Drawing Basics: Mixed Bag of Anatomy Inspiration

Hey fellow artists! Drawing anatomy seems overwhelming to me sometimes, but if I focus on strategies for HOW to learn it, it starts to seem doable.

Here are a few tips I learned from a recent article written by Dan Gheno in Drawing magazine:

-Don't try to absorb everything at once. Start with learning where the muscles attach to the bones. That makes it easier to learn the relationship of a particular bone to a particular muscle. After all, it is the muscles that move bones. Specific bones move when specific muscles contract.

For me, another good tool for me is a physical therapy book The Anatomy of Movement, by Blandine Calais-Germain. It discusses both muscles and bones as they relate to movement, and is used by my physical therapist (and now me!). It's helpful to keep motion in mind when drawing the figure because you can make the drawing more dynamic if you incorporate hints of motion as opposed to something completely still.

Jason Espey went a different route when drawing figures and making a body drawing by sketching the back torso of a live model. Done in vine charcoal, he finished this in less than an hour and drew it for students during an anatomy class. He focused on the torso, with emphasis on the muscles--much like Jason did--to reinforce their shape and position.

Not that I know anatomy at this point, but I do find these sorts of tools so helpful to learning it. What about you? Do you have thoughts or examples about ways to learn anatomy that you would like to share?

--Judith

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Drawing Basics: Mixed Bag of Anatomy Inspiration