The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 52: Chapter 37: Figure Drawing

[Item: George Burriman’s ”Human Anatomy”]

[Quality: Knowledge Card]

[Special Effects: After obtaining a knowledge card, you will clearly comprehend its corresponding content.]

[Equipment Requirements: Tier One Professional Sketching]

[Master Introduction: George Burriman was born in the nineteenth century. He is the world’s most renowned and authoritative anatomical painter.

He taught anatomy at New York Art University for nearly half a century, his students including the American comic godfather Will Eisner and the legendary illustrator Norman Rockwell, who influenced millions during World War II. Burriman innovatively invented a series of human sketching techniques.]

[Remarks: The brush is the scalpel that dissects the soul, sometimes... it can also dissect the body.]

”Human anatomy?”

In the long Middle Ages, there were three types of people who risked the stake to steal corpses for dissection and study.

Madmen, doctors, and painters.

Human figure drawing has been one of the most important categories since the birth of the painting genre.

From the twisted ritual dance engraved on tomb walls from Neolithic relics, to the god-like Sun God and the resurrecting Pharaoh recorded on stone slabs of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramids. From the noble portraits of feudal emperors to the millions-selling comics of today.

People have always been the eternal theme of painting.

Imagine if you were a medieval painter.

At that time, it was commonly believed that everyone’s leg bones had a natural curve, men had one more rib than women, and everyone had an undying bone meant for resurrection in religious legends...

In that century firmly held by ecclesiastical power, these weren’t myths but objective facts like water being drinkable and birds being able to fly.

Would you not find it strange to purposely erase the symmetrical rib lines on a man while drawing?

When you imagined that unique, hard resurrection bone and truly believed you saw it, wouldn’t you feel a sliver of doubt?

Even if you didn’t,

wouldn’t you want to know how a warrior’s muscle bulges up under the robe when swinging a sword, how to accurately depict the alluring curve at a lady’s collarbone when she lowers her head to cover her face...

How exactly can you truly paint a person to perfection?

Practice repeatedly, invite models home for observation, or... actually dissect a corpse to find out.

In the era when the church ruled the world, the structure and lines of the human body were considered a secret given by God to mankind, not to be explored casually, and stealing corpses for dissection was a crime worthy of the stake.

But this clearly didn’t stop people from pursuing the truth.

Amidst the thick smoke over the continent from the pinewood stakes, countless innocent souls perished because of it.

For several centuries following the Renaissance, anatomical drawings were always at the intersection of art and science. Countless doctors picked up brushes in front of sketchboards, and countless painters took scalpels in morgues.

Historical records show that Master Da Vinci could paint fascinating curves and precise muscle lines in his oil paintings because, in addition to studying various anatomical drawings then gradually circulated, he personally dissected over thirty corpses. Some believe he collaborated with local medical colleges, while many scholars think Da Vinci, like many predecessors, secretly engaged in tomb-robbing.

Coincidentally, it’s like having an inextricable bond with anatomy.

Like the legendary oil painting ”Mona Lisa” in the Louvre, which is viewed by millions, Rembrandt, the author of one of the world’s top three famous paintings ”Night Patrol,” also spent extensive time in the dissection room.

Rembrandt’s breakthrough work was an oil painting called ”Professor Dupe’s Anatomy Class,” now housed in the Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery in The Hague.

Gu Weijing felt various pieces of information flooding his brain’s memory area. Images of human muscles and corresponding painting techniques surged into his mind.

These techniques and lines quickly reassembled into an adult’s body in his consciousness.

It stretched, turned in his mind, the combination of muscles and tendons, slightly trembling pectorals, numerous tiny muscles themselves elongating, shortening, swelling, forming smaller wedges or together with larger, more robust blocks to form various shapes.

The already acquired ”Mojie’s Handwriting” was more of a verbal description, the specific pigments still require Gu Weijing to try pairing them himself, the impact when obtained was clearly not as strong as this anatomy atlas.

Gu Weijing closed the panel and looked up.

Almost subconsciously, with his movements, the muscles involved in the upward-looking action and the corresponding painting technique poured into his mind.

”Bilateral contraction of the sternocleidomastoid muscle, the sternum, and medial end of the clavicle contract, ending at the mastoid process of the temporal bone. The brush should pay attention to the shadow at the clavicle, highlight muscle stretch, make the image dimensional, reflecting the width and thickness of muscles. The erector spinae muscle from the back of the sacrum...”

A series of complex muscle transformations emerged in his mind. This subconscious action of looking up, Gu Weijing never considered it to be so vividly detailed.

He even felt that if it didn’t involve deeper topics like internal organs, in terms of familiarity with muscles and skin fat, some fresh medical students weren’t as familiar as he was.

In fact, Gu Weijing knows.

The separation of sectors like sketch artists, illustrators, anatomists, and forensic experts happened only in modern times.

In many medical schools with centuries of history, sketching was consistently a compulsory course for medical students.

Back then, there was no camera to quickly record surgical scenes. Even into modern times, early daguerreotype cameras required subjects to remain still for tens of hours, so a photo might require afternoons of stillness before developing.

In hot weather, this lengthy period risked spoiling corpses, so a solid sketching foundation was essential.

It wasn’t just doctors.

Scientists, naturalists in the natural sciences category... all needed good sketching skills, Darwin recorded the dissection specimens of various animals around the world with his pencil in notebooks.

And painters, in pursuit of extreme line accuracy, would learn anatomy meticulously, this tradition continued until the Victorian Era.

Considering medical ethics and other issues, it wasn’t until the 20th century that anatomy as a compulsory course for artists began to fade.

Old man Burriman represents the last few generations who mastered this scientific art.

In his contemporaries, Philadelphia Medical College still opened anatomy studies and observations for artists. Similarly, there was the painter and doctor Ikenes, whose understanding of muscle tissue made the tense muscles he depicted in the famous painting ”Wrestler” more detailed and clearer than the wrestler’s face.

This exaggerated display of vitality was almost unmatched later on.

Gu Weijing felt, compared to the ”Mojie’s Handwriting,” which is more like various small painting tips, for his painting career, Burriman’s ”Human Anatomy” should be more useful.

At least, many artists who study their entire lives to understand the mysteries of human muscle lines, he has effortlessly mastered them.

Gu Weijing uploaded the colorful pencil sketch of the finished cat head to his computer using the high-precision scanner available in the painting studio and submitted it to the housewife, completing the order.

Then he scrolled through the remaining unread messages, most of which weren’t valuable.

He watched briefly.

Foreign websites are like this, full of junk messages.

Some wanted to add him on Telegram (a foreign encrypted messaging app), likely cryptocurrency scammers, he deleted them immediately.

Some claimed to be jewelers wanting to chat with him, asking him to look at their ”big treasures.” He deleted, blocked, and reported the harassment all at once.

Profession: Jeweler—this has the same nature as the early small commercials of rich women in Hong Kong and Taiwan streets in Dongxia seeking sons with large sums of money.

A bunch of 20-35-year-old loser white males on Nutshell, Twitter, and various pen pal chatting apps claiming to be wealthy widowed jewelers, after a few casual chats, they propose to meet [beep—] or request bold videos, indeed many naïve young girls and... young boys fall for it.

After sorting for a while, only one order for drawing buildings was worth a look. The pictures and shadows were quite complex, the painting might take several days, and the price wasn’t high.

While Gu Weijing chatted briefly with the person and hesitated whether to take the order.

A new message just arrived on Nutshell.

”Can I commission you, ten dollars per piece?” — A message from buyer account Hyperion1077 from San Francisco.