Chapter 2 | POWERHOUSES
In this chapter I show several famous examples of powerhouses with huge muscle bundles or a skin of steel. You might like to redraw them or invent your own powerhouses.
Someone who wants to show his muscles very tough usually does it in this way (drawings by Le Dr. Paul Richer, 1910, Anatomie artistique). Wherever there are muscle bundles, such as here the biceps of the upper arm, the body swells a little.
Exercise: very lightly copy the next model figure. Then try to make the upper arms, shoulders, thighs and calves muscular. Exaggerate if you like. Where the bone is just under the skin, such as the tibia, you do not draw any muscles. Finally give this figure something very heavy to lift.
Cartoonists in particular have drawn powerhouses of all shapes and sizes. Precisely extreme deformations make characters, such as the good-natured Obelix with his enormous belly, very characteristic. As a young boy I liked to draw Jethro (Jerom/Jerommeke) from Spike and Suzy (Willy and Wanda/Suske en Wiske). Typical of Jethro is his huge chest and of course his hair.
Perhaps the oldest and most famous example of a powerhouse is Popeye The Sailorman by the cartoonist Elzie Segar (1894-1938). Unlike Jerommeke, Popeye has a narrow torso but enormous forearms, hands and lower legs. Popeye constantly finds herself in sticky situations. In the first picture, for example, he is almost crushed by another powerhouse. Lying flat on the floor, Popeye says, “I’ll rest until he’s tired…”
Just when you think Popeye will die, he eats an entire can of spinach in one bite and suddenly has superpowers as you can see in the second picture. Also pay attention to all the extra lines that indicate the movements, effort and sounds.
Another famous example that you probably know and might like to draw is The Incredible Hulk from the Marvel comics, first appeared in 1962. The Hulk is actually a nuclear physicist / physicist in real life, but due to an experiment with radiation, something bad happened to his DNA; when he sees severe injustice and gets really angry, he turns into a raging muscle with superhuman powers. His skin turns green and his muscles, hands and feet become so swollen that he tears out of his clothes. Only his pants remain intact. His head remains small because his brain has not grown.
A cartoon character that is easier to draw is Archie the man of steel (by Ted Kearon, 1952). Other names are The Jungle Robot and Robot Archie. The clear structure of his body resembles that of the model figures from The Human figure , part 1 and 2. Because he is made of steel, he does not need human muscles. In the image you see him in a running position. Notice how the hatches (shadow lines) accentuate the curves of the steel, just like in chapter 1 and in the lesson Shadow, chapter 1, level 1.
EXTRA: make Archie do something that takes super strength.
