading, I started all guns in on the Malleus with a 6B which didn’t really give us much room for shading darker areas afterwards. Thankfully the HB came to the rescue on the Tymponic cavity, but my original intention was to have that darker and the ossicles lighter.
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Categories: Human Anatomy Tags: 6B, Anatomy, Bones, Ear, HB, Head, Incus, Malleus, Middle Ear, Ossicles, Skull, Stapes, tympanic membrane
Drawing Skeletons – Mechanics
Knee Joint
The second of my observation posts on drawing skeletons. Firstly I would like to apologies for the use of blue around this image, in hindsight it really was the wrong choice.
What we have here is the knee Joint where the femur meets the fibula and tibia. What I want to point out here is that the human body is a fine piece of machinery and the skeleton not only provides the framework , but also gives strength and protection for this marvel.
If you look at the curve in the femur at the end and picture what happens when the knee bends, Im sure you will agree it is a fine piece of design. Now also consider the stresses and forces it has to put up with.
Bones aren’t there for the sake of it, and I think when drawing skeletons It is important to understand what motions are involved , what stresses and forces are involved, whats its relation to other nearby bones and understand especially the limitations.
The drawing itself I did with the king of pencils (or pauper of pencils-depending on your view) the HB. I adapted this image from a picture showing the tendons on the knee, as such the shape has suffered slightly, but I hope it is clear enough the point between the femur and tibia.
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Categories: Human Anatomy, Notes Tags: Anatomy, Bones, Drawing Skeletons, Femur, Fibula, HB, Knee, Leg, Mechanics, One Pencil, Skeleton, Tibia
