Anatomy Studies – Thigh Muscles Front View

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Table of Contents
1. Muscle Names
2. Notable Muscles
– The gracilis
– The femoral triangle
– The rectus femoris

To avoid confusion, we consider left and right from the perspective of the subject/anatomical model.

Muscle Names

For studies, copy from a reference. Putting the muscles into place will aid your understanding. Here are some things you can do:

Try and feel out the muscles on your own thighs. Spread your legs, raise them, and flex or extend them.
Look for additional reference that shows how each muscle layers on top of the other.
Familiarize yourself with the source and endpoints of muscles. Kenhub is a great resource for this.

Notable Muscles

When drawing spread leg poses, you can see several muscles affect our shading of the legs.

Try this exercise: Sitting on a chair, spread your legs and then raise your right leg. You can feel your gracilis muscle (the long encircled muscle in the photo above) as it connects to your pelvis. Notice also how the femoral triangle appears. It is an inward gap, showing the lack of muscle in that area.

First, the gracilis is probably the most noticeable thigh muscle in NSFW art.

The gracilis pushes outward, resulting in an inward space below. Art by Ooshima Aki

Also known as the ‘anti-rape’ muscle, the gracilis pulls your legs inward. Try pulling your leg in, and you’ll feel it flex.

Note the inward curve that appears because of how the gracilis pushes out. Also notice how the gracilis tends to point towards the clitoris/above it.

Of course, there’s nothing better than reference. My recent illustration is off in depicting the gracilis. I should have made the muscle curve inwards, and strengthened the shading of the curve below it.

Second is the femoral triangle. This triangular area shows the lack of muscle, where skin curves inward.

This one is also very noticeable, but less apparent in NSFW art. Raising your leg again, the femoral triangle is right above the gracilis muscle. If you look at the illustration above, notice the gracilis is right next to the adductor longus.

Looking down at your thighs, the femoral triangle is quite obvious. However, most spread leg NSFW artworks are front facing, so the gracilis muscle hogs the view.

The femoral triangle is more visible from above, or with a kneeling pose.

Reference photos with @violettalien as model

To better understand the muscles that make up the triangle, you can refer to the 3d video tour of the femoral triangle.

Finally, the Rectus femoris. This mass can be generalized into the overall cylindrical curve of the thigh, but you might want to show some shading for it. It’s most notable when lifting the leg, because 1) it is lifted up by bone while 2) thigh fat pulls downwards.