Common Mistakes – 004 Deceit of the Shoulder Girdle
In this episode
of Common Mistakes all of which can be easily fixed once pointed out, we will
continue with a very important concept. It is the concept of the shoulder
girdle. In order to understand what we deal with, we will need to endure a bit
of anatomy. Now it’s not going to be a comprehensive coverage of the shoulder.
We did all of that in the lecture on the shoulder you can purchase or alternatively you can watch
the free 10 minutes long cutdown version of this 1.5 hours long lecture here.
The following
drawing depicts the construction of the shoulder girdle which consists in terms
of bones of the two clavicles in the front and two scapulae in the back. These
four bones are not fused, they are joined and held together with ligaments and
tissue. This allows for a great freedom of movement. Just what we need to
assist to our arms to be able to reach almost anywhere.
Now that we have
seen this, lets remember what we talked about in the very first episode of the
Common Mistakes – massing is everything in figure drawing. Massing is King. No
massing, no drawing.
We also
mentioned in passing, that we usually start with large forms and then add the
smaller adjacent forms as well as fill in the smaller forms embedded in the
larger mass. This order is crucial, as any possible detail you see on the model
is just that. A detail, and in the great scheme of figure drawing, whilst it
ads embellishment, it is a slave to the larger mass and it cannot do anything
else but to follow. So if you don’t get the large mass right, the detail will
be in the wrong place anyway.
Ok, so we start
drawing and we remember we need to do the massing of the large body parts such
as the rib cage and pelvis. You do these two masses correctly and you’re half
way there. So you may choose to start with the rib cage. Remember how we do
massing? We look for clues and landmarks that will gives us reference as to the
position of what we already know from anatomy – the shape, size and
construction of the rib cage. And we just arrived at the common mistake. Most of
us will try to determine the position, rotation and orientation of the rib cage
with the aid of shoulders. This is the common deceit of the shoulder girdle. By
nature, the shoulder girdle is a floating device that sits atop of the rib cage
and a has a fluid life of it’s own very different to the semi rigid rib cage.
So there it is. Remember to orient yourself by
the bony bits for landmarks and clues which will help you to reference what you
already know from anatomy. The exception to this rule is not to use the
shoulders to reference the rib cage.
The video counterpart of this blog entry has
extra content which works better as a video. You can find it here.
