Term 1, Anatomy I — Torso, Week 4

Week of March 8, 2021

5 min readMar 15, 2021

For a description of this unit see my Anatomy I — Torso unit plan. For full context, see the description of my Art Home School Curriculum.

Retrospective

It feels good to be done with this unit. I found it really interesting to learn about how the human body works, but I’m ready to take a break from drawing anatomy quick sketches for now. One month still seems to be the perfect unit length — long enough to be a challenge, but short enough to stave off boredom. I did every single exercise in the proko torso anatomy course twice (one attempt on my own, and one attempt after looking at the instructor’s example) except for 4 upper back exercises. In total, it was about 135 hours of drawing.

I’ve been drawing on an art horse for a few months now, and in the last couple weeks it has really started to hurt my back. I think tilting left/right/forward and holding that position while working on different portions of the paper (which is pretty big at 18" x 24") is what’s causing the pain. I decided to by a standing drafting desk, and after using it for 5 days now, I’ve not yet experienced any back pain. This is the model I purchased.

I’m pretty happy with it, but it’s not perfect. It’s really hard to raise and lower. I decided to buy a tall chair for it so I never have to lower it. Standing at it is pretty comfortable, though a couple inches taller would be perfect (I’m 5'11"). The lip on the front will hold a single piece of paper, but it’s not big enough to hold my drawing board. I added some rubber gripping on the back of the board to keep it from sliding off.

Log

I convinced my boss to cut my schedule by four hours, and work 9 hours per day Tuesday through Friday, so now I have Mondays off to devote to art. That means I can try to hit 40 hours per week of drawing. I plan on spending Monday mornings oil painting. I’m going to follow the process outlined at drawmixpaint.com. I’ve already purchased all the materials I need, so this Monday I will stain my canvas and build an easel.

Drawings and Critiques

Monday, Mar. 08

Warmup.

Abs quick sketch.

Obliques quick sketch.

Inventing obliques.

I drew obliques over a 3D model of a skeleton.

Shoulder muscles.

Tuesday, Mar. 09

Copy Finch.

I wasted a lot of time picking the right reference, so I didn’t get very far on this today.

Warmup.

Shoulder muscles.

Lower back muscles.

Wednesday, Mar. 10

Copy Finch.

Warmup.

Lower back.

Thursday, Mar. 11

Copy Finch.

Warmup.

Lower back.

My shading always looks so bad. You have to have a perfectly sharpened pencil, and then it’s still difficult to get a line with the right gradient on either side of the shadow edges.