Due to the popular demand of like... a couple people, I will be going over how THE HUMAN TORSO IS LIKE A CLAWFOOT BATHTUB.

But first, a story.

When I was still just a wee babby artist I would wander into the local library and pick up art books and be confronted with all of the in-depth anatomy images and feel a bit, well... overwhelmed.

And it's not as if I'm a dumb person or anything. It just never really made any real sense, not in a way that was meaningful to me. I struggled to retain it, unlike with other subjects, which of course confused me even more.

In hindsight I see now that it was like trying to memorize the parts of a car engine, how they all looked visually, where they were placed spatially (in 3D nonetheless), without knowing how a car operates or how all the parts work together in motion.

Which is a bit ridiculous.

In any case, since I didn't have much interest in drawing western style comic superheros with musculature that looks like it's been vacuum sealed by their skin I spent a good amount of time just ignoring it and sneaking by, using a lot of shorthand and doing practices drawing from life. And, to be fair, I did learn a lot like that.

Which brings us back to torsos. So when you look at a torso you can visually see there are features, like pecs and belly buttons, but their relationship to the internal structure is not immediately apparent.

So what ends up happening there is you just end up sort of... putting stuff where you best guess it kind of belongs. And sure, sometimes it's a really educated guess, and can be hella convincing.

I tend to notice this most with collarbones. I can tell when an artists has learned largely through shorthand and idioms when their collarbones are just sort of floating around doing their own thing, basically acting as decoration on the chest without suggesting any greater purpose.

So what changed? And what does this have to do with bathtubs?

Well, I had a few paradigm shifts. To put it more simply, I realized I am a very conceptual and relational thinker. Anatomy never stuck with me because it never "clicked." So my success came from starting with big concepts and adding increasing levels of complication as I became ready for them. Pieces falling into place bit by bit.

Like a car, for instance, is a vehicle that runs on a series of explosions. Which is kind of badass. These explosions, in turn, are caused by pistons which rotate in time, which is kept going by... weird shaped gears and belts and pulleys... sparks... compression... well that's about it for my knowledge of engines.

*I have since been informed that it is the spark plugs that make the explosions and the explosions that power the movement of the pistons. I think it was clear by my diagram of a car that I am not well versed in automobiles.

So what is the bathtub about? This is literally all I came here for.

Ok, ok... So the bathtub is a conceptual metaphor that helps an artist understand the structure of the torso.

Cool.

So, to break that down... It's easy to think of the body in terms of a column. A series of objects supported by the object below. That makes sense, right? At heart we are, essentially, the Michelin man.

Except not at all. Unlike palm trees, pyramids, and economic class systems we are not, in fact, a series of parts dependent on the parts beneath them. And we knows this. I know this, you know this, we've all seen spooky skeletons before, but for some reason artists consistently fail to internalize it.

The issue being that we are still just mammals, just mammals that walk around funny. And Mammals are basically flesh tents. But... less horrifying than that phrase suggests.

Essentially your standard cat or dog is holding up its spine with its four legs and then its body is hanging from that support structure created by the spine. The body is not being held up from below by the legs. And that's a fairly crucial distinction as it turns out. The muscles of the legs connect to the spine(ish), and the ribcage hangs down from the spine, making a nice tidy sack to hold all the insides where they are supposed to be.

And humans? Well we're all evolved from previously four legged critters.

Which means we follow a very similar diagram - but with alterations to account for a bipedal stance.

WHICH BRINGS US TO BATHTUBS.

So, take this weird upright mammal and break it down into very basic blocks.

Got some hips, a spine, a ribcage, just like a cat but vertical. So, again, all the focus is on supporting the spine, specifically. Which is why our arm muscles still largely connect to our back (except, like, your pecs which are literally contracting and yanking your arm bones forward which is metal AF).

So, like an umbrella designed in hell, we are actually bags of meat hanging from our spines. 

And that "decorative" collarbone? Literally holding up a ton of meat draped over it so we can continue to move our arms.

Which 🎉🎉🎉 BRINGS US TO THE BATHTUB🎉 🎉🎉 

It's not a perfect metaphor since usually the curtain rod is held up by other supports besides just the shower head (it's literally called a head this is such a great metaphor) but give me a little slack. 

The ribcage is like the curtain, held up by the spine of the showerhead, and the hip bones are the bowl of the bathtub, within which are lovingly nestled... all the intestines. And stuff. This metaphor helps an artist conceptualize the human structure, so they can start applying further degrees of knowledge, like muscles and motion and afsGkljSAKjhgfajhs hands.

But I specifically said a clawfoot bathtub you say pedantically? Well...

I didn't stutter. It is a CLAWFOOT BATHTUB. Specifically.

And not just for some reason like "oh because it has feet."

(OK like maybe a little but not only, alright?)

So let's talk about hips.

Now muscles work by contracting, something I passingly mentioned before (didn't think that would be on the test, did ya?) so to create motion the body generally contracts a muscle that has ends tied to two bones.

That's why we don't resemble ball jointed dolls. Due to insert complicated mechanical reason based on leverage, pulleys, walking, flexibility, and so on we, again, aren't just objects stacked on top of each other like dishes.

So, as it turns out, rather than balls and sticks and vague underwear shapes, there is another pretty stellar way to consider the leg hip connection area. 

Excuse my atrocious rendition of it here, but I assume you get the jist. Two turkey drumsticks tagged onto Lego Bionicle pegs jammed into a pair of hipster undies, with some amorphous fleshy bits spackled in there. 

 So, I'm sure you've figured it out by now, but this shape very much resembles...

And that, my dear friends

is why the human torso

is a clawfoot tub.

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