Anatomy is a difficult but useful and necessary subject of study for an artist. I would advise new artists to avoid drawing teachers who do not teach any anatomy and claim that you don't need it for realistic figurative painting. These teachers are misguided. You can copy the meaningless bumps you see on someone's back like a good little painting robot that doesn't understand what it's seeing there, but it's so much more rewarding to know what goes on underneath the skin, and to be able to draw the muscles of the body and the skeleton accurately as you approach your piece with an artistic confidence that can only be derived from a solid foundation of anatomical knowledge. Without anatomy, I can guarantee you'll be in a situation where the mysterious bumps, the weird patterns, the random shadows on your model won't make any sense to you at all and cause you to panic and ruin your painting. Don't resist learning anatomy. Ultimately, putting more effort into learning the anatomy will make drawing and painting the figure easier.
Life Drawing Groups
I should also add that you must seek out life drawing groups in your area and attend them regularly. Most big cities will have at least one free, pay what you can, or low cost nude drawing group at a community centre that you can attend, or you could draw yourself in the mirror or your romantic partner. Oh, don't snicker at the mention of nude figure drawing. You'll see when you do it, it's not anything to laugh at, it poses a thousand challenges to you, a thousand insults to the drawing skills you thought you had, but have somehow vanished with a difficult angle or a strange pose, and an infinite number of surprises and discoveries. True learning never stops when you're an anatomist. That said, if you can't be bothered to draw yourself or others from life, you'd better get used to being a weaker artist. Don't be jealous when your friends who draw from life are all much better at art than you, when all you had to work with were flat two dimensional photos.
When to start learning anatomy
I had a teacher who said this jokingly, but I think he's right: if you can't draw the chair the model's sitting on, you have no business drawing the model. Practice simple cubes, spheres, and cylinders first. Draw chairs and basic objects in perspective until you get the 3d form of things on an intuitive level. Sketchfab's 3d viewer helps a lot: https://sketchfab.com/ Then dive into anatomy.
A note about difficult latin names:
A certain sign that an anatomy teacher is not very good is if she/he can't name any of the muscles and bones, or he's omitting these names on purpose to make it "easier". It actually makes it much more complicated to keep saying "this muscle in the arm", "this other muscle in the arm", "that muscle over there, but not this one.." Imagine if a geography teacher brought you a map, but instead of naming the countries, everything was called "Land"!
How confusing! You'd go insane studying for a pop quiz where all the answers, a,b,c,d are Land.
I do have some good news for anatomy learners: you don't need to learn all of the muscles like a doctor, only the ones that appear on the surface of the body are important for artists. And it's not too bad a problem if you forget some of the muscle names, as long as you remember the general location, its function, and relationship to the skeleton. But don't skip studying the names.
How to learn the names in a painless and fun way: through games!
Whack a bone is a fun study game to learn the human skeleton. Play it here:
https://anatomyarcade.com/games/WAB/WAB.html
Now learn the major surface muscles:
https://anatomyarcade.com/games/PAM/PAM.html
A note on how much time to spend on learning each body part
Each person is different how fast they learn and how much information they can absorb, but I would recommend no less than 3 weeks on each body part. And don't forget to practice daily!
Great playlist with anatomy tutorials
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtG4P3lq8RHFBeVaruf2JjyQmZJH4__Zv
If you speak Russian, check out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-jstG6C5vU&list=PLcxiCEpRkKE2pa_brVYhOv8zfwj8bcNlp
The most comprehensible book I have ever found is Valerie Winslow's Classic Human Anatomy. It has wonderful diagrams and it's written very clearly. You should also get the Bridgman books, and if you can find it, the Complete Guide to Human Anatomy by German anatomist Gottfried Bammes.
Last edited by imageryhand on Mon Nov 18, 2024 9:05 am; edited 2 times in total
Life Drawing Groups
I should also add that you must seek out life drawing groups in your area and attend them regularly. Most big cities will have at least one free, pay what you can, or low cost nude drawing group at a community centre that you can attend, or you could draw yourself in the mirror or your romantic partner. Oh, don't snicker at the mention of nude figure drawing. You'll see when you do it, it's not anything to laugh at, it poses a thousand challenges to you, a thousand insults to the drawing skills you thought you had, but have somehow vanished with a difficult angle or a strange pose, and an infinite number of surprises and discoveries. True learning never stops when you're an anatomist. That said, if you can't be bothered to draw yourself or others from life, you'd better get used to being a weaker artist. Don't be jealous when your friends who draw from life are all much better at art than you, when all you had to work with were flat two dimensional photos.
When to start learning anatomy
I had a teacher who said this jokingly, but I think he's right: if you can't draw the chair the model's sitting on, you have no business drawing the model. Practice simple cubes, spheres, and cylinders first. Draw chairs and basic objects in perspective until you get the 3d form of things on an intuitive level. Sketchfab's 3d viewer helps a lot: https://sketchfab.com/ Then dive into anatomy.
A note about difficult latin names:
A certain sign that an anatomy teacher is not very good is if she/he can't name any of the muscles and bones, or he's omitting these names on purpose to make it "easier". It actually makes it much more complicated to keep saying "this muscle in the arm", "this other muscle in the arm", "that muscle over there, but not this one.." Imagine if a geography teacher brought you a map, but instead of naming the countries, everything was called "Land"!
"This land is bordering on that land, and this land is mostly an arid desert, unlike that land which has a lush tropical environment, or this land famous for its lakes, and that land you see by the land is at war with the other land across the sea. Land land land land."
How confusing! You'd go insane studying for a pop quiz where all the answers, a,b,c,d are Land.
I do have some good news for anatomy learners: you don't need to learn all of the muscles like a doctor, only the ones that appear on the surface of the body are important for artists. And it's not too bad a problem if you forget some of the muscle names, as long as you remember the general location, its function, and relationship to the skeleton. But don't skip studying the names.
How to learn the names in a painless and fun way: through games!
Whack a bone is a fun study game to learn the human skeleton. Play it here:
https://anatomyarcade.com/games/WAB/WAB.html
Now learn the major surface muscles:
https://anatomyarcade.com/games/PAM/PAM.html
A note on how much time to spend on learning each body part
Each person is different how fast they learn and how much information they can absorb, but I would recommend no less than 3 weeks on each body part. And don't forget to practice daily!
Great playlist with anatomy tutorials
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtG4P3lq8RHFBeVaruf2JjyQmZJH4__Zv
If you speak Russian, check out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-jstG6C5vU&list=PLcxiCEpRkKE2pa_brVYhOv8zfwj8bcNlp
The most comprehensible book I have ever found is Valerie Winslow's Classic Human Anatomy. It has wonderful diagrams and it's written very clearly. You should also get the Bridgman books, and if you can find it, the Complete Guide to Human Anatomy by German anatomist Gottfried Bammes.
Last edited by imageryhand on Mon Nov 18, 2024 9:05 am; edited 2 times in total