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
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.
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Categories: Human Anatomy Tags: Anatomy, Bones, Ear, Head, Incus, Middle Ear, Ossicles, Skull
Ossicles – Malleus
The Malleus
Following on from the Stapes, here is the Malleus which is the latin for Hammer.
I wasn’t going to draw it from this angle, but was watching Jaws the other night and – well …
Again had the same problems as drawing the stapes, I can’t work out quite what is happening below the manubrium. My main source for this picture was one of the 19th century Grays Anatomy illustrations from wikipedia.
I am not to keen on using these as sources, as they are more technical illustration than drawing, which the artist would of probably spent six months drawing doric columns before being allowed to study anatomy and then only under strict conditions and with a defined set of rules and guidelines.
Fair credit to them, I would not have the patience to put in half the detail they put into those illustrations.
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Categories: Human Anatomy Tags: Anatomy, Bones, Ear, Head, Malleus, Middle Ear, Ossicles, Skull
Scalp
Superolateral view of the Scalp
I never knew that the word scalp was actually an Acronym.
Skin
Connective tissue
Aponeurosis
Loose Aerolar Tissue
Pericanium
I was flicking through my anatomy book when I came across a diagram showing the layers and I thought, must draw that. In the book its more a line diagram and was only the top half, but haven’t drawn a face in a long time so thought I would combine the two.
I can see what Is wrong with the face straight off; the right eye needs to come down and be resized (seem to do that a lot with faces) , the chin needs to come out more and the cheek realigned, and finally the nose shorten. I was very tempted to crop this picture just above the tip of the nose, but that’s what its like in my sketchbook and this wouldn’t be a true online version of, If I edited my work.
I know a workmen should never blame his tools, but could of done with a better pad as well. I normally use the WH Smiths 135gsm sketch pad, which most of the time is fine, but with where I was mainly using the rubber to work the skin I was running into problems in some areas – which you can see if you zoom in on the picture.
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Categories: Human Anatomy Tags: Anatomy, Face, Head, Scalp
Ossicles – Stapes
The Stapes
Onto the smallest bones of the human body the Ossicles and for this post the Stapes (AKA Stirrup 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 painting.
To give you an idea of how small this bone is, there is an excellent image in the wikimedia commons
The size did present some problems when drawing it, noticeably most of the images I could find were … well , small and what large diagrams I could find, didn’t really give any indication of texture or detail. It also seems that not all stapes are born equal , which you can see if you do a quick google search on the term.
Most confusingly, which I could not find an explanation for; some pictures seem to show a horn on the head as in mine and others don’t. It was also hard to find close up detail of the neck and head section.
My drawing is a hybrid of the photographs and diagrams I came across , I think this has had an effect on my shading in terms of representing light as I had no real reference.
Rest of the Ossicles coming soon….
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Categories: Human Anatomy Tags: Anatomy, Bones, Ear, Head, Middle Ear, Ossicles, Skull, Stapes, Yves Tanguy
