Welcome. This is Rey Bustos. Today's session, what we're gonna be doing is I'm
going to be talking about the pelvis and both femurs, and that's what you are going to
be sculpting. What I would suggest you do is actually have really good material front of you,
whether it's your favorite anatomy book, references that you found online.
Just make sure that you really pay attention to everything I am telling you.
Be really patient with yourself.
Set your own pace. So, let's go ahead and get started.

Now we have this beautiful armature wire frame,
and this is a really fabulous thing because now it's going to make
making the skeleton a lot easier.
I just grabbed a few of the tools I might need.
Don't worry if you don't have exactly the same things that I have. I like having any
kind of sharpened stick like this.
If you don't have one, boy, I'll tell you; you can just put something in a pencil sharpener.
Get the back end of an old paintbrush and just put it in the sharpener, and you can
have all sorts of different types of sharpened sticks. BBQ skewers, things like that.
The other one is this flat wire tool, which is a nice one to have. Again, if you don't
have these, you could always make them. Like I said, the pencil sharpener is a great idea.
Hair pins, anything like that.
The one that's going to be really valuable to you is my X-Acto knife. Almost every artist
has one of these in their box anyway. So, a good X-Acto knife is a nice thing to have.
I always like having at least one little soft bristle brush, like an old paintbrush that
I don't use any longer for painting. It's nice to just kind of have for little things
here and there. You might not have one of these, but every
once in a while I like having this nearby. It's a rubber-tipped tool. Okay, so these
aren't for anything specific. They're just like the tools I got out for this. If I need
something else I'll show it to you.
The other thing that we need right now is any kind of Vaseline product or any kind of
petroleum jelly product. In this case I use Vaseline lip therapy. This isn't a commercial.
It's just what I like to have. The reason is, once again, is because it's handy, and
I just get out what I need.
Now, the reason we use this: I put it on the areas that we are going to be sculpting. And
for this lesson it's going to be the pelvis, both sides--everything is both sides--and
both femurs. So wherever it is I'm going to be applying clay, I put this petroleum jelly on.
It helps the Sculpey clay stick like glue. It seems counterintuitive, but it's true.
This will make this stick like glue including this wire for the pubic bone.
It's going to be really important.
I'm also going to move the arms out of the way as if this were a doll, and you can do
the same thing. Anything I do you can do as well. I'm looking at the pose,
making sure everything is behaving.
Now, what I have over here as well is my Sculpey clay as it's been firming up in between paper
towels. You can see the oily mess that I made. The paper towels are nice and oily, which
means that it seeped out the oil from this clay, and it feels a little bit better than
when I first got the box.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to take pieces of it to start making the pelvis. Now,
what I suggest to people is, besides listening to my lectures, is having a good anatomy book
in front of you with various pages of the pelvis. You can even look it up. Just make
sure that you're looking at something.
What I'm doing is putting little pieces at a time here. It's not going to look like much
at first because you develop this. You're building on this. Try and make it so you can see that.
The pelvis is made up of three distinct parts, and the pelvis itself is in two halves.
So I'm doing one half right now, the left side. The left side you always want to do
much better than the right because the right side eventually will be covered with muscle.
It doesn't mean you don't do it; it just means you can ease up just a little bit.
The good thing everybody can relate to is 100%. Whether you're a professional and have
done this a million times, or you're a novice, a 100% is 100%. Whether you're Bernini or
you are just making a little thing for the first time, a little sculpture for the first
time; 100% is 100%. So, you put 100% effort into the left side of this entire skeleton.
On the right side you can ease up just a little bit. This is game day. This is when you get
all of your talent out. This is when you really put 100% effort into this. The other side
just ease up a little bit. I'd say 75%. Depending on the part of the skeleton that we're making.
It's like a little sciatic notch over here. Ischial spine. This is the ilium. Then there
is a pubis, and then what you're sitting on, especially if you're sitting on a hard bench,
you're going to move back and forth. Those are your sit bones; those are the ischii.
Don't let anybody mispronounce it and say "ish-e-um." It's an "isk-key-um." I've heard
a lot of doctors pronounce it as "Ish-e-um" but it's really not. It's a Greek word, so
the CH is pronounced like a K. Take my word for it, not your doctor. Everything else,
though listen to your doctor. But, when it comes to sculpting or art, listen to Mr. Rey.
So, this is the beginning of the ileum. See the little sciatic notch right over here,
the ischial spine. What you need to do is whatever the material that you have that you're
looking at is that you make sure that you look at it from different points of view because
you're doing a portrait of this pelvis. It's almost like if you're doing a portrait of
a person you need to be able to go all the way around them. I'm talking about like a
three-dimensional portrait of somebody. You need to look at their profile as well as their
front, their back, three-quarter view. Same thing with this.
Now, the corners, these little points around here, the anterior superior iliac spines,
the ones that go right across my belt is going right across this point right there. Take
my word for it. My belt line is right here. As you get older that belt line does get higher
and higher. By next year my belt line might be just below my chest. Right now it's at
my anterior superior iliac spine, right there.
These are facing out. See the direction of my fingers? Out towards the corner of the room.
Got it? But these ilii are facing, they're converging. See that? So, basically it's like
my hands. They open up like this. Alright. It's important that you know that.
The good thing is that these wires that we put on there are already kind of doing that
for you. I'm going to put just a little bit because every once in awhile my fingers kind
of rub off some of the petroleum jelly. Now, little by little we develop this. I'm going
to go across this wire.
Remember, the thing that helps the most is to work little pieces at a time. If you put
too much on there what happens is Sculpey tends to kind of trap a little bit of the
air, and it creates what is called sleeving. That is like there is a little airspace. The
good thing is that this Vaseline makes it stick like glue. Look at that.
So, the sleeving is--without that it's almost like the Vaseline neutralizes the metal and
allows us to stick without getting any airspace in between. Just an amazing thing.
Strange but true.
Now, this is going to be the acetabulum. Acetabulum in Greek means vinegar cup. And that's actually
the socket for the femur. And I haven't done anything yet. There are no details. I'm just
blocking this out little by little. This is the pelvic brim right in here. On men it's
somewhat triangular, and on women it's big and round, that opening. That's why on bathroom
signage you'll see that a triangle is for men and a circle is for women.
This is the ischium here. This is the pubis. The ischium, I'm going to make almost like
this little, almost like a Cheerio, but half of one. A little tiny donut. This is the ischium.
This is a sit bone. You sit on this. Even on cartoon pelvises, it's like these little
loops. Now these are in opposition to these. The ilium are going out towards me. These
are coming towards you like this, almost like a boat bow is coming right at you.
Now, you'll notice that i do a lot of this with my bare hands. I don't want you thinking
that you need fancy tools to do all this. These are fancy enough. Whatever I don't like
about this we can change. We can certainly change. This isn't necessarily going to be
like a Franklin mint version of a skeleton or pelvis, but it's going to be really pretty
good, and you'll learn a lot from it.
I'm going to use my rounded stick because what happens is when you attach Sculpey you
need to really blend it in. Otherwise, later on when you bake it, it's going to always
be week there, and it'll break at that spot. If you blend it in a little bit, mush it in
like that, it's amazing how helpful that is.
The other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to get my X-Acto knife out because that opening,
it's called the obturator foramen, that opening, the loop--it's a little small right now. That's
why my X-Acto knife comes in handy so often. It's because I like to work a little bit bigger,
and then I reduce. What I did is I actually cut a little bit more of an opening.
The other thing I want to do is I want to get a little bit more of the shape of the
ischium, and the best way that I do that is with my X-Acto knife. I'm just cutting this.
I'm squaring it off a little bit more so it doesn't look so much like a cartoon pelvis,
which would be a little bit more like it's loops, like little round loops like you would
see at a playground. These are actually a little bit flatter. They're not like the rings
that you would see at the gym or at the playground for the kids.
I'm going to open up the obturator foramen even more. This is the beginning of little
pelvis. Now, there is a little peak over here. I don't know if you can see it from your point
of view, but this riser goes up and it's longer. From here to here, and then there is a peak
and then it's shorter. From that peak to the back end. This bump back here--
watch what I'm going to do because I'm going to take a bite out of this, like that.
This bump that I created is that little dimple that you have on your
backside. Take a look sometime. It's really cute. So you have this bump, and this is the
opposite of the one you have up front here. This is the anterior superior iliac spine.
This is the posterior superior iliac spine. And you have a anterior superior iliac spine
and you have an anterior inferior iliac spine. That's this little nub. It's going to look
really minimal, but this little bump is really important because the rectus femoris muscle
is attached to it. That's the Captain America muscle that, if you remember from my lectures,
it's that one that looks like a trout sitting on your lap. This is facing forward. So, it's
facing forward. This is facing back. Then there is a diagonal. Let's see if you can
see that. I'm going to rotate this around slowly.
The other thing that the X-Acto knife does--this is more of a stylization, but the X-Acto knife
creates very deliberate looking marks. Even though the pelvis isn't exactly like this,
by putting these really sharp deliniated facets, it really makes your sculpting look more deliberate.
If you have any wires showing, like mine is right there, don't worry about that. Later
on when we finish this that will tend to disappear, and you won't see that any longer. Once it's
all painted and it's the same color you won't notice it. Right now it looks a little bit
different because it's a different value, it's a different color, it's a different material,
and your brain can see that. Later on, when it's all painted it tends to kind of disappear.
So, what i'm going to do now is I'm going to is make the other facet and creating that
little peak right there. I'm going to soften the peak just a little bit. Same thing back
here. I'm going to add just a little bit of like a table top to it, an edge to it. That
just makes it look like you're a little bit more deliberate in your sculpting. It looks
a little bit more purposeful, like you did it for a reason. What that does is stylistically
it just makes it look a little bit nicer. You do have a little bit of an edge like this
on your real pelvis. I just tend to push it a little bit further and make it really obvious.
There. Pretty good. I'm going to cut a little bit more of this notch out. It's a little
bit tighter on men, and this is a man's pelvis. I'm going to show you once I finish this pelvis,
I'm going to put a small female pelvis that's the same scale next to it,
and you can see the differences.

Now, what I'm gonna show you is I'm gonna show you this tool that I have, and if you
don't have one like this you can find something that's pretty close.
And the reason I like just particular tool for this particular job is just
because it has this little rounded thing. Now, some of you may know what a cuticle pusher is,
and that's what this kind of resembles. At least I was told that
because I've never used one of my life. I guess it's a push back your cuticles.
As you can see, I don't go to the salon very often, but this is something that
might be familiar to some of you.
If you don't have a anything like this you could just get a paper clip, and it'll
work almost as well but this one works really well because it pushes in on the clay.
Now watch this because I'm gonna remind you something this armature wire frame
resembles as skeleton for the obvious reason that we're making a skeleton around it.
On the skeleton the skeleton is made up of many bones
this is basically one big armature wire with very few parts, you know, different
wire for this, different wire for that, but for the most part it's a lot less than the bones.
So, the pelvis is separate from the femur. The femur, of course, is your thigh bone
going into the socket, so what we have to imply and we have to show by
artistic illusion, is create that there are two different bones here so what we need
to do is create the socket around this wire
because this wire represents the bone.
So, if you think about that, of course, we need to create a socket so it will look like there's a bone
or a wire coming out of that socket. Do you see how simple that was?
It was just pushing back the clay around the wire.
All of a sudden there you go you have this magic little symbol
form that we'll call the socket for your femur.
What' I'm going to do now is make like a little wormy guy.
Take a look at this. This is about as simple of a sculpting job as you're going to ever get.
Half-inch long...like a toothpick.
I'm just going to curl this around like this. I'm just making a little doughnut.
And that's going to resemble the ball the of the humerus or the head of the humerus,
and that just kind of fits in there just like that.
All of a sudden, you have a ball and socket.
Very simple.
The good thing about this project is this not for sculptors. It's for artists.
All artists have to be good with their hands so don't ever use the excuse that
you're not a sculptor. This is actually learning anatomy by three-dimensional means.
Yeah, you can say you're sculpting because you are
but you don't necessarily have to have any experience in sculpting.
You're learning three-dimensionally so it's a three-dimensional project.
It sounds like it's the same thing but to me it's a big difference because we
think you have to be a sculptor or anything like that,
part of you will kind of resist doing this well.
And I don't believe in that. I just figure when I first start doing this, I just
figure I can figure out how to do it.
And I did.
So there's that. I'm going to make a better
ischium by trimming this, and again you want to use reference.
I'm really lucky because of references stuck in my head. I don't have to look at anything;
I just look at those pictures in my head, and I copy them.
This is the pubic bone coming forward.
Now I just need to quickly do the other side because the other side doesn't have
to be quite this beautiful
I am also going to trim a little bit of this.
Like this.
Hopefully that will look good. There.
One of the things I do want to tell you is I want you guys to all be patient about this.
It may take me, I don't know, 40 minutes minutes to do a pelvis like this.
A half-hour, 40 minutes.
I want to think of like, between me and you, like a little conversion chart.
And on one scale you have Rey, and on one scale you have you. Me being an instructor, I've done this before.
I could do this a lot faster so don't think that you have to do this in real time.
You may put that through the conversion chart, and if I tell you it takes me a half-hour
it might take you four hours, two hours. What I want you to do is just be patient
with yourself, and just keep whatever pace feels comfortable to you.
You'd never want to frustrate yourself. Treat yourself as if you were your own child.
If you were teaching a 5-year-old something you would not get impatient
with them where you shouldn't, because doesn't help the child any.
So think about inner child in you, and I want you to just be patient about this.
So this is the ileum on the other side , and you get see that because this side is a weight-bearing leg.
The pelvis has already kicked up higher on that side.
In the case of this particular pelvis, I don't need to be quite as tight about it,
so when I'm going to do is try to show you how much or how little you need to do of it.
Because the wire is popping through right there, I'm not going to worry about it because
it's not going to affect the muscular system on this particular ecorche.
But I do need the anterior superior iliac spine, so I need that point right in here.
If one side of the ileum is higher, then this has to be higher than that.
Does that make sense? It's like if I tilt my hip than my belt tilts as well.
Got it? So, everything has to have a little bit of perspective to it.
I'm looking at this side because this is a side I'm saying is okay, and that's good.
And I'm going to leave this like this, and this is the anterior superior iliac spine.
I'm going to pull out a little nub here and that's the anterior inferior iliac spine.
I'm just going to make a solid ischium. I don't even the hole in it, that opening.
The way I do it is the way you can do it as well. You don't need to do more.
I don't want to doing less, but I don't want you doing more than what I'm doing here.
And this will meet in the middle, and because this is a male tell you one of
the differences right off the bat between a male and female pelvis is see this
little opening? This is called the pubic arch.
Right in here. And one of the things you'll see is that it looks kind of like a capital A.
That's very male.
On a female that would be big and open like a right angle . This would be a right angle
or more, and you can see because this corner is a right angle,
that it's less than a right angle. So on a female, I would open this up more.
This is pubic arch is where the genitals would be, male and female.
So, this is the pubic bone above the genitals.
Therefore, you could kind of get the idea--oh, I see, with females their pelvises are designed,
whether they have kids are not, they're designed to be able to have kids, and if they are the kid
should not have too much trouble getting out
of this little area, so this is more open.
What I'm doing now as I'm creating this little separation between, called the pubic symphysis,
It's cartilage in between the pubic bone.
On your plastic skeleton that you might see in your classroom--almost everybody
is familiar with those--they usually use different color rubber to signify that this is different.
This is different material. This is not bone. Same thing with the vertebra.
The disks in between the vertebrae are often
a different material, a different color,
the cartilage around the rib cage toward the chest.
So that's what that is. On a female when the female becomes pregnant
the hormones change the body.
There is a hormone called elastin that softens that up and allows the pelvis open
That aperture opens a little bit more allowing for more space
in this beautiful little pelvic bowl.
Now, what's missing is the sacrum and the coccyx.
So, the sacrum and coccyx are the last parts of the vertebrae, and it's the center
of the pelvis. You can see that the pelvis looks a little unfinished without
the sacrum the sacred bone.
It's a really, really hard bone.
When we turn to dust that tends to be like one of the last bones to turn to dust,
In the ancient times they called it the sacred bone.
What I have here is a missing posterior superior iliac spine
The sit bones are in place. They look pretty good.
I want to blend this little bit more. See how like there's a lot of little breaks there?
I don't want to have that in fact break later on, so I'm gonna do this and
and notice that I'm not even gonna do a socket on this side. It's really just not necessary.
What we do need is the posterior superior iliac spine. The posterior
inferior iliac spines of no consequence to
drawing the figure sculpting the figure, but the posterior superior iliac spine
is pretty important so this one you do not want to forget about.
The posterior inferior iliac spine is a little spot right below here in that area.
So, there is posterior superior iliac spine.
Let me see--they're closer together
than the anterior superior iliac spines, and sure enough they are.
It looks like I'm doing okay.
I want to keep that kind of clean. Now I get to put in the sacrum.
And what I do because there's all this wire in between is I put some clay in front
of this over by where that tape is, and I'm going to put a little bit more of this.
Even though I remember putting some on there, I just don't want to take a chance
because the clay just doesn't want to stick.
I'm going to clean up my fingers. You know why, because then the clay is going to
want to stick to my fingers way too much. It's like a magnet for this clay.
What I'm doing here's a making you a
triangular piece like this. This is going to be the beginnings of a sacrum.
I'm gonna put a little bit of a cap on the backside, and I'm going to mimic that.
It almost looks like a little triangle.
I'm going to do the same thing back here
and kind of stick them together so now it's surrounding the clay.
I'm going to make it as if it were one because it is.
It's the center of the pelvis, the last part of the vertebra; it's both.
In your anatomy books, if you look up the pelvis, there is a sacrum.
If you look up the spinal column there's a sacrum.
It photobombs everything. That's like a new term I just learned.
There is like a little ridge down here, and then there are openings.
Between eight and 10 little holes or foramina in this area.
The other thing I have on my website, and it's just something I found when I was looking up pelvis--
just, you know, Google or search for pelvis--
and you'll ee page after page of pelvises, and oftentimes will be somebody talking about
the pelvis. They rotate it and they explain it really well, so that's another resource you guys could use.
Here are the little foramina. There's one, two, three, four.
Sometimes there is a fifth one on both sides; therefore on both side that would make it 10.
But I'm going to leave it at four because that's what fits comfortably there.
Only on the left side because on the right side there's no reason to do extra work
when it's gonna get covered up by muscles.
And you can see the little foramina right there.
See, basically what the sacrum is is they are fused vertebrae.
And you can get really noodly, if you want, if you're that type.
I don't always have the patience to do that much like noodly stuff, especially when it doesn't
make that much of a difference. The other thing I
need to fashion out of the very bottom is a little coccyx.
It's like little fused bones, your tailbone,
But I'm just going to leave it like that. This cute little tail like that.
I must have something like this, something that has like a little edge to it.
It's like a wooden knife.
it can be anything as long as it's kind of similar
in making like little indentations.
And this is the coccyx.
Voila! Sacroiliac joint.
This is the one that oftentimes chiropractors
will try to realign your spine. Things get a little out of whack in that section.
Now you can see why--because the pelvis is in different parts.
and its attached in different level joints
Somewhat immovable joints but unfortunately there is a little movement
because you need to have a little bit movement. But because that, he could wake
up really loosey-goosey and we wake up and we jump out of bed a little too quickly
because your body is all relaxed, things can get out of whack pretty easily.
Okay, so that's the main idea of the pelvis. Do you see that?

What I want to do is I want to show you just the differences between male and female pelvis.
You can see it’s much more open on a female. This is much bigger and rounder, and this
is really very, very open. That is opposed to the male pelvis, which is a lot less wide.
I can widen this out just a little bit more too. Now when I measure that it should be—it’s
2 inches. It’s pretty narrow. I’m going to leave it because I like it. Two inches
is the least amount. If it’s 2-1/4 inches it’ll work really well. This one is thin.
It’s narrow, but I’m going to leave it.
So now that I’ve finished the pelvis somewhat, I could always go into it and kind of tighten
it up a little bit. But right now I’m going to leave it like that. I might take my X-Acto
knife. This is where the X-Acto knife comes in really handy. You just tighten up some
of these little edges here and make them a little bit more deliberate, and I like that.
Same thing with something like this. It has a really nice defined little edge to it.
Same thing with that.
I have anterior inferior iliac spine, the anterior superior iliac spine; these are the
most important ones right in here, so I’m going to make sure you can see them. If I
create like a big facet you can’t help but to see it. This is the anterior inferior iliac
spine, which raises like a little nub. But that’s what the erectus femoris is attached
to, this little guy right there at the end of my index finger. I’m going to take a
look at this. I like it. I’m just going to smooth out the left side. Make sure that
it’s really pretty. I think I’m ready to go here. I’m going to one more thing.
I’m going to make sure we can really see a posterior superior iliac spine, and see
that really is sticking out quite a bit like that, and it is.
Make this one a little bit more symmetrical.
I just want to make sure that they’re the right height. Those are the two dimples on
your backside. The femurs are going to be easy compared to this. I made the mark over
here. I’m just going to take that femur and make it a little bit short of that mark.
Now that I notice, this is looking really long. I’m going to double-check this, and
it looks like it is a little bit more than 4—I’m using the socket—so I’m going
to go just a little bit higher with this so that it doesn’t get too long. The femur
I don’t want to be longer than 4 inches.
So, once again, you just take pieces. If this is called the head of the femur, then there
is a neck, and then this is going to be the great trochanter. That’s the part that you
see on Michelangelo’s David. You see what appears to be like a fried egg on the side
of the hip of Michelangelo’s David, and that is the great trochanter. Trochanter means
runner, so it’s the great runner, the great runner bone. There is the socket. I’m trying
to make it even more so of a socket. There is the head so it looks kind of like a mushroom.
This is a great trochanter. The great trochanter is kind of like a rocky formation over here.
The design of the femur is beautiful because it changes directions here so I can give you
a little bit of suspension. These rounded sticks are fabulous. See, I’m reinforcing
that neck right there. The great trochanter is like this little fun, rocky formation.
Once again, you want to make sure that you have something in front of you to look at
so it can help you mimic three-dimensionally this beautiful bone. Longest bone of the human
body. If you remember from my lectures, it’s the one that forensic pathologists will, if
you find human remains, like if you’re in the backyard and you find a human femur when
you’re digging up the weeds, bring that human femur in the house, measure it, and
using a formula it can determine the height of the person when they were alive. The formula
is length x2.5+23 inches. So if the length of the femur that you find in your backyard
is 18 inches, multiply that by 2.5. It would be 45. Plus 23—68, which is 5 feet 8 inches
here in America. This is a beautiful little femur. Of course, it’s looking kind of rocky
right now. It’s not real pretty. What I want to do is I want to put little pieces
at a time because if you put too much on here there is going to be a lot of air trapped
in here. Sometimes I can’t help it no matter what. There are like little air pockets in
there. But this is feeling pretty good because I am, in fact, being patient and doing this
little bit little. Down here, of course, you have the condyles so it flares out.
The femur flares out.
Now, I want to leave this like this just for a moment just to show you this is the roughed
in the version, and you can see now that it’s bothering me to see it that long. I am going
to adjust it. I want you to feel like you can as well. Like if you see something and
you don’t like it, really go with that instinct and start measuring things again. And what
I’m doing is I’m measuring the entire length, and it looks like it’s 4 inches
so I like that much better. I can always bring the ground up, but I can’t shorten this
once I bake this. Right now I’m just going to leave it like this, and I think it’s—it
feels better to me. Okay, you have the lesser trochanter and the great trochanter. Actually,
I haven’t taught you about the lesser trochanter, but the great trochanter is on there right
now. I’m going to put a little bit more clay around it because I want this to be a
really good landmark because it is.
It’s one of those things that if I take my hand I can actually hit my hip right her
at my femur, and I can actually hit this. Now, you women out there, you have a fat pad
that covers that up so it’s going to sound different. Like with us men it’ll sound
like this. But with women it’ll sound like this. Got it? Hitting a little softer area
than you do on men. Now, this rocky formation at the top of the femur right in here is going
to swing down. Watch what I do. It’s going to swing down and because this protruding
little bump over here that’s going to be really important. This is the lesser trochanter.
There is change from one big form to a little form, but you see it on the back a little
bit more than you would in the front. Over here the great trochanter kind of curls around
this stick, this pointed stick.
You’re going to want to pause because I do move a little bit faster possibly than
what you’re doing, and you don’t want to feel like you have to keep running this
at the same time because it can get a little daunting, and it can frustrate some people.
I want you to not allow that to seep into your experience with me. I don’t want you
getting frustrated. I want you really enjoying this. Something about working with your hands
is just—it just brings out this really neat part in me, and it becomes very relaxing to
do this. The fact that I’m just doing this for you guys and you’re doing this just
to educate yourselves better should be enough. That should be enough to keep you really happy.
I want to put a lot more clay around the bottom part of this femur because I tend to make
this too small, oftentimes. There is always a little bit of stylization when any artist
works on anything like this. Like, in head drawing class I tend to not do a portrait
of the model. I tend to kind of stylize a little bit, and definitely with figure drawing
I stylize a lot more than what I see. I just don’t find copying to be that interesting.
I really enjoy just letting myself be more organic about the drawing aspect of art.
Okay, so hopefully this starts making sense. There is this big knobby area here. Sometimes
it just takes a little bit of coercing, almost like you’re taking this to the ecorché
gym, and you caress it on both sides just to smooth it out. Now, the back of the femur
has a ridge on it. It’s the linea aspera. That ridge makes it a little stronger. If
you’ve ever bought chips with ridges, the ridges make it stronger so that the chip doesn’t
fall apart when you dip it into dip. Make sense? That was created a long time before
any person put it on a chip or put it on anything structural. That’s triangulation creates
strength. It’s a little wobbly, but it’ll be okay. What you do is you caress it, and
you start pushing—it’s getting a little bit of sleeving. It’s trapped a little bit
of air in there, and sometimes it gets annoying. I want you to know that it’s happening to
me too. If you feel like I’m doing something, and it’s like how does he do it without
getting any of that sleeve? I’ve got a little bit of a right now. I can move this around.
There is just a little bit of air trapped in there. I’m going to try to work with
it. All of the things that happen to me I will tell you so that if it happens to you,
you don’t think that it’s you. It’ll happen to me as well. What I’m doing is
I’m faceting this just to make it look more like a bone rather than something that’s
too organic and too mushy. I want it to be a little bit more structurally sound, look really cool.
The other thing about the femurs is that, you know, being the longest bone of her body,
this is also where the manufacturing plant of the red blood cells are. They’re highly
pitted, these bones, the ends of them. What I’m going to do is I’m going to do that.
I’m going to cut some pits into this. The way you do that is you just push into it with
like a needle tool. Or, since I happen to have this in my hand. Don’t poke it. Just
kind of like lay it on its side. You can have like a needle or even your X-Acto knife and
just put like a few of these like little pits at that end of the bones like this. All I
did was just put these little pits on there. Then this flares out and starts becoming the
femurs, the bottom parts of the femurs. Femur is starting to come to life now little by
little right in front of your eyes. And voila. Linea aspera. If I put this in the right light
you’ll be to see a little bit more clearly. I think you can from this
point of view right in here.
It’s nice because it not only makes the femur stronger on the back where it needs
it when we’re running or walking, but it makes it, like, nice flat planes for muscles
to attach to. Like, your adductor group are attached right where my fingers are, and the
muscles on the inside part of your thigh that will take that ridge and pull it towards you
so it brings your knees together. It’s almost like the machine part of being a human is,
these fulcrums and levers and all this stuff as if we’re putting together a Lexus or
something, a Mercedes-Benz. It’s just beautiful how we’re put together,
just like a beautiful piece of machinery.

Now, there are these two knuckles that look like they’re curled up like that. Guess
what they’re called? They’re called condyles. Do you know what a condyle is? A condyle is
knuckle. The Greeks actually thought these looked like curled up knuckles, so they named
it that. I’m going to try to simulate this on the back of this at the end of this femur.
You can kind of see that. I don’t want to do anything that looks like it takes any kind
of special skill to do this. I’m being really careful not to make this overly complicated.
It’s complicated enough without me making it more complicated.
I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible.
That’s all you need to do. Getting rid of some of this excess
clay that I don’t need underneath here so that in the next lesson when I put the tibia
that joints with this bone it’ll have a little spot there for it.
It’s a little wobbly from this point of view so I’m going to add clay or redistribute
the clay that’s already there and make it all smoother looking. It’s gets a little
cumbersome to try to keep doing that, but you have to do it. Then this is going to curl
up and have that nice plane. I’m just rubbing this until it gets smooth. I need to be able
to see the lesser trochanter so I definitely need to put a lesser trochanter in here.
Even though I try to birth it, I try to get to come off of the greater trochanter. It didn’t
work so I’m going to make sure it does. I’m going to force the issue, and you can
do the same thing. Watch, because when you look at your book, whatever anatomy book you
have or image that you have, from the front you’ll be able to see this little bump,
and that bump is not on the inside part of the bone, it’s actually on the back part
coming forward, almost like a rising sun.
The hardest thing with clay or anything like
this is trying to keep everything even and smooth. That’s what I’m trying to do now.
Okay, now what I’m going to do is I’m going to just do a really quick one for the
right side because, remember, on the right side what you do is you do what you just did,
but you also want to just hold back a little bit. Hold back about 75% of what you did over
here. This was about 100%. Right now for me this is like 80%. I do want to put just a
little bit more time into it, but I don’t want to do it right now right in front of
you. You’ll know that just in case off camera I might just do a couple more little, just
smoothing this out so it’s not so wiggly. And I’m putting some of the pits down here.
This nice sharp stick is pretty good because it’s a little bigger. It puts like the implication
that there are pits and little holes at the end of this bone like that.
I think that’s pretty darn good.
I’m going to facet off the sides here like this to create almost like a wagon wheel effect
right in here. See these two little wheels coming toward you?
Okay, now on the other
side I could just put a big clump here, and that’ll be the great trochanter. See how
much easier it is to do it on the other side. On this side I’m just going to hold back
a little bit more. I’m going to just put big chunks over here or strips, and leave
it almost like this. That’s why it doesn’t matter if this side is thicker because all
of this is going to get engulfed in muscle. I’m just going to put a bunch of this clay
on there, and it’s going to be a lot easier to do than this side. This side, boy, you
can just keep going over and over again. Every time you turn around you’ll see something
else you don’t like, and you have to fix that. That’s one of those things about doing
this, is that when you’re working on one side something else is being malformed. You
have to keep rotating it until you like all the sides. I just saw a couple little things
I could still kind of clean up a little bit. That’s pretty good like that.
There, like so.
Like that. And let’s get this one because then we can be done with this lesson.
You're going to enjoy doing the feel because I’m also going to get some watercolors. If you
have watercolors or acrylic paints. Guache might work. I paint the toes to make it look
like there is blood underneath the skin. Down here I’m just going to make a really quick,
nice little knee because now the knee I have to spend just a little bit more time on. The
shaft here, this part of the bone—I don’t need to spend too much time—and I know it’s
going to look really bad because you’re going to say, well, that’s not very pretty.
It doesn’t matter. It’s going to get covered up with muscle anyway, so who cares.
But the bottom part, see here at the knee, then you do have to care because a lot of
this is, in fact, visible. Anytime you’re working with an X-Acto knife you have to be
careful. It’s one of the most common accidents at art schools, these X-Acto knives. There
are whole wings at hospitals dedicated to the X-Acto knife wing of that hospital, just
X-Acto knife accidents. Students being a little too tired, letting that X-Acto knife roll
off their slanted tables and impaling them. They come into the emergency room with an
X-Acto knife sticking out of their thigh. You just don’t want to get any of those
annoying little cuts by even cutting even this nice, soft Sculpey.
Look how cool that is. Notice what I’m doing. I’m not making this overly done over here.
I just need to make sure that the great trochanter is in a good place, and what I mean by that
is almost like there is a fan from here to here to here. It looks pretty good. I’m
going to raise it up just a little bit more. That looks pretty good. I want the great trochanter
to be prominent and sticking out because it is. It’s going to stick out even when we
put muscles on this. If this is about as much as you need to do here, the lesser trochanter
I could just make a bump on the inside part of the thigh right here, so that’s what
I’m doing there. Do you see that? That little bump right there. The filet mignon muscle,
the iliopsoas is going to come through here, use this where the front of my finger is,
and then go back. It helps lift the leg up. On a cow that’s filet mignon. Filet mignon
is nice and soft because cows really don’t do a lot of dancing or pilates or anything,
so that muscle is not used very much. It’s very tender. It doesn’t have any fat on
it, so a lot of times chef’s have to put bacon around it. That’s like the culinary
part of my demo today, what to do the iliopsoas muscle.
When I see it on a cadaver, when I take my students to see human cadavers, I point that
out and it’s already like in a roll. It’s already shaped like filet mignon. If you cut
that up it’s just a disk. Of course, when you go to a restaurant, it’s not going to
be human. It’ll be a cow. At least I hope that’s the case. Let’s see, right over
here we have, try not to cut my thumb. There we go. This is about as much as you need to
do of this. I have a little bit of time here. I want to just double check and make sure
that this is—when I rotate this, this looks good. Remember, to the best of your ability,
you’ve just got to look at these bones and see how much better you can make them. I could
do better if I spent a little bit more time, but I don’t want you to see that I’m doing
anything other than what I’m having you do. So if you get it to about this point,
leave it and be happy. If you have a lot of ability you could take this a lot further,
of course. But this is all you needed to do for this lesson. Okedoke. Then you clean up,
and you go have a sandwich and a cup of tea.
Okay, so now we’ve done the pelvis and both femurs, and that’s a great place to start.
Alright, well, I know that was kind of challenging. The pelvis is one of the one most difficult
areas of the body to sculpt, but you did it. You got past that big hump. I hope that you
learned a lot from that. Now, what we’re going to be doing next, and I hope you joint
me is doing the feet and the tibias and fibula. Basically, you’ll be at almost the halfway
point of this whole skeleton, so please come back.