119 Hours and a Major Milestone

I went to bed Saturday with a sigh. I wasn’t going to make thirty-two hours for the week. I had to flip around my sleep schedule one too many times and I still had nine hours left to go.

I measure my progress from midnight Sunday to midnight Sunday and htis time I just ran out of hours.

On Sunday morning I talked to Sara  about my dilemma. I didn’t want to come up short, but I also don’t want to kill myself the next week to catch up. Her advice was to just tack it onto the end of the 10,00 hours.

So, thankfully, the goal this week is still 32 hours as opposed to 41. We’ll see how it goes, I may be able to do more.

But enough about that. I reached a major milestone this week! I have memorized a working knowledge of the human skeleton and it’s proportions.

Why, would I do this you may ask?

Drawing the portrait and figure can be a bit like writing out sentences.

Imagine copying a sentence when you hadn’t been taught how to write a single letter. You might take some time trying to copy the shape and size of each letter. You could copy the shape and size of each word. Or, if you are really gung-ho, you might try to copy the shape and size of the whole sentence.

Imagine your relief if someone came along and said “Hey, there are 26 letters that you can memorize and once you have that down, the letters make up these words and the words make up the sentence.

It’s can be the same way with the portrait and figure. Except in this case the letters are the proportions and positions of the skeletal system, muscular system, fat deposits, and the skin.

I don’t think an artist needs a medical knowledge of all these areas, but the more you research how these things work together, the easier it is to draw them.

So last week I memorized the first part of my alphabet. This week I’m starting in on the muscular system. So until next time…