This Manga: I knowe this frumm my lernings

Anatomical Terms of Location

The everyday language we use to describe the location of things is usually enough for us to find what we need to find:

• Where are the keys? They’re on the table next to the front door.
• Where’s the soda? It’s in the fridge, behind the leftovers from last night.

When it comes to bodies however, human or otherwise, using words like inside, inner, middle, bottom, lower can get really messy.

For example: when someone says, “the inner part of the arm”, would you think of the flesh and bone of the arm that’s covered by skin or would you think of the surface that would touch the torso in the resting position? If you’re thinking of the latter, what sort of rotation would the arm have to take? What exactly is “resting position”? Since the arm moves with the hand, are the palms supposed to be facing behind us or facing the torso?

It gets even messier when you’re talking about different animals, where the “top” could refer to a dog’s back, a human’s head or a flounder’s right or left side.

Over the centuries, the scientific community has been able to use more specific terms to minimize confusion when talking about locations on a body. While helpful for them, the terms unfortunately haven’t permeated too much into common language, which prevents most people who come across these words from understanding them.

If you want to learn about it in detail, there’s a much more detailed article on this subject in Wikipedia.

On the other hand, I will cut to the chase and introduce to you the most essential terms used in human anatomy because, in all likelihood, you’ll be running into academic anatomical references which make use of these terms. Hopefully, understanding them will ultimately make it easier for you to learn about figure drawing from more sources.

Human Anatomical Position

To help avoid ambiguity, anatomists have agreed on a standard pose for the human body. They call it “the anatomical position” and here’s what it looks like:

• Standing upright.
• Head facing forward.
• Arms close to the torso.
• Palms forward. Thumbs pointing to the sides.
• Feet facing forward.

Doing a Google image search, you’ll consistently find the same standard.

Relative to the Six Directions

Now that the standard position is established, we can begin to talk about the anatomical terms of location.

With the standard position established, some of the terms we normally use don’t really need to be replaced anymore. In most cases, they’re also annoyingly longer than the normal words we use so we might actually be better off just using the words we already know.

However, since humans share a good number of analogous body parts with many animals, the specific terms used by zoologists to avoid confusion in their field have also become the standard for describing many human structures.

Here are some of those words:

• Superior - top/higher/above/up
• Inferior - bottom/lower/below/down
• Anterior - front
• Posterior – back
• Left and right stay the same (of course, refers to the subject’s point of view, not yours)

According to this vocabulary, you can therefore call the nose superior to the mouth, not to say that the nose has more admirable qualities compared to the mouth but merely that it is located higher when the person is in the anatomical position.

Weird, huh?

At this point, you may have noticed that these establish locations of structures relative to other structures along the three axes of three-dimensional space: relative positions along the X, Y and Z-axes. But there is another set of terms that take advantage of the fact that the left part of our bodies are the same as the right part (that we’re bilaterally symmetrical).

Relative to center

Another set of words describe structures in terms of their relative distance or position from an established center.

Along the body’s horizontal axis from left to right:

• Medial – refers to something closer to the center of the body.
• Lateral – refers to something farther away from the center of the body regardless of whether it’s to the left or to the right. (This doesn’t apply to things that are far in front or far behind.)

This means that you can consider the little toe, the most lateral toe. And you can consider the big toe, the most medial toe.

You’ll encounter this mediolateral axis in the names that are given to muscles or parts of bones. For example: if you’re familiar with some prominent muscles, you might know about the vastus lateralis and the vastus medialis/medius. Pay attention to where they’re located and how they’re named.

Backs and Bellies

A general pattern in vertebrates is that they have structures “in front” of the backbone and structures “behind” the backbone.

• Dorsal – refers to the structures behind the backbone. (for fish, dolphins and sharks, you may recognize the term “dorsal fin” which can be found on top)
• Ventral – refers to structures in front of the backbone or closer to the belly. (this includes pectorals and the abdomen.)

This is where the relatively famous latissimus dorsi partly gets its name.

When talking about heads though, the top of the head is normally considered the dorsal part (to coincide with the fish-arrangement). Likewise, the chin-side is considered the ventral part.

For parts of the body that aren’t anywhere near the backbone, these terms normally don’t apply. Some anatomists do use the term “dorsal” in some weird ways when it comes to hands and feet though.

Et cetera…

There are many other terms to describe anatomical locations but I figured these eight would be the most important to an artist who might be looking at anatomy diagrams and things. Again, if you want to know more terms or want to read about them in greater detail, you might want to check this very detailed Wikipedia article on Anatomical Terms of Location.

[still in the process of writing and revising]