Learning to Draw the Pelvis with Michael Mentler a.k.a. "The Bone Doctor"

As I explained in this previous post, doing the Proko "Bucket" method to find the bony landmarks of the pelvis wasn't working for me. I was struggling to get the correct shape of the top ellipse and without that shape correct, the rest of the drawing falls apart.

So instead of using The Bucket, I thought I'd just draw the pelvis based on observing my skeleton:

I liked the how the drawings were coming out but…I still felt like I was guessing about proportions and the locations of the parts. I felt like I wasn't fully understanding the pelvis.

Out of frustration, I searched for other measuring methods for drawing the pelvis and surprisingly found only one: Michael Mentler's pelvis grids.

Mentler created a front/neutral position and a profile position grid, based on the head measurement, to draw the pelvis proportionally correct:

Hooray, another method! Just what I was looking for!

I deciphered Mentler's handwriting and did drawings based on his measurements:

His grids got me close to a correct drawing but they were off in some ways.

Then I decided to test the grid over a picture of a real pelvis instead of a drawing or my skeleton:

These drawings showed where the Mentler grid was off and how it could be improved.

In my next post, I'll show you the pelvis grids I developed based on the Mentler measurements.