Anatomical Drawings - S. Howard

74 DRAWING www.ArtistDaily.com www.ArtistDaily.com WINTER 2012 75

Setting the Parameters to Achieve a Timeless Vision

I didn’t start off my life knowing that I would be an artist. It came to me on October 19, 1982 in a grungy woodshop in South Philadelphia. I decided

that afternoon that my life was going nowhere and I had to do something radically different. I decided that I would become an artist.

This didn’t come out of a vacuum. It was a direct result of having grown up in Italy and experienced Michelangelo and all the great cathedrals of Europe as a child. I knew that great art was something sacred. I knew that it took great skill and learning to create art that changed people inside. When you are 19, the sky is the limit. With an urgency to set out on that path, I enrolled in the Philadelphia College of Art the following fall. I had zero

interest in the current art world, and I had no respect for teachers who told me that the Renaissance was something from the past. I knew that the emotional impact of this type of art was timeless. I obsessively looked at the work of Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael, and I carried an art book under my arm everywhere I went.

At school, I met Martha and Walter Erlebacher, who became my mentors. Martha is a painter; Walter was a sculptor. I knew instinctively that I had to learn specific information from the Erlebachers so that I would have the tools to make “real art.” They taught me that art was a daily practice that took tremendous concentration, determination, and courage.

The art world likes to describe things as being “faithful representations of reality.” But does objective reality exist? I believe there is no singular “real” way of perceiving the world. We translate every moment through our perceptions, which in turn are driven by our beliefs. So when someone says that certain art “has been done already,” I disagree. Everyone is different, so all works of art are different. No work by an artist today has been done before.

If you’re a figurative artist, you’re coming on the heels of a very rich tradition. Today, artists can do pretty much whatever they want, because the Modernists opened the door to self-expression. If you couple self-expression with the beauty of the past, then you can do figurative art created solely for

Anatomical Drawings

Early in my career I completed a series of anatomical studies that still guides my efforts to produce unique, modern sculptures in the Renaissance tradition.

b y S a b i n H o w a r d

right

Monumental Hermes

2004, bronze, 88". Private collection.

below

The artist applying the patina to the bronze

Monumental Hermes.


Standing Reference FigureA standing pose is very powerful. How we are able to stand erect in defiance of gravity is an act of force and vitality—it is a statement of “I am.” The information in this drawing is a foundation. It is the most important in terms of what it tells about how the human body is put together.

The biggest lessons to be learned from this page—or from your own studies of the standing figure—are how the body

is broken into sections and how each of these sections is part of a whole that contributes to the figure’s overall unity. This becomes clear if we look at the skeleton on the right. One leg bends at the knee, and this creates a rhythmic chain of gestures rising through the figure. First, it causes the distance on the right side from the floor to the pelvis to diminish. This causes the pelvis to drop, in turn causing the ribcage to tilt in the opposite direction to maintain balance. The head rotates, tilts, and flexes.

the benefit of higher consciousness. That’s why I harken back to the Greeks, specifically to mythology that deals with human conditions and human characters. My sculptures aren’t about religion or government but about our human vitality and spirit. And a firm grasp of human anatomy is a part of this. Coupled with the great tradition of realism, it can help you reach new heights.

What I received from the Erlebachers is exemplified in these drawings, which I created a few years after I graduated and had started teaching anatomical figure drawing. These are not perceptual drawings done from life. Rather, they convey a methodology to translate the human figure into a modern art form that follows in the Renaissance tradition. When I applied this conceptual information to my work in front of the live model, everything changed for me. Human anatomy provides me with a structure. Within this parameter, my creativity soars.

These drawings explain what I am looking for and how I show energy and

spirit. They show how I break the body down into parts so that I can construct it from the frame up to flow visually. Every small piece must fit in its proper place in the whole. Each page was done as a lecture on a specific part of the body. As I progressed as an artist and gained control of my technique, other things became integral to my work—I don’t think I would create this set of drawings again today. However, I have never left behind this information. It is ingrained in how I perceive the world, and I use it to push my art forward.

masses of the torso and head are large. The figures can be measured in head sizes: The total height of the figure is 7¾ heads. The vertical line running through the earhole explains how the masses line up over one another and helps create a further sense of equilibrium in the whole. I drew rectangles around the ribcage and pelvis to show their axis and inclination. This also shows what planes are pitched upward toward the light and which are pitched down into darkness.

Head Study

These drawings are solely anatomical and deal with how to construct the figure. They are about how things fit together and where those parts begin and end. They allow me to know what I am seeing and what I am looking for.

I became a sculptor because it is a natural progression from the two-dimensional page. To be done well, sculpture requires masterful drawing skills and a deep spatial understanding. As you walk around a sculpture, the outline and curvature change with every millimeter that you move. Each view must connect to the preceeding and subsequent views. With the complexity of the head’s movements, an artist has to be able to draw the features in perspective. This drawing deals with the proportions of the head from all angles, the different rates of curvature on the face, and the relationship created by the inclination of ribcage, neck, and head.

The gesture of the head also tells a story about the model. No matter how great a sitter a model is, there is always movement; models are living, breathing creatures. The artist has to be able to decide on the exact movement that the model will hold and lock into it artisically to return to in the drawing.

Human anatomy provides me with a structure. Within this parameter, my creativity soars.

In this chain of motions and gestures, each part is connected to another through a joint that has specific mobility that dictates how the bones move. And bones take precedence over everything, because they define the proportions and thrust of each body part in every pose. Always look for subcutaneous landmarks that reveal where the bones begin, where they end, and how they are oriented.

The side views help explain the inclination of the body parts. The

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Torso StudyThe primary concern of figurative sculpture is to create the sense of presence. This vitality or spirit is conveyed by subdividing the sculpture into parts that push outward, bursting with life. In Italian, the word for swollen is “gonfiore,” which translates as “inflated flower.” I love this term, because it gives the sense of life, growth, and potential. Each part of the form has a specific high point or fullness, and there are different rates of curvature on each part.

In the drawings, the bones of the body are drawn first, just as the frame of a house is built first. The muscles then fit into this foundation at their origins and insertions. The largest masses are the ribcage, pelvis, and head. This drawing of the torso shows how muscles are divided into sections all inserting and aiming for the origin. The result is a seashell pattern that often lends itself to a fan shape. The muscles do not move longitudinally with bones but rather move as spirals, because they have more than one function—one muscle can be an extensor, a flexor, and also a rotator.

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Figure Study From Caravaggio and Spiral CompositionThe drawing below deals with the idea of light and how light describes form. The study on the left derives from Caravaggio’s Cupid Victorious, and the study on the right deals with the concept of a spiral composition.

These drawings were done to describe how light falls over form. It is a very tactile experience. As one draws, the eyes travel over the form and see how it turns. This is then described through shading. The lightest part on a figure is the part that is perpendicular to the light source, and the closer the parts of the figure are to the light

source, the brighter they will be.As the forms turn away from the

light, there is a place where the form falls off from the light, like a sun setting over the horizon. This area is called the tangent zone, and it is the area most descriptive of the form underneath. If the form is hard, such as a bone, the tangent zone will be darker and sharper. If the form underneath is fleshy and has a slower rate of curvature, the tangent zone will be wider and softer. As in my sculptures, this sketch after Caravaggio is about how anatomy is used to supplement what one sees perceptually. The specifics of the body as seen by the artist take precedence over conceptual anatomical information.

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Study of Heads and Features Medical anatomy has very little that is artistically pleasing. It provides raw information that does not take into account the concept of aesthetics. I studied portraiture in Rome with Paolo Carosone, and these sketches exemplify what I brought back from my studies. The forms are different than in medical textbooks, especially when it comes to the face. Using spiral design elements that are derived from nature and from the Greco-Roman tradition, these drawings deal with a subdivision of forms and how the parts are built and fitted together.

In reality, the skin around the lips is lighter, and this accentuates the mouth. The upper lids have lashes, and this is accentuated by adding more depth to the lid. The planes above the eyebrow are a ridge of bone, and this plane can be tilted up toward the light to create greater drama with the darkness of the orbs below.

Study of Hands and ForearmsClarity in how a part of the body is put together leads to clarity in the creation of art. If you have a structure to work within, your capacity for creativity soars because the art goes beyond your individual experience. It is unique to your vision and can also be universally understood. In this case I took advantage of the clarity and structure provided by anatomy. I drew the bones first and then applied the muscles to their various insertions and origins.

Apart from the anatomy and organization of muscles into groupings, these drawings give a clear idea of advancing and receding outline. The outline never rests on a single plane but rather spins toward or away from the viewer, giving the illusion of dynamic movement and three-dimensionality.

Ego1994, bronze, 28". Private collection.

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About the ArtistSabin howard studied at the Philadelphia College of Art; the New York Academy of Art; and the Tyler School of Art, in Rome. He has won numerous awards for his sculpture and has shown his work in venues across the country. For more information, visit www.sabinhoward.com.

AphroditeI use my anatomical drawings to help come up with poses and body types for my sculpture that paint a psychological portrait of a character. I always work from live models, but I can use anatomy to enhance what I see through proportions and how forms come together. I have used up to eight different models to make a single figure, taking specific parts from different bodies to create the figure that best tells the story I wish to narrate visually.

Aphrodite is an example of this—I manipulate the viewer’s eye by leading it through the composition of the figure to a specific focal point. Planes are pitched toward and away from the light to create greater drama. Parts are changed and tweaked to give a greater sense of grace, power, and monumentality. v

Parts of this article are adapted from The Art of Life, a new book written by my wife, Traci L. Slatton, and myself. In addi-tion to an illustrated tour of my sculpture practice, the book in-cludes reproductions of all my anatomical drawings. It can be purchased in collector’s hardcover or in paperback at www.parvatipress.com.

Aphrodite2006, clay, 76". Private collection.

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Reprinted from Drawing Winter: Copyright © 2012 by Interweave Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Anatomical Drawings - S. Howard