I'm probably the slowest learner you've ever met. It takes me forever to absorb things... and I have to tinker for long bout's of time and fail over and over.

Sometimes, it seems like I try to do things the hardest way possible... on purpose! The excuse I tell myself is that if I can do it the hardest way, then I really got skills.

So I've tried every way possible to sculpt and paint over the years.

But there’s one thing that’s made the biggest difference and it’s not just learning some anatomy. Specifically, it was making my first Écorché.

Écorché, if you don't know, is French for the human body with all its skin removed… hmm…

All the greats have done it... Leonardo da Vinci's can be seen below.

But I like to look at things from a brain-based approach not just a tradition or history approach.

To understand why its important, we need to remember one thing: studies have shown that the brain can only hold around seven bits of information at a time... like a phone number.

Unless your European... if your European then your brains are bigger because of your longer phone numbers... :)

But seriously, have you ever looked at your sculpt or your art and just had no idea where to start or even what to work on?

Just stared blankly... wondering..

• What's wrong?
• Why can't I see it?
• Do I have enough talent?
• What if I'm not good enough?

Well, a big part of that is because when you look at the human body you are looking at, literally, hundreds if not thousands of different bits of data...

Your brain can’t even handle all of that information at once. It has no way to get into all that information sitting in front of it. So, you and I just sit there and stare blankly wondering... what's wrong and blaming myself.

Most likely, you then hit the books... grab your favorite anatomy book... only to be confronted with a 100 different bits of information all on a single page which leads to you just sitting there and staring blankly at the book just like you did your work. :)

That's happened to me. Lots of times.

 But, I can already hear people saying that this takes too long. It’s too complicated. There’s so many muscles in the human body...

Now, I’ve trained surgeons before and yes there are lots of muscles in the human body but THIS isn’t about memorizing muscles. No, sirree.

In fact, I was in a workshop with the amazing sculptor over a decade ago and he was was doing a live demo when this dirty little secret came out.

He was surrounded by anatomy figures. His model was a living anatomy figure from Cirque du Soleil. 

... As he’s doing this demo he couldn’t remember the name of one of the muscles in the leg!

Oh no! For shame!!

Of course I write this tongue-in-cheek. Richard is an amazing sculptor and his skill does not exist because he's an anatomical encyclopedia.

Studying Écorché is not about memorizing the muscles it’s about discovering them... for yourself!

We have a saying at Vertex. You’ve probably heard it before. It’s not new:

You can’t draw what you don’t know.

Ever drew or sculpted something that you were convinced was perfect… and then woke up the next morning and seen how wrong you were?

We don’t know… what we don’t know… Until the morning after. That’s when you know everything. :-)

Let’s get back to the brain-based approach. Your brain is what we call an unreliable narrator.

It is not omniscient. It does not know everything and there are things that it gets wrong.

What makes it unreliable is not that it makes mistakes... what makes it unreliable is that it doesn’t tell us if it doesn't know something... instead, it just makes shit up and fools us into thinking that we know what is right...

When the truth is we’re stuck in the Dunning-Kruger effect. Yeah, soak that one up…

The truth is that sitting down and putting in the work to make your own Ecorche is how you get things done faster.

It’s the equivalent of the Navy SEALs saying, go slow to go fast.

So, if this is something you are lacking clarity, confidence or certainty in then get registered by clicking the link below and I'll see ya soon!