My Own Business

The Artistic Anatomy of the Leg: Front View

Posted on February 21, 2012 by jeighdeigh

The artistic anatomy of the leg is, in practice, fairly simple. However, we will need to look at some things hidden well under the skin to get a real understanding of the leg’s structure, and this may at times seem a bit complicated. I think that if you bear with me, you will see that this complexity is really pretty easy to manage.

We’re going to start with the leg as seen from the front. And we will need to start with the skeleton.

Here are sketched the bones of pelvis and leg, and the outlines of the musculature:

Leg: Front View 1

At this point, we are really only concerned with four bones: pelvis, femur, tibia, fibula and patella (kneecap). The bones of the foot will be dealt with in a separate tutorial.

Leg, Front View 2: Bones

The muscles of the thigh which are seen in a front view fall into two main groups. I am calling them here the “Thigh Muscles” and the “Adductors.” The adductors are the muscles we use to pull the leg towards the body’s centerline. The “Thigh Muscles” are the muscles we use to straighten the leg, as in rising from a crouch, leaping up, sprinting from the starting block — obviously very important muscles.

Leg, Front View: Thigh Muscles

Between these two groups runs a long flat band of muscle, the sartorius (shown here in yellow).

The thigh muscles, actually a group of three muscles, mainly connect to the upper end of the femur, and gather below to connect at the kneecap.

The adductors connect the underside of the front of the pelvis, to the inner surface of the femur, along most of its length.

Leg, Front View: Thigh Muscles

A short mass of muscle, the gluteus medius, connects the outer rim of the pelvis to the outer corner of the head of the femur. It functions to swing the leg out.

Leg, Front View: Gluteus Medius

We can simplify things a bit, for a moment, by temporarily taking the femur out of the picture. This gives a good view of the way the thigh is shaped by the two main muscle masses.

Leg, Front View: Thigh shaped by main muscle masses

Below the knee, we are mainly concerned with two muscle masses: the foot extensors, and the calf muscle (gastrocnemius). The calf muscle is a muscle of the back of the leg, of course, but it can be seen from the front, on either side of the extensor muscles and the tibia/fibula.

In the muscles which lie on top of the tibia, there is long gap between the foot extensors and the calf muscle. The shin bone can be felt right under the skin, in this gap, which faces forward and a little towards the centerline.

Leg, Front View: Muscles of Lower Leg

The calf muscle connects the lower end of the femur to the hind end of the foot (the heel bone).

The foot extensors connect the upper end of the tibia and fibula to various places on the foot, and are what we use to raise our toes and/or the ball of our foot off the ground.

Leg, Front View: Muscles of Lower Leg

Finally, on the outer side of the knee we can see, in a front view of the leg, the lower end of the biceps femoris, one of the muscles we use to bend our leg. It is mostly hidden here by the front thigh muscles.We will get a better view of this muscle and others in the tutorial on the rear view of the artistic anatomy of the leg.

Leg, Front View: Lower End of Biceps Femoris

Getting some bones out of the way, again, we can get a clearer and simpler view of the main muscle masses.

As I said before, it’s actually fairly simple.

Leg, Front View: Muscle Masses, Overall Form

Here is a sketch of the front view of the leg, showing the surface forms made by the bones and muscles we’ve been looking at.

Leg, Front View: Surface Forms

Tutorials to come (not necessarily in this order): back view of the leg, outer side view, inner side view, changes of forms with bending at hip and/or knee, example sketches.

Posted in anatomy for the artist, Art, how to draw the figure | Tagged anatomy, art, artistic, figurative, figure, how to draw, human, leg, Life, sketch, tutorial | Leave a comment

Why Are Artists All Such Knee-Jerk Leftists?

Posted on February 21, 2012 by jeighdeigh

OK — not all of them. But you know what I’m talking about.

So here’s the deal. “Leftist” means socialist. And “socialism,” if it means anything, means government control of the economy. And if you look around, at the countries of the world, and you look at how well the human beings in those countries are doing, what you see is that human well-being varies inversely with the degree of government control of the economy. The more government control of the economy there is, the worse people are doing. In the two big countries where total control was tried, Russia and China, the experiment cost the human race a total of maybe ninety million lives, mostly from starvation.. (See The Black Book of Communism, Stephane Courtois , et al.)

So if artists, the lefty sort, have the special place in their heart for humanity that they’re supposed to have, why haven’t more of them taken a look at how life works out for actual flesh-and-blood human beings living under governments of the left, and given the question some second thoughts?

Groupthink? Are we looking at people hewing to some secular religion, with religion’s characteristic lack of interest in fact and evidence? Conformity? — as in, you know what your friends will do, if you question the Gospel accoring to Chomsky? I’m not asking rhetorical questions here. I really don’t understand this.

Posted in Musing | Tagged art, artists, communism, conformity, economy, left, leftist, liberal, poverty, prosperity, socialism | Leave a comment

Drawing Hands Reaching/Holding/Beseeching: Some Examples

Posted on February 19, 2012 by jeighdeigh

This is an addendum to my last post about drawing hands: hands making holding or reaching or beseeching gestures. I’m posting some examples. These were done from imagination, following the rules I have described in other tutorials.

Posted in anatomy for the artist, Art, drawing, How to draw hands, how to draw the figure | Tagged anatomy, art, artistic, drawing, figurative, figure, hands, how to draw, human, tutorial | Leave a comment

Beauty Is Not (Just) In the Eye of the Beholder

Posted on February 19, 2012 by jeighdeigh

The title of this post is meant to be provocative.The old saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is in fact true, taken in its original, narrow meaning. Looking only at art, it means that an art object is called “beautiful” because it evokes a certain response, and that without that response — which is always the response of some individual who beholds the work of art — we can’t say that the work has beauty. The work is aimed at that response. It seeks to evoke that response. It exists only to arouse that response — in its maker, the artist, if no-one else. Even works of art which serve religious purposes — works which one might think exist to please the deity, rather than the beholder — even those works must in fact move their viewers in a certain way, if they are to serve their devotional function.

But this old truism is now often taken to mean, “beauty is anything anyone finds beautiful.” It’s not simply subjective — it’s purely subjective. It’s not just your individual response — it’s nothing but your individual response. It’s all in your mind. There are no standards. This is a very comforting point of view to many people, as near as I can tell. Very relaxed, very accepting, very non-judgemental.

It leaves a lot out, however. Until the (temporary) triumph of Modernism in the 20th Century, no-one would have thought to question the intimate connection, in art, between beauty and craftsmanship. Is craftsmanship, then, in the eye of the beholder?

Gosh, I don’t think so. And when I think of the Big Beauties — the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, the Belvedere Apollo, most any Ming Dynasty ceramics, Vermeer’s Girl With the Pearl Earring — the one thing they have in common is breathtaking craftsmanship.

Would I, or you, or anyone else, find them beautiful otherwise?

I suggest to you that the craftsmanship has to be out there, in the world, in the work of art, in the thing, before the beauty can happen in my eye, or your eye, or anyone else’s eye. And when we talk about craftsmanship, well, we can talk about standards, too, by God. We can talk about degrees of skill, levels of mastery. Suddenly things aren’t so relaxed and comfortable anymore.

So if we look at the art of the 20th Century just in terms of craftsmanship, what do we see? Well, I defy you to find any one of the Big Name artists, the ones bearing the seal of approval of the New York critical establishment, whose mastery of materials, whose brushwork or manipulation of clay or wax or whatever their chosen medium was, rose to the level of the most mediocre artist of prior eras. And that is one reason why most people do not now, and never will, find such work beautiful. And of course, they’re not really supposed to..

You see, craftsmanship implies an ethic. It is a particular mode of responsibility to, and good will towards, one’s fellow man. When one regards one’s work, not as a contribution to the life of one’s community, but as a cudgel or prod, with which to provoke a certain reaction, then one need not worry about crafting it well.

Posted in Art, Musing | Tagged art, Beauty, craft, craftsmanship, Modern, Modernism, objective, subjective | 2 Comments

Hands: Gestures of Holding, Seen From the Pinky Side

Posted on February 16, 2012 by jeighdeigh

Today, I’m going to look at how to draw the hand, making a gesture of holding or beseeching, as seen from the little finger side. This tutorial goes with some others: Drawing Hands: More on Gestures with Bent Fingers, Drawing Hands: The Thumb and Palm, and others which can be found in the categories sidebar.

As in other tutorials I’ve done on drawing hands, my main focus here is on the way the flesh of the palm is shaped by the bones of the hand.

Here’s the hand, making a gesture of holding, seen from the little finger (“pinky”) side:

Hand: Holding, seen from pinky side.

Here are the names of the bones we’re concerned with:

Holding gesture, pinky side: bones

I’ve been calling the carpals the “wrist block” in previous posts. The pisiform bone is the carpal at the little finger end of the wrist block, and it makes a visible bump on the outside of the wrist when the hand is bent back. It connects to a forearm muscle, which bends the hand foreward and to the side, and it connects to the muscle which flexes the little finger, and which fleshes out the little finger side of the palm.

So what shapes the outer contour of the palm, seen from this side? From the wrist, there is a long arc, across the muscle which flexes the little finger, and then there are two creases:

Hand, holding gesture seen from pinky side, two creases

Crease 1, as I have described in other tutorials, arises because the palm folds at the knuckles:

Hand, holding gesture: palm folds at knuckles

Crease 2 is where the palm ends, halfway (more or less) up the first finger bones:

Hand, holding gesture, palm ends halfway up first finger bones

When the curl of the different fingers is very different, so that you can see between the fingers near the knuckles, as here, you can see the end of the palm, between the fingers, indicated here by little blue arcs:

Holding gesture, palm end, between fingers

Looking at the thumb, we see the mound of Venus, with the first joint of the thumb about halfway along the metacarpals, as has been described in other tutorials (i.e., Drawing Hands: More on Gestures with Bent Fingers, Drawing Hands: The Thumb and Palm).

Later today, I hope to add some sketches to this post, with more examples of drawing a hand making this kind of gesture.

Revision to earlier post

Posted on February 10, 2012 by jeighdeigh

OK, I just learned about Captcha. So now it’s not necessary for commenters to this blog to register and sign in. You just have to go through filling out a Captcha form.

It still just royally ticks me off that we have to do this sort of thing.

Posted in Art, Musing | Tagged Captcha, spam, spammer | Leave a comment

Goddess In the Garden

Posted on February 10, 2012 by jeighdeigh

Connection speed slow — few words now.

"Goddess In the Garden." Linocut on Hosho paper, about 9 by 15 inches.

Posted in Art, Block print | Tagged art, Beauty, block print, celebration, coffee, female, figurative, figure, goddess, human, imagination, imaginative, linocut, linoleum | Leave a comment

The Comment Spammers Have Won

Posted on February 10, 2012 by jeighdeigh

I really didn’t want to have to do this. I wanted anybody to be able to post any kind of comment on my blog, no restrictions. I thought I might have to deal now and then with something nasty, but I would just delete it. I didn’t know about comment spammers — those cretins, those foul, repulsive vermin, those chittering, disgusting little insects, who try to deposit their little smelly piles of word turds in my blog comments, just so they can slip in the back-link, just so they can use my blog to get some free advertising. I’ve got Akismet up and running, and a pretty good spam-blocking utility installed, and I still have to deal, most every day, with several comments from spammers. That doesn’t take much of my time, but I hate people trying to use me.

So now people are going to have to register and log in, to leave comments. I’m really sorry about that. I really wanted discussions on this blog to be open and free-flowing.

Posted in Musing | Tagged disgusting, evil, spam, spammer | Leave a comment

Relief Printing With An Etching Press

Posted on January 25, 2012 by jeighdeigh

I’m going to describe the process I’ve worked out for printing from a linoleum block on an etching press. This has a couple of advantages for me. In the first place, it’s a lot faster than the method of laying the paper on the inked block and rubbing the back of the paper with a wooden spoon, which I’ve used for years. In the second place, I can do prints on watercolor paper, which I think would be very difficult with the wooden spoon method.

I have no idea if this is the “correct” way to do this. But I have got good results.

The etching press I’m using is from Dick Blick, the Blick Mast Etch Model II:

: Dick Blick Master Etch Model II

The linoleum “block” I have carved has been glued to a slightly larger rectangle of what is called Davey board — used for the boards in binding a hardcover book. Bookbinding is something of a hobby of mine. The Davey board is about the same thickness as the linoleum, about 3 mm. A closer view of this block was posted earlier.

In the next picture, the linoleum has been inked, and placed on the press bed. The grey strips around the block are strips of linoleum which has been glued on top of strips of 1/8″ particle board. These are the same thickness as the linoleum block, and serve to enlarge the effective size of the block. This spreads the pressure of the press roller across most of the width of the press bed, necessary especially if the block is relatively small. Otherwise, I found, the paper tends to slip on the block.

Setup for relief printing on etching press: block placed, with pressure distribution shims

Next, the paper (Hosho in this case) is carefully laid on the block. I usually hold one edge of the paper down, the left edge in this view, with thumb and finger spread far apart, so that that edge acts as sort of a horizontal hinge for the paper, and gently let the rest of the paper swing down, coming to rest on the block. I then press down on the paper, very gently, to get it to stick to the ink on the block.

Setup for relief printing with etching press: paper placed

Next, I lay a piece of particle board on the block and the shims. Unlike printing from an etched plate, you need something kind of stiff between the felts and the block. This is because the relief in a linocut or woodcut is so very much higher than it is on an etched plate. I tried using matt board for this, but it was too soft. I’ve heard that the rubber blankets used in four-color lithography (I think) will work, but I didn’t have any. I tried using a big sheet of the linoleum, but that was too soft too. The particle board I am using here has worked fairly well:

Setup for relief printing with etching press: pressure board

Next, the felts, or wool blankets (catcher, cushion and pusher), are laid on the bed.

Setup for relief printing on etching press: felts placed

Next, the whole shebang is cranked under the roller, and comes out the other side, and the print is pulled. As I mentioned in my last post, I got a good print the first try, so I’m reasonably happy with the process described here.

Pulling the print

Here’s the result, again:

"Evening Cup II": Linoleum relief print on Japanese Hosho paper

Posted in Art, Block print, technique | Tagged art, Beauty, block print, linocut, linoleum, method, process, technique | Leave a comment

Drawing Hands: More On Gestures With Bent Fingers

Posted on January 23, 2012 by jeighdeigh

It’s been a while — it’s time for another tutorial on figure-drawing — more about hand gestures this time. This will relate to what I talked about in the earlier posts Drawing Hands, Part V and Part II.

We’re going to look at the hand doing a holding, or a beseeching, gesture. We’re going to look at it from the thumb side. First the basic bones:

Holding gesture 1: bones

The two main points about proportions here are 1) the first bone of the thumb is about half the length of the first metacarpal (the base finger bones):

Holding gesture 2: proportions

And 2) the length of the middle finger is about the same as the distance from the joint between the ulna/radius and the wrist block (carpals) to the knuckles.

Holding gesture 2: proportions

Now we put the meat on. First, from this angle, we can see how the base of the thumb is fleshed out by the Mound of Venus:

Holding Gesture: Mound of Venus

Next — and this is the most important part of all this — we look at how the contour of the palm, seen on edge like this, is shaped by the way the palm folds at the knuckles. Here’s an image from an earlier tutorial (Drawing Hands: Thumb and Palm). This shows how the palm folds at the knuckles, as seen from the palm side:

Form of Palm IV

From the thumb side, we see a contour with two creases in it:

Holding Gesture: the folding of the palm

The first crease is at the folding of the palm at the knuckles:

Gesture of Holding: Palm folds at knuckles

The second crease is at the end of the palm, halfway between knuckles and the first joint of the fingers:

Gesture of Holding: Where the palm ends

The next time I do this, I’ll go over the same gesture, but seen from the little finger side.

Posted in anatomy for the artist, Art, How to draw hands, how to draw the figure | Tagged anatomy, art, artistic, drawing, figure, hands, how to draw, human, illustration, tutorial | Leave a comment

The Artistic Anatomy of the Leg: Front View

Why Are Artists All Such Knee-Jerk Leftists?

Drawing Hands Reaching/Holding/Beseeching: Some Examples

Beauty Is Not (Just) In the Eye of the Beholder

Hands: Gestures of Holding, Seen From the Pinky Side

Revision to earlier post

Goddess In the Garden

The Comment Spammers Have Won

Relief Printing With An Etching Press

Drawing Hands: More On Gestures With Bent Fingers

Jonathan Day

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