Back to Anatomy

For two weeks now my plans to have the amazing model Ed Cz, who many of you will know from Seneca and Sheridan fell through. First I screwed up my schedule and then Ed's starter wouldn't start and he was stuck on the shores of Huron (I can't blame him for wanting another day at his place out there).



Ed's been at my studio and home many times for hours of studies and has inspired some of my best works. This time I wanted to get ready for the Master Class at Seneca for the first week of July and Ed's the best model to prepare from. Not having him in person, I went back to the piles of studies I have done. There is a lot to be learned from returning to old studies, re-interpreting them, taking poses and rotating or changing expression. Even scribbles can be valuable in that they will make you question what you were trying to say, whether or not you got it across, and whether or not you even knew what you were doing.

I found some studies of the back. Of course any part of the body is fascinating, but the back in particular, with its subtle forms created by all the overlying muscles that in many ways are simply muscles of the arms fascinates me in particular. Arms proper, usually thought of as from the shoulder down, and legs are much easier to depict, but usually the back is avoided or rushed over by students. I myself found the back confusing and frustrating until I understood it from the bones up, skin last.

I threw some tracing paper over the study and began to search out the skeleton, when it struck me I hadn't been up to the Anatomy Labs at the University in a while. So that is where I found myself a few minutes later. Unfortunately for me and studying the back, Students from Humber were there working on the cadavers so I moved into a corner, was provided with some arms and spent a few happy hours studying and sketching.





I'm looking forward to the first week in July when I will be bringing my master class students to Guelph for a day at the lab.