Hi, Rey Bustos here again. Now, what we are going to be doing is we are going to be sculpting
the tibias, fibulas, and feet. One of the things that you’re going to notice is that
on the right side, the right foot, we’re actually going to make a real foot. It’s
going to be fleshed out. We’re going to put toenails on there, veins, everything.
On the left side it will be skeletal. It’s a really neat little way that I like to do
ecorchés. Let’s get to it, and watch for everything that I do because I have a lot
of really good helpful hints as to how to do both sides.

Okay, so now what we’re going to do is finish up the lower limb. I am going to still use
some of the same materials, some of the same supplies. I don’t know if you can tell,
but I also have like a little extra piece of the 24-gauge wire, and I’m going to show
you what we’re going to use with that. This is much longer than what I need, so if you
cut a piece that is about this long, you’ll be okay with this. It looks like it’s about
9 or 10 inches of wire, so this should be fine. The first thing we need to do is once
again get the Vaseline and apply that to the areas that we are putting Sculpey on, including
a little bit on the wooden base. Believe it or not, it’ll still help it stick. It’s fabulous.
Try not to poke yourself. Oftentimes , there is a little tiny piece of end wire that you
might find accidentally, just be really careful. I need to be especially careful because I’m
talking and doing this at the same time. I don’t want to be distracted and not be paying
attention. Once again, I need to make sure my hands are clean and somewhat free of the
Vaseline. Here we go. First thing we need to do is pretty simple. We’re going to cover
up these little loops. I’m just going to put some of these strips around here and create
like a little ground. You can do whatever you want with the ground, but try to keep
it somewhat close to the board. You don’t want to waste too much clay just hiding these
wires. This is one of the simplest things and fun things that you can do.
It’s easy, quick, simple.
I’m going to show you a couple little things that sometimes I do to make this look a little
bit better. And voila. You basically just want to disguise this area and make it into
ground. Sometimes what you can do is you can take pieces of clay like this and mush them
and make almost like pebbles. Just do that everywhere. Basically, this is up to you.
You can decorate this any way you want. What I’m going to do is what I like to do. I’m
going to smooth this out and just push this around everywhere like so. I’m going to
take a flat piece of metal, which you can get at any art supply store. Like so. I’ll
show you what I’m going to do with this. It’s kind of neat. I think you’ll like
it too. We’ll put just a little bit more. I’m not going to be too cheap about my clay.
I’m going to use it so it looks nice. This is an important part of the look of the finished
product. For me I like making sure that I like this ground. It just doesn’t look like
a big wad of what it is, clay. I’m going to smooth this out and make it a little bit more like it’s
slate rock. Later on when I paint this whole board, I’m going to paint this whole board
black. I’m already foreseeing what I want to do with this.
Sometimes people like the look of the wood, so they just stain it. I like actually painting
it black. It’s easier in years ahead to keep it clean. Every once in awhile instead
of cleaning it you just repaint it black. It keeps your ecorché lasting years and looking
really nice through the years.
What I do is it take this, and I’m going to just show you really quickly when I start
faceting the sides herej—oops uncovered a little bit of the wire, just cutting a little
bit of this here and there. No rhyme or reason to wear, just do it. Even pushing down into
the clay kind of creates almost like layers of slate rock like so. I’m going to leave
it like that because I think it looks pretty good.
Now, what we’re going to do first are the feet. The feet are going to be about 2 inches
long, about like that. I can eyeball it. I’m just going to make sure that it looks logically
the right size. We’re going to use logic. The way I’m having you do this is the way
I want you to do this. The way I’m doing it right now is the way I want you to do it.
Meaning, you start with the feet. Don’t do any of the in-between stuff. It seems a
little weird, but his is the way I do it. This is the easiest way and the best way.
The left foot is going to be skeletal, and the right foot is going to be like a fleshed-out
foot. Basically, it’s like a little shoe. So, force the issue. Make sure that this fits
in there. It’s a little bit bigger than what I want because I need to be able to reduce
this I also want to put the direction of the foot wherever it is that I want it to be.
In this case, I want it to be outward just a little bit.
The real foot is going to be more straight like this. I want to start with just something
like this first, which is like the general shape of the foot, the skeletal foot. Once
again, make sure that you look at good reference for this. Remember the tuberosity of the 5th
metatarsal? That’s it right there. See the beginnings of that. I’m going to try to
do as much as I can with just my bare hands just to show you that what I’m basically
doing is I’m almost making the box that the foot came in like this. The little packaging
of the foot, tuberosity of the 5th metatarsal right in here. The tarsal art of the feet
is back here. As you know, you have a deep arch over here, especially the skeletal foot.
The skeletal foot is all arch. We’re designed really, really well.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to show you this nice, deep arch. I could start it
with my fingers. But eventually, I’m going to use something like this to scoop out underneath
the foot. Alright, right in here. Okay, so I’m going to do it with my bare hands first
just to get the feel of this. What you want to do is you want to make sure it’s not
too wide. For the size of the ecorché that I’m working on, this looks pretty good.
This is about 2 inches. But more importantly, the reason I’m not putting a tape measure
or anything is I’m just eyeballing it. You should be able to have a good sense of scale
and what size a foot would be relative to what you’ve already done. To me that looks
pretty good. I’m going to leave it at that. You have seven tarsal bones, and what you
can do is just find the talus bone, which is right here where this wire is coming out
of, and you can actually just copy what you’re looking at.
One of the things I’ve done, and I’ve told my students to to do this, the ones that
are in the classroom, is to actually either take a picture of their own foot or I give
them one and shrink it down to 2 inches, and then just copy it and then put it right next
to your foot right in here. The real foot and also if like you find a skeletal foot
do the same thing. Scale it down to 2 inches and just copy it. Since the one that is in
my head is handy, I’m going to use that one. You might want to use something else.
The tarsal bones are basically the back half of your foot all the way to the tuberosity
, 5th metatarsal, which is right here. The first thing I want to do is just kind of make
a little reminder that this is where the tarsals and metatarsals combine, kind of like this.
I’m going to try to keep this as simple as possible. I just want you to get the idea
of this foot. It doesn’t have to be too perfect. Surprisingly, we could do a pretty
good job with this. I’m going to make a mark where I want the toes to be like this;
where I want the foot to end, and it’s going to be something like that. Do you see what
I did? I’m trying to keep this as simple as possible. I’m going to dig out the arch.
Here it goes. I’m going to just dig right in here. And voila. This is in deeper still
right in here. This is where the toes that will eventually come to the big toe are. Let’s
make sure that the demarcation is still there again.
These are the tarsal bones behind the halfway point of the foot, and then the top of the
foot which are the metatarsals. Meta just means beyond. Beyond the ankle bones, and
then the ankle bones, which are back here, which include your heel. Now, I need to really
carve this out as well and really carve this out. Don’t worry about the fact that there
is a wire in here. Okay, I know that and you know that. We all know that, but we are going
to try to just work around it. There is only so much we can do when we have a model. My
X-Acto knife will come in handy in making some of these demarcations and some of these
carves. It carves out really quickly, reduces and takes away material lickity-split. The
heel almost looks like a doorknob, and there it is like this.
I’m not going to be too literal with this because it’ll take too much time, and I
don’t think it’s all that necessary to do so, but I do want to at least get the semblance
of these bones in here. At least we’ll resemble what I know to be this beautiful foot. Okay.
So far, so good. It’s fun. It’s not only educational, but it’s therapeutic as well.
Do you see how I’m just carving? Just reducing. I don’t want you to overthink this. With
whatever it is that you’re looking at, really look at it carefully, but also just know that
you’re trying to give just the idea of all of this. Now, one of the best tools that I’m
going to need and use right now is the needle tool. I need to reach back and get mine. It’s
a sewing needle. Let me show you.
Okay, so what I have here—it’s not pretty, but it’s just a sewing needle that I have
taped up onto a brush handle. What I’m going to do is I’m going to separate some of these
bones. Again, you want to use some of reference. I’m just going to kind of fake it. That’s
the talus. There are cuboid bones. There is navicular bone, which on some of you, you
can actually feel. If you look at your bare foot, some of you may on the arch of your
foot have like a little bone that’s kind of sticking out. That’s your navicular.
The cuboid bones kind of look like that. They look like little ice cubes. I’m just going
to make a little tic-tac-toe kind of a thing here just to show you that I’m not going
to get too noodly about the look of each one of these little bones because I don’t have
those completely to memory because it’s not that important to me. Since I don’t
look at somebody’s foot and see all these tiny little bones.
The navicular one is important, though, because it will pop out. So there are certain bones
that definitely you want to spend a little bit more time on, and that’s one of them.
The other one is tuberosity of 5th metatarsal, which is this one, the last of the metatarsal
bones. It’s got a big tuberosity, and it’s going to create that big bump on the side
of your foot. You can even see that in your footprint right outside of the pool. You have
a wet footprint on cement, and you’ll be able to see that. Okay, so these are roughly
the seven little tarsal bones. I made them a little bit kind of a like a tic-tac-toe,
and they are not really that simplistic. This will work out just fine. These look fine.
Now, for the rest I need to use my X-Acto knife because what I want to do, everybody
is kind of carve the contour of the side of the big toe. Did you see what I did? I just
kind of carved out the 1st metatarsal right in here. I need to go underneath the ground
right there to kind of push this down. You do the best you can to copy the material that
you have in front of you, or follow along with me as best you can. Pause. Whatever it
is that you need to do to get this information right. It needs to be done right.
The next thing I’m going to do is separate by the negative spaces. I’m going to draw
each bone but not so much the bone as much as the negative space. I’m drawing in between
each toe. What I need to do is take out the negative space like that. I could pull out,
and I could also push in. Both are equally good. I do a little bit of both. This one,
the same thing. I’m going to show you the push-in method, where I push in on the negative
space. In that case I’m going to pull out a little bit of the negative space because
I do have quite a lot of room. It looks like we did pretty good there.
Notice I did it a little simplified, but it still works. I could separate each one of
the little bones. Each toe has three segments except for the big toe. It only has two. It
is very much like your hand as well. Thumb has two segments, each other finger has three;
one, two, three. One, two.
I thought I would do the skeletal foot first. That is the one that sometimes people are
afraid of, but there is really nothing to it, especially if you are just kind of indicating.
Like I said, I don’t want you getting too uptight about exactly every little single
section of each little bone because it’ll just drive you crazy unless you’re a really,
really great sculptor, and you probably wouldn’t need my help anyway. I’m trying to get some
of this debris out of there, and we’re looking pretty good.
The other thing I need to now, and I’m going to have you guys do this, is to separate the
little segments. I’m going to start with the big toe, because the big toe has the big
joint right there, you know, the ball of the big toe. Since there are only two segments
I’m just going to do this and
reduce around it. Pushing, pulling, doing whatever it takes to make sure that these
are visible. So one, two, three segments. One, two, three segments. One, two, three
segments. One, two, you get the idea. If you want to tighten this up you can, but this
is the gist of it. Simple as that. Trying to keep it as simple as possible for you because
it’s more important that you understand the bigger picture rather than the little
tiny details of this. Little toe like this. I’m going to separate the big toe from the
other toes just a little bit more. It looks better. I looks pretty good.
We’ll leave it like that.

Now I’m going to do the real foot. The real foot is fun because, I don’t know if you
can see, but I’ve got some of my watercolors. This is cadmium red light and this is Phthalo
green. You can use acrylic paint. These little tubes of watercolor are what I use. I’ve
even used little kids sets, you know, the little cheap ones with the little cakes. I’ve
used those and they’ve been fine. The only thing is that the red is kind of a difficult
one to match up if you only use like really cheap little paints.
Cadmium red light is a really fabulous color.
The other thing I’m being really careful about is because I’m going to use the color
of the Sculpley to simulate the color of the skin tone that I happen to be using. I’m
going to have to try to keep this as clean as possible. I try as best I can to clean
my hands, but there is only so much an artist can do. Sculpey tends to pick up even minute
little traces of anything in your hands. When I teach in class it’s really challenging
because I work on a blackboard so it makes it really especially tricky.
The thing to remember is where do you want the feet to be facing? It’s always best
to not keep the feet just straight like this. It’s nice to do something where the feet
are actually telling you something about the composition. The person actually looks relaxed
and more natural. Once again, I’m starting with the shoe. See how I’m being kind of
big and clunky because I don’t care. I’m going to reduce this down. I always like starting
with something a little bit bigger. Now, the one thing I’m going to tell you when you’re
learning anatomy is that you have to feel like this is inside there. So that’s always
a good thing to remember. The whole idea is that you’re trying to simulate something
that already has a skeleton in it.
So, here is the foot on this side. You have to try to make sure that if you have a tuberosity
here, the part that sticks out, you have to try to show it over there. Once again, I’m
going to try to do as much as I can with just my bare fingers just to show you that I’m
not doing anything fancy. You don’t need fancier tools than the ones you are born with.
I do want to get in here because my fingers are too fat. I also want to show the placement
of where the toes are going to be. I tend to use what is called the Italian foot, which
means that the 2nd toe is going to be longer than the big toe. It just looks better artistically.
The old masters, the old Italian masters used that. The Roman foot or the Italian foot.
Sometimes they even went a little bit further and made the 2nd and the 3rd toes longer than
the big toe. All that is just to make the foot look more pleasant, like the toe is more
fingerlike so they could use the toes for more expression.
Now, you have an arch here, but because it’s fleshed out it’s not going to be as deep
as the skeletal arch. I’m just going to dig in there just a little bit by pushing
my pinky finger in there. Remembering that the big toe is going to be over here, and
it changes the direction. See how I’m doing this. I’m trying to visualize a foot inside
a sock. That’s the best way to do this, for first and foremost. So, that’s a foot
with a sock on it. Trying to make sure that there is enough clay over here for the toes
so that I could play around with this. The tuberosity of the 5th metatarsal should be
apparent, so I want to make sure that we could see that.
Watch what I do. I’m just going to reduce this over here behind where the heel is and
separate it from where the tuberosity. The tuberosity is roughly halfway between the
end of the little toe and the back of the heel. I’m just eyeballing it right now.
Now, what I’m going to do is I’m going to try to clean this up just a little bit
so you can see it a little bit more clearly like that. It’s fun trying to kind of make
this feel as if it’s a foot in a sock. One of the best things you could do first. Now,
I’m going to do this with the toes to show a little bit of weight. One of the first things
I want to do is push in just behind the toes. It’s kind of awkward to do this and make
sure that you can see what I’m doing. I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m just
pushing behind the toes, like just at the beginning the toes. The end of the top of
the foot, the beginning of the toes. I don’t know if you can see that. I created a little
indentation there. I’m mostly going to do that with the ends of the toes just a little
bit. And also the pad of the side of the foot, just a little bit wider like this.
Okay, now I need to separate the toes. You have to pretend like you are wearing like
a little flip-flop. Flip-flops separate the big toe from the other toes, correct? I’m
going to do the same thing right now. I’m going to take my handy-dandy tool—if you
don’t have this fancy one you can use just a sharpened stick. What I’m doing is pulling
as if this was the sandal strap pulling right in here
creating almost like a little webbing like that.
The other thing, this is really important. When you remember my lectures when I talk
about the foot, one of the major tendons is the extensor hallucis longus. That is the
tendon that pulls up on the big toe. What I’m going to do is I’m basically pinching
like this, creating a little ridge toward the big toe. I’m not sure if you can see
that. But see that? That little tendon. It kind of separated the foot into two part.
One part at the halfway point of the toe to the arch and then the other toes.
At the halfway point of the toe to the arch and the other toes. You can see how it’s
starting to look, kind of a like a foot and a sock, and now it’s starting to be kind
of be liberated from that sock. The foot is starting to come out just a little bit. Take that big
toe and push it down. What I’m going to do is I’m going to push down on the end
of this big toe right there the nail would be. You can kind of see them doing that. I’m
going to separate the big toe from the other toes.
Push up on the big toe a little bit almost as if it’s going to be kicked up.
Now let’s get to the other toes. It’s important to count. It looks like little piano
keys at the beginning, but it’ll look better once I am finished. I am going to use the
same tool that I used when I was making the socket for the pelvis and push at the ends
of these toes. I am going to shorten up the pinky toe, though, just a little bit like
that. The other important thing, remember this, is the sharpened stick. This one really
does wonders. It kind of almost creates a little webbing. I’m going to push the little
toe inside underneath the toe next to it. It’s a common thing I’ve noticed. What’s
interesting about being an artist is how much you start noticing everything, and then you
could incorporate that into your artwork. It’s a little simplistic, but you know,
it works. It works and it works fine.
I’m just going to round off and clean up the toes a little bit. Take a look at this
and make sure you like the toes. Really, if you have to, look at your own feet for reference,
something. Just as long as they end up looking natural. That’s the whole point of this.
I’m going to push down on these toes a little bit more to really give them the end. The
same thing with the big toe. The other thing I’m going to do with the big toe is I’m
going to take my X-Acto knife and just make little cuts right in here where the toenail
would be. The big toe is a little bit into the ground. Cut in. Cut in. Make the little
rectangle. It’s not really. It’s tapered. It’s thinner on the backside. Sometimes
if I am patient I could even do little nails on the other toes.
Voila, you’ve got yourself a foot.
But, we're not going to end there.
This is where the paint comes in. You get to actually paint on your clay now. But I
want to clean this up a little bit. It can’t have any debris or anything messy. I’m going
to clean this up a little bit. We’re going to add a little life to this. It’ll definitely
look a lot more lifelike. I’m trying to create almost like the beginnings of the tendons.
It doesn’t have to be complete, but it’ll look good if we do this right.
Alright, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to take my handy-dandy paint here. I
have a little old brush that I’ve had for years and years. I’m just going to barely
touch this paint because it’s really strong. Let me see if I can just get a little bit
on here first. Alright, so you ready. Let’s get the ends of the toes right in here. It
doesn’t look like I’m doing anything, does it? But it is. It’s almost like putting
rouge on. When the ladies put rouge on their cheeks. You don’t want it to be like a clown.
You want it to be just really delicate. This was a little too much. I’m going to leave
it, but it’s a little much. You can see that it’s kind of like just adding a little
rouge to the toes. It’s a little bit of color. It makes them look more like it’s alive.
Same thing with the heel side of the foot. You can always rub off if it’s a little
too much. I kind of like making it a little bit brighter than you would really see it
in real life. It’s almost like the way you would see a Peter Paul Rubens painting. It’s
just really, really nice and bright and sunny. Blood-filled little feet. This adds a nice
little element to it. And so does this next step. That is the veins. This is the phthalo
green. The other one was cadmium red light. Notice that what I did is I changed to a really
thin brush, a little liner brush. Sure enough, watch. Just almost like little branches. And
you put the veins in. There is no pattern. Just think of like a tree limb and you’ll
be okay. There are certain named blood vessels that you should know, but with the feet you
can just kind of do it the way I’m doing it. I’ll make the feet look really nice
and translucent and really delicate by being able to see the veins underneath the skin.
There.

Alright, now we get to do the tibias and fibulas. On the left side, let’s make sure—I know
I’ve done this but I want to do this again—I’ve done this step already. I just want to do
this again. I just want to make sure that those bones are going to stick on here. I
want to make sure there isn’t going to be any issue about that. I’m trying to also
smooth out some of this because it gets wavy and lumpy pretty easily. With the Vaseline,
it’s a nice way of kind of smoothing things out as well.
Alright, so the tibia. Kind of like this. What I’m doing is I’m doing the top part
of the tibia which is the bigger of the two bones because I want to do just the top of
it. What I can do is I can actually put the little sockets in and then push it up when I think it’s about
ready. I think it’s just about ready, like that. I’m going to turn the knee just a
little bit. That’s good, like that. I’m going to do the shaft part.
Now, remember the femur had the linea apsera, which was that ridge on the back. The tibia
has it on the front. It’s very interesting because remember the potato chips that have
ridges. It makes them stronger so they don’t break when you dip them in chip dip? So, what
we have now is we have the strength on the lower part of this bone, and on the upper
part it’s on the back. When you’re walking, when your foot is like this, when your leg
is like this, you need the power to be on the back, and you need the ridge, the strength
to be on the back. But when you propel forward like this, then it shifts to the bottom part
of your lower limb or your leg from the knee down to your foot. Specifically, you need
the front of that bone to be strong.
Nature is perfect in its design of these bones and when to put a ridge because all bones
have ridges. If you look at any skeleton and really study the bones you’ll see that ridges
are all over the place. There are no really cylindrical bones. You would think like the
arm bone or something would be a cylinder, but they are not. If you see any cross sections,
and there is going to be a lot of ridges, a lot of ridges on those bones.
The tibia in particular is almost like a prism. It’s triangular all the way through just
about. If you see any cross-sections around here, around here, and that’s what anatomy
means, by the way. I know I mentioned that before. It means a cross-section. If you see
any cross-sections of this bone they’re all going to be triangular sections. That
means that the back of this is relatively flat, and the edge is on the front. There
is going to be a smaller bone because just like your arms there are two bones up there.
There are two bones down here as well. The tibia, which is the big one I’m doing right
now, the weightbearing bone and the stabilizer bone that rides along the side of it, the
outside of it, the fibula. Because it’s so thin we need to put wire inside of it.
Hence, this is why I needed this. Your kneecap is part of this bone. Your kneecap is attached
to this by a ligament by this bone, the tibia. The tibia, if you look at it from the side
it has a nose on it. It’s called a tibial tuberosity. You can see this on a lot of kind
of bony-kneed people, perhaps yourself. The top part is like a golf tee. What I’m going
to do is I’m going to take my X-Acto knife and just help make a prism out of this. Just
kind of clean it up a little bit and make sure it has ridges. The back is flat. The
front has a ridge on it. It’s a slight S-curve. It’s a little wobbly but we’ll straighten
it out in just a moment.
Later on what we’ll do is we’ll make sure that we like everything that we’ve done
so far. That’s pretty neat. Like that. Here is the tibia. There is a little triangle right
there. You can see that and then the bump, the nose if you will, of the tibia. The back
of it and both sides. I’m trying to even it out and trying to give you a little bit
of a curve here. Let’s see, what kind of other tools can I use to really smooth that
out a little bit besides my fingers, anything that will shave some of this off. The X-Acto
knife will cut a lot off. Sometimes we don’t want that.
The thing that is going to take a little bit of time is for you to do what I’m doing,
which is evening things out. What I do is I use two fingers to go on both sides of whatever
form I’m trying to smooth out in trying to even it out as much as I can. It’s tricky.
It’s tricky to get it all right, and I know that you’re going to have a little trouble
doing that unless you really watch how I’m doing it. I caress it on both sides with my
fingers, and that makes it a little bit easier to deal with. The X-Acto knife is just a great
tool. What I’m going to do is I’m going to get this little tiny wire to make a little,
thin tiny bone. Because I need for Sculpey to stick to it, I’m going to take some Vaseline
right in here and just put it on this wire. Okay, do you see that?
I could put clay on there. Not bad. We kept everything pretty nice and neat, and even
though we did this kind of quickly it’s looking pretty good. You know, after you think
you’ve finished something it’s hard to resist going back and cleaning things up.
What I’m going to now is I’m looking at that foot, and I’m just going to clean up
that big toe and make it look even better for you. There, like that. Maybe kick it up
just a little bit more like that. There we go. Okay, I’m going to put some clay around
this little wire. It’s tricky because it’s so thin. What I’m going to do is I’m going
to extrude a long piece. I’m just going to keep rolling this until it gets long and
relatively flat at first. You’ll see what I mean when I roll this out. It needs to be
as long as the tibia; it’s just a lot thinner. It’s as long as the tibia, but it’ll start
lower so it will end lower.
Right now what we have is we have the inside ankle, and what we’re going to need is an
outside ankle. I’m going to add a little bit more clay to this because it’s not quite
thick enough down there. What we need is we need the medial malleolus or the inside ankle,
and it’s part of the tibia. I needed to add clay to that to make it fuller and bigger.
Do you see that? Just like that.
A lot of this is just going to be just kind of cleaning up, making things look really
good and smoothing out things that look a little wavy. It’s not easy to keep any clay
from getting wavy, so you have to just do the best you can. There. That’s not bad.
Okay, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to take a lot of this clay because it’s
not behaving. I want to make it really long, and it’s going to be easier if I just work
with a big chunk of clay, try to wrap it around this wire. Obviously, you can see that I have
much more wire than you could possible use for this bone. It’s much longer than the
tibia. This is going to end up being the fibula, and the tricky part is going to be making
sure that you surround the wire with clay, and I’m forcing it. I’m squeezing the
heck out of it right now. Do you see that?
There is wire inside this. I’m going to try to straighten it out little by little.
It’s ugly at first, but this is the way you have to do it. I’ll make sure this is
clean. Do you see that? And less wavy. I need to think about different things all at the
same time to make sure that all of this starts looking really good. Okay, now it’s obvious
that I have much more bone here than I need so I’m going to start reducing this. I’m
trying to think of how long that is, still too much, but this is getting better. It doesn’t
look pretty, but this is best way to start. Now, what I’m doing is I’m straightening
out the wire. See that, I’m trying to keep it in the center. I’m going to take my X-Acto
knife and start trimming away some of this bone.
Over here we liberated too much of the clay so I pushed it around. What I’m doing is
I’m reducing the size, the thickness of this clay by just reducing around it. I’m
being kind of careful with that. It’s getting smaller and smaller. It’s still too long
and I know that, but I’m not worried about it. Now that I know how long I need to make
it, and I think this is it, what I’m going to do is I’m going to bend this in. This
is as long as I want to go. This is as long as I want to go down here. Is that, in fact,
as long as that bone? It is. It is. Roughly the same length as the tibia, but you notice
it’s much smaller. It’s about 1/4 the size. It’s really small. The top of it has
a little head, and this is something that you could actually feel along the side of
your knee. The bone, protruding bone down here, it’s the ankle part that’s sticking
out of your shoe right now.
Once again, all of these bones actually have facets to them. You don’t have to copy the
facets exactly. I’m just trimming, Even a small bone like this is not a cylinder.
It’s got lots of facets to it. Oftentimes, what I do is I take a bone like this because
it’s already, it’s got a separateness to it. I throw this in boiling water to cook
it. I don’t want to do that because I would have to walk away from you right now. I’m
just going to work with this right now, so what I’m going to do is I’m just going
to work with this. I cut too much off here. I’m pushing some of the clay up into that
area that I reduced too much. It got away from me. But notice I don’t worry about
anything. I just work with what I have. The bone is getting smaller and smaller.
The good thing about that is that I’m going to cut some of this off, leaving just a little
nub at the end. I don’t know if you can see that. I still have a little bit of wire
sticking out because that’s the way I’m going to secure it onto here. I don’t know
which way I had this, and it doesn’t matter. I need to establish that the top has a little
head, the bottom is going to be like a little arrowhead. It’s going to be more like a
teardrop at the bottom, and the top is going to be a little bit more like a cherry like
this. See what I did? Sometimes even when I stick it on here I can carve it from this
point of view.
Okay, you ready? So, this looks pretty good. It could still use a little trimming, a little
fixing, but right now it’s fine. I want you to see, I want you to see something. There
is a back corner, and then there is a center right here. I’m going to make a mark for
you right here. That’s at the halfway point between the front and the back of this bone.
But over here, there is a little back corner. See where I put the little mark? So, that’s
where the head goes. The head is not really on the back of the tibia, and it’s not on
the side of the tibia. It’s on the back corner. This bone comes at a slight angle
forward, and it finds its little position over here, and I have too much wire on this,
so I’m going to actually cut some of this off. It’s not letting me stick it in there
because it’s so close to the big wire. But this is it. It’s a little wobbly right now.
What I need to do is while I have this on here, and you can do the same thing. Take
your X-Acto knife and start making it thinner, reducing it down.
I’m going to get that debris around from the feet. It needs a little bit of trimming
from this point of view. You keep rotating it around, and as it’s sitting on there
you can trim it. This is the outside ankle, and this is the head of the fibula right there.
You just copy the bones as best you can with the reference that you have and with everything
that I’ve shown you.
Now, the neat thing about the other side is that just like what we did with this femur,
and it’s kind of big and clunky looking and it’s okay is we get to do the same thing
with the tibia and fibula, and the difference is that on the other side—oh another thing,
remember that little extra piece of armature wire right in here? Watch what I’m going
to do? I’m going to do this. I’m going to make a little hook. I’m going to put
a patella around this. See if I can make it a little bit more like a pretzel. Maybe even
more like this, okay, a little question mark, whatever you want to call it. I’m going
to make a patella. The patella, your kneecap, I’m going to just do this. The patella is
not really round like a cap even though we call it a cap. It’s more of almost like
a roundish triangle, rounded corner triangle with a nice sharp top on it because you could
see this very clearly on a lot of your knee that there is a sharp edge that makes it drop
down, and it’s quite beautiful. There are a couple little bumps on the front of it that
are also very noticeable. The neat thing about this is this is all you need to do, and what
I’m going to do now is take my handy-dandy scissors, and you have your patella stuck
on the tibia like that.
On the other side you don’t need to do all that fancy stuff. All you need to do is just
throw a whole bunch of clay on there and make a tibia and fibula that is combined. I’m
going to trim some of this because it’s looking a little unruly. I want it to be neater like that.
Later on I need to get a brush and just kind of brush in between and get
all that debris from underneath there the best I can.
Like that, like that and cleaning things up a little bit like that.

Alright, so the tibia and fibula on the other side are done as one. So everything we just
did you can do as one including the patella everybody. This is going to be a lot simpler,
a lot quicker. The place that you need to be careful with is at the beginning of the
tibia and fibula and at the end because the ankles need to stay true to what you see on
a real person. The other thing is the tibia also needs to be not too sloppy because the
tibia is exposed from the knee down to the foot. I don’t mean to make it sound like,
oh, you could just get away with leaving it like this, but you can ease up just a little
bit. This inside part, though, it needs to be a really nice facet.
I’m going to take my X-Acto knife and just as it sits, I’m going to start putting in
a nice big cut on it like that. And the ankle down here needs to be clean. You can see that’s
going to be a skeleton that kind of blends right into the foot. I hope you can see that.
The ridge needs to be somewhat clean, and the edge of this tibia needs to be clean.
I have to hide a little bit of that wire because it’s showing through and I don’t want
it to. It comes up like a golf tee right up here.
A lot of this wire is kind of exposed. I’m trying to hide it. The reason I’m bringing
it up is just in case it is on yours as well. You can just fix it. Remember, we need to
also show that there is a fibula here, so I’m going to show like a big head of it
right there. Even though we’re not doing a separate tibia and fibula it needs to look
like there are two bones there. I’m actually pulling out the fibula from the clay that
I have for the tibia. I’m cleaning up the edge a little bit and bringing out the fibula a little bit more
on the side. Do you see that? Right along here.
Of course, we need to have a patella. But watch. I’m going to put a little glob there,
and that’s not the patella. That’s the space in between the tibia and the patella.
It needed a spacer since on the other side it’s a skeleton. You don’t need to have
anything behind it. But here it needs to be supported by clay. I’m going to put the
patella like this, and then the patellar ligament. Basically, what it looks like is like an ice
cream cone. Then there is a ligament that just basically attaches from it to the tibial
tuberosity like that. You have a patellar ligament and your patella. This is very visible
on your own knee, sometimes more than others, like anything else on your body like that.
That’s a really good strong patella. Now that I look at this tibia from the side I
don’t like it because it’s got a bid indentation on it, so I’m going to try to clean that
up. I hope you can see that. Okay, I like that.
This will make it so that we’re just at about the halfway point of this whole skeleton
just like that. I’m giving him a little bit more of an ankle. I’m adding to it.
I want you to just not be afraid of doing that as well. If you remember from my lectures
there is a tendon from the tibialis anterior, goes into like the foot, and it goes to the
side of the foot. I’m going to actually put that out a little bit. That’s what this
little crease is that I’m putting on there. That’s the tendon of that particular muscle.
I’m putting it in so that later on when I put the muscle in it’ll just kind of blend
into this part that’s going into the foot.
What I’m going to do now is, I’m going to take a brush, as soft bristle brush like
this and just clean out a little bit of the debris. I look around the feet, and I can
see that what appears to be almost like sawdust. I’m just going to clean that up a little
bit. Definitely in between here and there and just kind of clean it up. And voila.
Pick up all your little messes. So there it is right there. Let’s take another look
at it. You look around to see what you can fix, remembering that this side is going to
be engulfed with muscle except for this ridge right here. I’m looking at this bone a little
bit more carefully. I’m looking at this. You know, you just look around and see what
you can clean up a little bit and hope to make things a little bit more even. That’s
what I’m doing right now. It’s those little things here and there. Don’t think I’m
doing anything fancy except cleaning up. Make the head look a little bit more purposeful
because it is. It’s a really great landmark on the human body. The head of that fibula,
the outside ankle is a little bit clearer now and a little bit more finished looking.
It’s looking pretty good. It’s a little wobbly, but you know, we’re human. Let’s
see how it’s looking. You just kind of rotate around and see what you can fix here and there.
Get rid of all the big obvious things. The patella looks pretty good on this side. It’s
going to be ready to take muscles. The quadriceps muscles will go over this and then continue
on to become the patella ligament. What I’m trying to do is squeeze in here just to separate
that ligament a little bit more. I don’t know if you can see what I’m doing, but
I’m just separating that. I’m doing the same thing on this side.
And making sure the knees are big enough, you know, wide enough. Remember, this side
does not have to be super clean, so don’t spend too much time on it. It needs to at
least have the integrity of the bones. And it is. It’s looking good. A lot of this
is more like the details stuff, making sure that it is looking good from different points
of view. Great trochanter looks good. It’s got a lesser trochanter. I look at it overall
because we’re halfway through the skeleton. We did one of the hardest things, and that
was the pelvis. The skull is really hard. We’ll get that when we get to that. Don’t
want to think about that too much right now because it’ll give me nightmares. Skulls
are really hard to do, good ones. You look around now, and make sure you’re happy with
this. Look at the feet. Look at the toes. It’s all looking pretty good. And that’s
it for that section of the body.
See? That wasn’t so bad. You did the feet, you did the tibias, you did the fibulas. After
doing the pelvis, I think that should have felt a little easier. Basically, you’re
at about the halfway point of making the whole entire skeleton. That should give you a really
good sense of accomplishment. Now you know you can do this. When you come back we’re
going to be doing the vertebra, the thorax, or the rib cage. Both humeri, which are the
arm bones, the upper arm bones. So, come back and I can’t wait to start this with you.