Studying the spine

Before getting into individual parts of the body it's important to understand the literal backbone of the body: the spine. Consisting of five parts, the spine connects all body parts, meaning that every other part of the body inherits the spine's limitations.

These are the components of the spine:

The upper part forming the neck is called the Cervical. It has 7 vertebrae and most flexible, it can perform all movements along any axis.

The Cervical descends into the Thoracic, which is the longest part of the spine. The ribcage is attached to it, so it's kept quite still and can't move that much. The only motion allowed is rotation.

Next there's the Lumbar. It is located at the bottom of the back and is responsible for most of the body's movement. Bending forward is done here while bending sideways is done only by the upper three vertebrae of the Lumbar. It leaves rotation to the Thoracic section.

The lower parts are called Coccyx and Sacrum, but aren't all that relevant for my studies. They can be put together to the Sacral.

The first exercise was about drawing the spine as a simplified pipe-like structure with a skeleton model as reference. This time, it wasn't about tracing, but managing to get a grasp about the spine free-hand.

I had a lot of fun practicing the possible positions of the human spine and I found that to be no trouble. Naturally, this one wasn't too difficult though, because all the vertebrae and attachments were clearly visible.

In the second assignment on the other hand I had to trace again. Now on 'normal' human bodies it was definitely more difficult to make up in which place every component are.

This was more of an issue for me. Although I am quite content with the outcome, I had to look up the solution of the first image for help and took a lot more time to complete this exercise in general. Not being able to see the bones surely makes a difference as you may have thought naturally, but it was a bit of a aha-moment after the first part of the assignment went so well.

For the last practice unit I had to combine the previous two ones: drawing the spine plus attachments free-hand from a human body reference. While progressing from the first to the fourth image I noticed an improvement in being able to track the locations.

Still I have to say that I am not sure if every drawing is correct. Unfortunately there are no solutions available for non-subscribers other than the first example, so I had to trust my intuition. I'm especially unsatisfied with the last example as it was a very complicated pose. But other than that, I really am content with how the first three images turned out.

In the end i clearly could notice an improvement while doing the assignment regarding the realistic possibilites of how the body can bend or rotate. I hope it will help me invent poses from imagination in the future.