Sharon’s Sketchblog:Â DayBooks
Drawing the skeleton means willing to get lost. The complexity of the relationship of bone to bone and the very real fact that all these individual bones can function together, and bear weight too, is a boggle. I always think about that, no matter what part of the body I’m drawing. I do get dizzy trying to keep my mind focused from one bone to the next, sensing the surfaces as they exist in space. I know it’s the nervous system that makes the connections and I know there’s a lot of soft tissue help and support involved. But the bones are still the lines. And it’s lines I’m drawn to.
The foot, almost gets the best of me every time I tackle it. So many bones, so little time, so much to do. Connecting with the ground isn’t as easy as it appears.
I work from a lot of sources: from anatomical atlases (through the ages) to model skeletons to scans of x-rays I find on the Internet, to my own feet. One source informs the next and I build up a multi-layered sense of the lucky body part of the moment. And stil, when I start translating the whole thing to the page that solid bone can become as wispy as fog. It’s a disappearing act and I want to reel it in and translate it to the tangible.
Both feet on the ground. Easier said than done.
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