CARTOON ANATOMY (REVISED)

Oh, Man! Wouldn't you kill to have a figure drawing class that included real-life models that look like this (above)? I lined up a couple of draped models like this one the last time I taught a cartooning class, but they weren't very well received. 

Students who were good at drawing traditional models seemed to have had the hardest time adapting to this type. I think they were frustrated because they couldn't figure out how to apply what they'd learned in other classes to comedy. 

   

Me, I believe in the value of both kinds of figure drawing. I love short, drastic poses like the one above, and I also like slower, analytic posing of the classical kind. 

John K has an interesting take on figure drawing sessions. He believes in long, long poses that give a student plenty of time to analyze what they're seeing and figure out an approach.

Lately I've been drawing poses off the net. Pictures can't substitute for live models, but I always get a good seat this way and I don't bother anybody when I get up to get a cheese sandwich.

I love dead leg poses like the one above. They're funny and they give the illusion that one leg is longer than the other.

Wow! A rare Double Dead Leg Pose!!!!! How often do you see that!?

I never thought about it before, but there's such a thing as abdominal dresses (above). What a gift to cartoonists!

They're sexy, but they're the kind of thing you want somebody else's girlfriends to wear, not your own.

One last word about dead legs: they appear in walks too. Not in Preston Blair's classic walk, but in walks you see on the street. After pushing forward with the rear leg some people don't lift it to the front, they just slide it forward with the toe dragging (or almost dragging) along the ground.

I like the idea of someone having an an assertive, power stance when they're standing still, then a languid dead leg walk when they're in motion. That seems like a contradiction but in real life people often have contradictory behaviors.  

HOW WOMEN STAND / WOMEN STANDING

If you remember, a few months ago Theory Corner devoted a post to the fact that a lot of women lean forward without realizing it. Well, months have passed and I'm here to report that this is what I'm still seeing on the streets. I see it everywhere.

They stand askew a lot too, at least in photos. We're so used to it that we don't notice it,  If I hadn't called your attention to it, you probably wouldn't have noticed that the woman above is listing like The Leaning Tower of Pizza...er, did I spell that right? One more inch to the side and she'll fall over.

I'm not talking about bad posture (above). I'm talking about women who are not generally regarded as having posture problems.

This woman (above) was probably asked to stand up straight, and she probably believed she was...but she wasn't. She's leaning forward.

Maybe you thought high heels were what thrust women forward, or maybe a big chest. Nope, none of the above. Look at this woman (above). She's small chested, is wearing flat shoes, and is still leaning. I guess women were just born that way.

Maybe that's why they're always leaning on things.

I always assume that magazines are run by people who know more than I do. They say that flirty women always lean against walls, and who am I to disagree?

 I'll try to remember that when I draw cartoon women.

Rich women (above) sometimes prefer pottery or trees to walls.

Well, if it makes them happy.....

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BTW: Congrats to NASA for landing the Curiosity rover safely on Mars. I'm all for Mars exploration, but I haven't supported previous rover missions because they didn't seem likely to collect enough information to justify the cost. 

Maybe this falls into that category too, but I couldn't help but be impressed by the precision of the landing, and the hardware on this vehicle. It's got a laser that can read stratas on exposed cliff sides in high-def, and the cliffs probably probably date back billions of years.  

We learned a lot about the origin of the Earth from the manned missions to the Moon. Maybe we'll learn as much from this mission.    

CARTOON ANATOMY (PART ZILLION)

For the cartoonists on the site, here's a couple of anatomical oddities that you might not have noticed before. For one thing, an awful lot of people don't have much of a trunk. Classical anatomy charts (above) tell us that we all have one...a space between the bottom of the ribs and the pelvis... but you don't see it in a lot of real-life poses. 

In real life, lots of people (above) appear to be trunkless. For them the mid-body bulge (above) begins immediately under the breasts...at least when seen from the front.

From the side (above) we get a different picture. In the back we see a trunk line from the bottom of the scapula to the beginning of the bulge.  So the trunk is there, but it's wedge-shaped, and only visible from the back and side.

Here's another interesting one: in about half of all people the arm (above) doesn't connect to the body at the shoulder. Cartoonists have known that for years but it's taken time for the public's awareness to catch up.

Cartoonists know that the arm (above) usually connects to the side of the body, not the shoulder.

Are you skeptical? Look at this guy's arms (above). They connect to the body way below the shoulder. It's as if he was wearing shoulder pads.

Even if your arms did connect directly to the shoulders the clothes you wear (above) might make it look otherwise. Most suit jackets are padded.

Interesting, huh?

MORE CARTOON ANATOMY!

How about a few more words on how laughter happens? I'm obsessed with finding out why the cheek enlarges so much, even for a smile as shown above. Mark Mayerson says the cheeks enlarge to accommodate the extra skin which is pushed out of the way by the smile. He's almost certainly right, but...well... where's the wrinkles you'd expect to see if skin was being packed that way? And why don't you see the skin traveling upward in steps, into the cheek?

I really shouldn't pursue this. The answer is probably obvious and I'm just being dense.

Here's a picture (above) that seems to confirm Mark's opinion. The cheeks don't bunch up much, maybe because the skin is spread all over the side of the face. Boy, this face resembles a screaming baboon!

The small picture on the lower left (above) is interesting. It shows the lower jaw receding backwards into the face as the woman laughs. The upper teeth don't seem to move much.


Of course it's an effort to hold a smile very long. You get tired of keeping the cheeks up. When the strain becomes unbearable (above) you stop supporting the cheeks and the meat collapses downward, back into it's home in the muzzle.

I've seen lots of flabby muzzles, especially on middle aged men and Star Wars fans.

NEGLECTED ANATOMY LESSON #1

GOOD LORD! Look what women have to put up with! NO WONDER there are so many lesbians!!!! Um...wait a minute, that's a bit emotional. Let me start again...

I know a number of art students hang out on this site and I thought I'd post something just for them. My guess is that anatomical drawing teachers are pretty selective about what they teach. That's a pity. The day will come when students will need to draw the omitted item and they'll be totally unprepared! Well, worry not, Theory Corner is here to help! Get out your pencils and notebooks and get ready to take notes!

NEGLECTED ANATOMY LESSON #1

MALE BACK HAIR




Hmmm. Let's try to make some sense of this picture (above). It looks like the hair occurs in tufts. The pattern here is kind of mangy. It looks like a patch of moth-eaten buffalo skin that I found in an attic once. Amazingly the biggest tufts occur at the sides, near the bottom of the rib cage...what's that about? And looking closer I see the rib tufts seem to have sent out feelers to the shoulder tufts. Hmmm. Are the tips of the shoulders hairless? That's incredible!

Phew! Well that's enough with that picture!

Here's (above) a picture of a less mangy back. It looks like the hair is combed away from the spine. You don't suppose the guy's wife combs this stuff do you? And what are those little correction-tape notes? Why are the hairs in need of correction?

Notice that the neck is hairless. I assume that's because he cuts it. I mean surely nature wouldn't be so cruel as to just start the hair abruptly like it's a jacket he's wearing.

Man! Nature dealt this guy (above) a bad hand! Or maybe it didn't. I showed this to my daughter and asked her if she found it attractive. She of course said no (actually "Ew!" was the word) but then I asked if she'd feel the same way if she liked the guy. To my amazement she said something like, "Oh, well that's different. If I liked the guy the hair wouldn't matter." Isn't that interesting? I'll end this lesson on the comforting thought that a providence seems to take care of us males. Women are somehow prevented from realizing how ugly we men are. Isn't that wonderful?