Renowned Italian painter, Leonardo da Vinci, started a new artistic genre from 1510 when he began composing anatomical drawings. The whole series comprises about 200 works, broadly dealing with the internal organs, muscle system, and skeleton. For each component, Da Vinci involved his study with the fundamental as well as practical aspects. The influence of growing age and movement starred prominently in all his series. To get a better perception, he covered almost all his internal organ subjects from 6 principal views – top, front, back, left, right, and bottom.
To draw like Leonardo da Vinci, get yourself familiarized with the following perspectives:
- Model work. Getting a source image is the first relevant step in progressing with the accurate works of this caliber. These sketches are like biological diagrams that cannot be changed at will. Look for books, journals, magazines, and the internet for the purpose.
- Child in the womb. Apart from following the consequences of aging on the human body, Da Vinci pursued a baby’s evolution inside the uterus. Several drawings show a mother’s internal organs placed against each other, the bond between the baby and the mother, and the baby’s position. He accurately described the rolled-up posture of the child. However, he wrongly believed that the developing baby does not have any free body functions. He thought that her heart does not beat while inside, and the baby depends upon the mother’s breathing capacity.
- Bowel and Appendix. Da Vinci was attributed to making the first-ever sketch of the appendix in the year the late 1400s. He made a well-defined arrangement of the appendix, joined with the caecum (a pouch connected to the junction of the small and large intestines). He concluded that the appendix has an air pumping purpose that monitors the air pressure in the caecum. The actual use of the appendix is still unknown.
- Lungs. Leonardo da Vinci captured the formation of lungs in detail in the form of extremely complex sketches, broken down to the arrangement of veins. He documented the automatic process of breathing and the role of a diaphragm. However, he could not fully understand the lungs’ function, which was believed to control the temperature of the ‘heart.’ Obscure knowledge led to numerous mistakes in tissue connectivity, structural design and description.
- Genito-urinary system. The genitor urinary system in a woman’s body is one of the complete drawings in this series. It brings out the external structure of the kidneys, the reproductive organs, and their networking. Da Vinci carried an in-depth study on kidneys in animals. Consequently, in these works, the right kidney is usually placed higher than the left one, as in animals. The uterus, cotyledons, and membranes also drew much of Da Vinci’s attention in the order of several sketches.
