Spines, Spines and you guessed it more Spines

Well I can't exactly say I enjoyed drawing spine after spine after spine, but I suppose if the groundwork is laid down well the rest won't add either. The same goes for the rib cage although placing the rib cage takes a bit more tact than expected. Proportion has to be right on with these two otherwise the remainder of the details will be wasted on something lopsided. The gesture drawings are there to ingrain that basic structure but I found that they also made it hard to correctly give the figure the right proportion. Especially the length of the spine versus the height of the rib cage. It seemed that when were finally able to start adding in more features on the longer sketches I had a hard time setting things up correctly because I wasn't able to add enough detail into the quick drawings. I felt that if we did more 3 minute-ish sketches it would allow us to add in the most basic details in addition to the body structure and therefore help us figure out the proportion and position a bit better than just doing the structure. On the other hand I did see how the spine and rib cage helped flush out my figures and made for a more life-like image.  The spine if laid out well provides a nice natural curvature that allows the artist to build off and make the overall figure look more dynamic and organic. It helps alleviate the appearance of corpse-like figures that are too stiff and seem frozen. The rib cage similarly helps provide an appropriate girth for the figure. Also the rib cage if positioned correctly allows the artist to help separate the planes on the surface of the figure.