neck, collarbone, shoulders.

A few weeks ago I had to miss class, and I missed a long model pose (sad). We had been learning about the shoulder blades and the collarbone area. This week somewhat blew me away, I never realized how wild shoulder blades really are. It sounds silly but it's true: they really are crazy. My understanding of shoulder blades beforehand was pretty basic and somewhat incorrect... I never realized how they truly work. It really intrigued me how the bone comes up, thinning out, and reaches around the arm, almost connecting to the long, thin collar bone in front. The shoulder blade fits right into the humerus (upper arm bone), so that any time the arm moves the shoulder blade moves. It is pretty weird how the shoulder blades seem to kind of shift and float around on top of all the back muscles. This was interesting to me because I often try to get knots out of my roommates' backs, and the knots are usually right up to or underneath the shoulder blades. I can see how all the movement is in this area, which causes all the stress to be there.

So after I missed class I came into the open drawing session on a Tuesday night. It had been at least a couple weeks since I did any gestures or model poses, so it felt a little rusty. First I filled a page with some one minute gestures, and later I did a fifteen to twenty minute pose of the shoulder and neck area. This area already is very interesting to me and fun to draw, so I enjoyed capturing this pose. It was a little difficult to get the angles right, because the model was slumped up against the wall in what looked like an uncomfortable position. I was working slowly, because I hadn't heard how long the pose was going to be. Although I was cut off, I think the information I got down on the page was enough, and showed some emphasis on what we had been discussing that week. I hope to still learn more the shoulder blades and how to capture them in gestures correctly.