What's your situation? School assignment? Science project? Maybe you're in a health class and need to know what's connected to what to pass an anatomy test. Unless your mission is making a Halloween decoration, your drawing of the human skeletal system is likely to have a grade riding on its accuracy.
Instructions
1. Find an anatomically correct drawing of a skeleton to use as your reference material for this project.
2. Draw a round circle onto a piece of artist's tissue paper that will morph into your skeleton's head. Measure the height of the circle with a ruler.
3. Draw a straight line down from the circle that's between seven and eight lengths of the head circle (e.g., if the head circle is one-inch high, draw a seven- to eight-inch line) so your skeleton sketch winds up being properly proportioned.
4. Draw a horizontal line across the middle of the head circle and mark it "eye sockets." Use your reference material to draw more horizontal lines down the center of the sketch to mark where the collarbone and shoulder blades belong.
5. Sketch an upside-down triangle at the juncture of the torso and the lower extremities to indicate where the pelvic bone will appear on your finished skeleton. Mark the final reference points--knee and anklebones plus fingers and toes--with a pencil to complete the outline of your drawing.
6. Start at the skull and--using the lines you drew and points of reference taken from the picture you're using--flesh out the chest, upper arms, ribs, groin, waist, pelvis, thighs, knees, hands and feet using rudimentary shapes like circles, ovals, triangles and rectangles.
7. Convert the geometric shapes to bone shapes to complete your skeletal-system drawing. Compare each section of your drawing to the material you've been using as your reference.
8. Turn the tissue paper over and, pressing down, trace only the finished lines of your skeleton on the reverse side of the original drawing. Place the tissue drawing over a nice piece of drawing paper and tape the two together.
9. Use your soft pencil to cover the original drawing with a series of crosshatched pencil lines. Lift one edge of the tissue from time to time to make sure the critical lines are being transferred.
10. Remove the tissue paper and complete the finished drawing by darkening and shading bones and lines. If your assignment includes labeling bones, use the proper terms--skull, sternum, humerus, sacrum, pelvis, femur, patella, tibia, ulna, radius, phalanges and fibula--for an accurate and complete skeletal rendering.
