more muscles and drawing

On Tuesday in life drawing we went over the ribcage, trying to understand how the ribs look, how to think of the ribcage as an egg and that the ribs sit higher in the back than in the front. After learning a crap ton about the ribs we spent the rest of the class period building muscles on the ribcage. Even thought there was only a couple of muscles we had to make it still took a long time. I think that the bigger and longer a muscle is the harder it is to make. It is hard to get the right size and the right placement of the muscle. Even though building muscles is hard, I enjoy doing it and I think, if this wasn't my last semester of classes and didn't feel extremely rushed in life in general, I would like doing this more.

On Thursday, we spent the class time drawing the body. Missing that week of classes really seemed to have affected my drawing skills. Also, it didn't help that I forgot a lot of what I learned and had to dig deep within my brain to remember the tips and tricks of the human body. The 25 minute drawings were tough. The first where the model was standing was easier because it was straight on and there wasn't any foreshortening to deal with. The next two 25 minute poses were EXTREMELY difficult because the model was lying down and I had to foreshorten the body which is really hard when I barely know how to draw the body standing up facing me. Also, foreshortening the ribcage was really hard and I would draw the ribcage over and over and over again, not seeming to get any closer to the correct position. Bah!

There are two pictures below: one is of my mannequin and the other is drawings done in class