Project #3 - Major Abdominal Muscles

This project is a diagram of the human abdomen, illustrated in a traditional method with paper and a 2B pencil. The method used to create this illustration was by first looking at a few references, then moving off of them and annotating my learning down to simple structures and shapes. Initially after trying to draw without a reference of the musculature I needed, I found it very hard to get it proportionally correct, so I spent a lot of time refining that before I made this final version. The pictures above are actually the 5th iteration of muscle anatomy that I drew in my sketchbook before being satisfied with how they look stylistically and anatomically.

During the first few days of my project, I spent a lot of time studying the major anterior muscles of the body, as well as looking up various artists' renditions of how to proportion and place the muscles in the human body. Over time, I narrowed down my subject group to only the muscles that directly connect to the abdomen, or are a part of it. I did this for two reasons: Extremities are much more dependent on movement, and are as a result more complicated if flexed or turned on the radius of the bone it is attached to, and drawing too many muscle groups without fully absorbing the method on how to illustrate them would lead to ineffective absorption of any material that I pick up. The two artists that I pulled most of my influence / learning from are Andrew Loomis and Burne Hogarth. I chose these artists because of how little their individual style affected their portrayals of the anatomy of the human body, which made it easier for me to understand the muscles I was trying to learn to illustrate.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the final result of this project. I definitely noticed an improvement in my ability to draw the muscle groups of the abdomen proportionally as I drew more and more. Along with knowing how to draw these muscle groups, I also am now able to name each group and explain their primary function in the body. Even though I felt I did well with proportions, I can see a few things myself even in the pictures above that need improvement: The pectorals are slightly too large, the trapeziums are a bit too wide, and the abdominals are too tall to be proportional with the obliques. For my first time really getting into drawing muscle groups, I would definitely say that I did very well making it appear symmetrical with my careful use of linework.

I am planning to make my next project similar to this in the respect that I will be trying to draw the arms and legs. My goal will be to illustrate them in a way that gets across any flexion or radial movement in order to appear more realistic and fluid, rather than stiff and anatomical.