VISUALISE AND CONSTRUCT BONES

CHARLIE PICKARD continues his ten-part series of quick tips on anatomy; this month, we delve deeper into our understanding of bone structure

- CHARLIE PICKARD

Last issue, we discussed the fundamental importance of studying bones when striving to understand anatomy in figure drawing.

We made the distinction between 2D observational anatomy and 3D constructive anatomy. This month I would like to outline a method for studying this construction. The ultimate goal is to gain a comprehensive understanding of these forms to be able to draw them from any angle from memory.

We will explore how to go about performing this study for the skull, but this approach can be applied to every bone individually and in the full context of the skeleton.

As we can see below, the threedimensional drawing is merely the combination of multiple crosssections, projected in perspective and joined by an outline. While this basic idea is fairly straightforward, the complexity of the full form can quickly become overwhelming. Simplifying the problem will be an immense help for us.

Charlie Pickard is a classically trained fine artist and illustrator. Recently awarded the Philip de László Award for excellence, Charlie continues to work, exhibit and teach out of his studio in London. www.charliepickardart.com

1 Start with the orthographic views

While these cross-sections are essentially infinite in every direction around the form, we can take our study quite far by starting simply with just the cross-sections of the X, Y and Z axis. If we take these views out of perspective and view them alone they are called the ‘orthographic’ views of an object. There are six of these for every form.