Rib Cage Sketches

These are the rib cage sketches. The assignment was to find three old master drawings of which we could place tracing paper over and draw where the rib cage would be on the picture. The first sketch is a front view of the rib cage. The second is a ¾ view of the rib cage and the third sketch is a back view of the rib cage. I found the three images from a German book called Aktzeichnungen Grosser Meister, which is a collage of body sketches, by numerous famous artists such as Michelangelo Buonarroti and Francois Boucher. The first image is by Michelangelo on page 112. The second image is by Daniele Ricciarelli Da Volterra found on page 128 and the third image is by Michelangelo on page 190.

I had the most trouble with the ¾ view of the rib cage because it was difficult to understand which direction to take each rib to make it appear like a rib cage and not an egg. That did not seem to work too well for me but I continuously worked at it until I was comfortable with its appearance. The front view of the ribs came to be the easiest of the three to draw and the back was probably the next difficult view.