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 ;- )
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Categories: Human Anatomy, Notes Tags: Anatomy, Bones, curves, Drawing Skeletons, Hand, Left, Metarpal, Skeleton, Tips
Ulna Radial Notch
Ulna - Radial Notch
Also known as the elbow, this is one of the reasons I like drawing anatomy stuff, all the latin names make it sound like an exploration.
Following on from my post on the Bony Thorax where I only used an 8B pencil, this was only done with a 5B. One disadvantage is I couldn’t quite get the curve on the right hand side as smooth as I wanted it to be.
When you actually look at this bone, it is quite a graceful curve, which I don’t think I quite captured in this sketch.
I’ve mentioned before in my posts about using construction lines, I thought it might be handy to include a photo this time round so you can see how the sketch started off.
And to end a bit of a tip. I could not find my blender stick when I was shading this. Instead you know those cheap nasty pencils that have a rubber on the end , which never rubs anything out ? well they are quite handy for blending!
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Categories: Human Anatomy Tags: 5B, Anatomy, Arm, Bones, Elbow, One Pencil, Radial Notch, Skeleton, Tips, Ulna
