Total Definer (eBook)

Illustrations

●Before the Renaissance, typical anatomical illustrations consisted of crude schematic drawings lacking scientific basis and were usually based on astrological factors.

●Anatomical illustrations were then characterized by their elaborate and scientific-based anatomy after the advent of the works by Da Vinci and Berengario da Carpi. This settled the basis for the anatomical illustration change from schematic and allegorical toward a more accurate and scientific.

●Andreas Vesalius developed a new technique for scientific illustration with his masterpiece “De humani ­corporis fabrica libri septem”, an astonishing work for the era.

Sculpture

●The Pietà (1498–1499) is one of the sculptures that established Michelangelo as the best-documented artists of the 16th century. In fact, he sculpted both the Pietà and David before the age of 30.

●The Pietà is the representation of a mother, Virgin Mary, holding the body of her son, Jesus Christ. The observer may perceive a sense of peace and serenity, since Christ’s face does not project suffering, and Mary is a young woman in grief.

●Michelangelo built the body size of Virgin Mary almost twice that of Christ, which allows the observer to see the son like a small child although he is in fact a grown adult.

●The son’s body lays on his mother’s arms and lap, his head is drooping, and his abdomen is curved. The son’s sculpture has a faithful abdominal definition; we can clearly appreciate the oblique muscles and the rectus abdominis, in addition, due to the convex position of the abdomen. There is a remarkable change in the lights and shadows when compared to other sculptures.

●David is one of the most iconic sculptures of the Renaissance and in the history of art. Michelangelo built this majestic 17-feet (5.7 m) tall marble sculpture between 1501 and 1504, in which he depicts a tense and assertive David just moments before the battle with Goliath.

●This masterpiece shows an athletic, strong, and youthful male human body, with a stupefying muscular definition which includes the deltoids, pectoralis major, serratus, biceps, rectus abdominis, and obliques. His pose is in contrapposto with a tense neck and a well-defined shoulder girdle. His left hand holds a sling that is draped over his shoulder and runs down through the back to his right hand, which holds the handle of the sling. His nudity reflects the story of David as stated in the Bible, contrary to prior sculptors who represented him as a warrior in armor.

●The perspective once again plays an important role in identifying both a large head and big hands, which, in addition to the small genitals, leads the observer (situated below) to focus in the former areas and kind of avoid the latter.

Planes

●Artistically, plane refers to the image surface that our eye perceives when looking at a two-dimensional picture. Paintings have a real surface, which we can touch with our hands, but they also have a conceptual surface called picture plane, which refers to the flat surface where the image is created upon (e.g., canvas, board, paper).

●Different picture planes allow us to create illusions through painting, such as the sensation of viewing through a window, the impression of seeing a real object instead of a drawing, or even giving a smooth appearance to paper drawings.

●To generate an effect of depth, the drawing is developed in layers and each layer presents a deeper and deeper part of the picture and when all the elements are put in order, a very harmonious pattern is generated with a clear effect of depth as if we were contemplating the painting through a window.

●Likewise, during high definition (HD) liposculpture, we have surgical planes such as the superficial and deep layers and just as a painter uses the picture plane to generate a depth or smooth effect, a plastic surgeon must use the surgical planes to replicate this effect but over the human body during body sculpting surgery (Fig. 1.1).

●The abdomen has a special significance in dynamic definition (HD2), since the most appealing characteristics of muscularization can be carved in this body segment. Different planes in the abdominal bellies and the chest can be seen through the skin in a lateral view. The chest forms two planes: a convexity in the upper pole that creates a different plane compared to the lower pole (Fig. 1.2a).

●In the abdominal area four planes can be observed from superior to inferior, each one divided by muscular and/or skeletal structure as follows (Fig. 1.2b):

–Superior plane: From the insertion of the abs into the rib cage until the free border of the costal margin (T10).

–Upper central plane: From T10 to the waistline (point W), usually at the level of the last floating ribs.

–Lower central plane: From point W to the anterosuperior iliac spine (ASIS).

–Inferior plane: From the iliac spine, following the oblique line, toward the pubis.

●Planes are extremely important when restoring the normal abdominal anatomy after excisional body sculpting procedures as well as in HD2 liposculpture alone.

Shapes and Polygons

●Sculptors build their creations through a series of forms, which will in the end constitute a structure with distinctive three-dimensional conformation of a particular object.

●Just as roses have a stem, leaves, thorns, and petals, the human structure has a series of segments that comprise the body.

●A structure can be constituted by three basic shapes: spheres, boxes, and tubes. Although these shapes may ­substitute and simplify the complex anatomy of the human body, they need to be complemented with specific features of each body segment to result in a marvelous characterization (Fig. 1.3).

●HD liposculpture can impart accurate features of different body segments and turn a tubular arm into a toned, muscular, athletic, and youthful one (Fig. 1.4).

Lights and Shadows

●Contrast is the interplay of lights and shadows over an object. Traditionally, they are commonly polarized, although they actually need to be complementary.

●Artistically, light could be used to create movement, to tell a story, or to generate a perspective in a wide diversity of ways, while shadows allow perception of the shape, illumination, time, and volume.

●Tonal progression is defined as the succession of shades that smoothens the transition from light to dark and vice versa (Fig. 1.5).

●In nature, the light–shadow interaction is dynamic, and artists are challenged to create one. That said, the marble is for the sculptor what the human body is for the plastic surgeon.

●There are no flat surfaces in the human body, but actually a harmony between convexity and concavity, as well as between sharp and smooth borders.

●HD2 liposculpture uses this concept optimally by using dark to emphasize concavities and light to accentuate convexities (Fig. 1.6). For example, fat removal over both the midline and the pectoralis major lower crease emphasizes the muscle convexity through a shadowing effect. Then fat grafting will further highlight the convexity by improving the volume perception (Fig. 1.7).

Sfumato versus Chiaroscuro:...