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| Anatomy: the temporalis and masseter muscles |
I'm proud of you for coming to this page and deepening your knowledge. Good work! As you can see in the illustration below, the temporalis muscle is in red; and one we really haven't talked about before - the masseter muscle - is colored in blue...err more of a purple. Check it out:
In red is the temporalis muscle; in blue is the
masseter muscle
The temporalis starts (i.e. has it's origin) along the entire side of the cranium. It inserts into the jaw bone between the outside of the teeth and on the inside of the masseter. It passes through the arch of the cheekbone (called the "zygomatic arch" ) just behind your eyes and in front of your ears.
The masseter arises on the outside of the cheekbone and attaches to the outer rearward edge of the jaw bone. It's the main muscle you see Robert Redford flexing like a fish gill when he's in one of his more perplexed moods. ('Flexing like a fish gill'...that's making me laugh. Sour grapes for not being a movie star I guess :-)
Both muscles are involved in chewing and biting down.
Clench your jaw and you can feel the two of them tightening right back there
in front of your ear and over the lower, rearward edge of your jaw. And
guess what? I'm going to let you draw this picture!
Time to draw
Here's a link for a printable empty grid. Note: the lines on these grids are lined up in part with the horizontal guidelines of the face. Here's the anatomized face from above with the grid applied. And here's a gridded illustration with the outline of the head intact just waiting for you to fill in the fine details, and yes, I'm really working you. I want you to fill in both the empty grid and the grid with the "empty head" outline - and fill them in completely. Now go on. No belly aching. You know what to do.
(Print them all out and draw the profile view into the empty grids.) Go for it! Do several of each. Practice, practice and more - guess what? - practice! will get you to your goal.:-)
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