Broken ribs are one of the most painful injuries. Such pain can be compared to a broken heart - from the outside, everything looks as normal, but every breath is excruciating pain. Nevertheless, ribs heal much better than unfulfilled love.

What's more - broken ribs do not signify the weakness of our body at all - but its perfection.

During massive pressure on the chest (for example, during a car accident) - the ribs often break - and yet they perform their function - if they were not there - our heart, lungs and liver would turn into smooth pate.

Every average adult has twelve pairs of ribs, and we divide them into ribs 'true'(Latin - costa vera - from I to VII ) , ribs 'false'(lat. costa spuria from VIII to X ) and 'floating' ribs(lat. costa fluitante). I find this fact hilarious. Of course, many parts of the body have bizarre names, such as uvula (the hanging, fleshy tissue in the back of your throat) or coccyx (commonly known as the tailbone). However, dividing the ribs into true or false seems rather cheeky to me. In my native - Polish language, 'false' ribs are called even more amusingly - 'alleged'. I find it super - funny, not gonna lie:)

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So the 'alleged' ribs are the ones that are connected to the breastbone (sternum) by a common cartilage join with rib VII to form together the so-called rib arch. So the 'true' ribs are those which are, we can say - independent, and on 'their own terms' connected directly to the breastbone.

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False ribs are a beautiful, almost ornamental finishing touch to such a beautifully formed cage for our organs. 'Floating' ribs are essentially an evolutionary remains and have no real function, just like the coccyx (which does not prevent it from being painful during falls:)

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I like ribs. Not only as an anatomical curiosity. A rib cage, with the help of the breastbone and cartilage, is flexible enough to allow us to inhale deeply during emotional time or... running - and hard and stable enough to help us survive a car accident. We can touch and count at least some of the ribs through the skin. They give our torso its shape, its character.

Ribs are worth noting for another important reason - they give us signals that something is wrong with our body:

-pain under the left rib - on the left side under the ribs the organs of the digestive system most often hurt: stomach, spleen, pancreas or colon

-pain under the breastbone - or upper abdomen pain, this usually means stomach problems, for instance: peptic ulcer disease, gastroenteritis or gastroesophageal reflux disease

-pain under the right rib - a feeling of pain on the right side may suggest problems with the liver, gallbladder or poor bowel function.

But I have to admit that this is not the reason why I chose the rib cage as the subject of my drawing.

I see them as aesthetically interesting because they have an extraordinary metaphorical potential. The rib cage is almost in the form of a bell, where the heart is the clapper :) In Polish, for the 'clapper' of the bell we simply say 'heart' of the bell. The musical connotations in my mind do not end here. The ribs remind me a bit of a musical instrument - the xylophone. I'm guessing that this association in turn came from old Disney cartoons.

The very notion of a 'rib cage' is, for me, a strong one. A cage for the heart, a cage for the lungs. A prison that protects us. Isn't that a perfect plot twist? I like it when life mocks us:)

About the drawing

I very, very much regret that this time I didn't use grids to scale the drawing (as I did with the skull). I thought it would be a simple drawing...and it took me much longer than I had planned. My sight was getting lost in my ribs:)

Now I think it would have been best to just number them at the very beginning, to make sure that each rib is drawn as it needs to be - because each rib has a unique shape! Nevertheless - in pain - I managed to finish the picture without taking extreme measures :D

I know now that no part of the anatomy should be underestimated, not only in drawing ;)

I wish you all lovely week!
Yours,
Strega Azure

Drawing & pictures are my authorship if not stated otherwise.
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