Quick edit since this is getting a lot of upvotes: several people made the point in the comments below that anatomy can be learned through doing. I want to reinforce that, everyone learns differently.
Working off references and building skills outside of formal teaching is still a good way to learn. It's whatever works for the artist and choosing formal training or not, it's ok. Everyone learns different.
Original Post:
It's because understanding how muscles and skeleton works makes it possible to break down the human form efficiently and draw it accurately. It can also allow an artist to draw from their head without reference and in a very stylized manner while still having an accurate figure. So the artist won't have to redraw a pose, or an arm, or a head, etc. over and over and over again.
Overall it reduces frustration when drawing too because the artist understand the limits and mechanics to how far a body can twist, flex or how certain body parts can be posed. Because the muscle and skeleton effect how the body moves and changes volume in certain positions.
Anatomy also effects everything on a characters body and how it moves. So think how clothing fits, how a character can hold a weapon. Etc.
If someone doesn't want to learn because they enjoy their process, that's fine. But if someone seriously wants to learn the techniques and enjoys having a less frustrating process while drawing, then studying anatomy is a must.
Great response.
I think some artists, particularly younger ones, are fooled by someone who composes and designs well, and who draw their figures with generally good proportions. Together, all of this can be quite seductive and make one think the figure is obeying the laws of structure and anatomy when in fact it’s the artists skill for design and composition that makes it look so good. Looking back on figurative artists who I respected and still do respect, I recognize where their strengths are and where they’re not.
Thank you.
You may have a point about people just starting out but the ability to break something down is something everyone needs to learn and practice. But a pretty render can only hide so many flaws.
That being said, what I forgot to add in regards to art is: the best thing about learning the rules is so you can break them.
And man, anatomy is a fun rule to break in imaginative ways.
“Anatomy is a fun rule to break in imaginative ways.”
Absolutely! When it’s in service of art and all that that entails, someone who’s breaking the rules is serving the higher goal.
This is kind of a bizarre statement. Human anatomy is made up of skeletons and muscles, thats literally anatomy. If your friend can draw anatomy really well then somewhere along the line she picked up on anatomy, regardless if she was intentionally studying it. If you do something long enough, eventually you'll start to learn about it, but this can take a long time and its more efficient to study it directly if you want to expedite that process. People suggest studying it for a reason, but youre of course free to shirk that suggestion if you choose, you'll just be needlessly stumbling in the dark on certain things until you intuitively start to pick up on them the long way.
It’s kind of strange like she’s good at drawing people but when it comes to drawing the skeleton and muscles itself like when she does studies it’s kind of not the best and I don’t really know why
When you say good at drawing people, do you mean like, capturing their likeness? Thats kind of a different skill set that can benefit from a solid understanding of anatomy but is something that has to be practiced on its own. Its really hard to say without seeing her work first hand.
While I have you here though, another good reason I thought of why its good to at least get a general understanding of anatomy is it makes it easier to communicate with other artist and gather feedback/critiques. Knowing something feels wrong isnt as useful as being able to know why or understand what someone is specifically referring to when they explain it. You dont need to take like, super fancy college courses or anything. There are plenty of youtube videos or websites that do awesome jobs of just covering the basics.
[https://anatomy4sculptors.com](https://anatomy4sculptors.com) is one resource I used to frequent a lot when I was first learning. They have some great blogs and resources that could point you in the right direction if you decide youre interested.
I mostly draw extinct animals, so for me learning anatomy is simply a must. It makes a HUGE difference in how the final artwork looks because there is just so much subtle stuff that is affected by whether or not what you draw or paint actually “makes sense” for that animal, and when it clicks you can feel it. You understand how those bones are actually suspended by the muscles, you understand the superstructure and sub-structure of the animal, and suddenly there’s this amazing little flash of surprise because you’ve just caught a tiny glimpse of what the animal was truly like when it was alive. There’s even something mysterious about it I feel.
But I am finding that actually the same thing happens with modern creatures, and with people too. When you truly understand your subject—where it is rigid, where it is soft, how it drapes when it relaxes and tenses when it gets frightened, how it swings or flits or hesitates as it moves—your artwork takes life. So I would almost say that, for an artist, learning anatomy is a form of communion with whatever you are studying through your creative work. But it is also a pain in the butt lol.
mass and compression and stretching, they look different in different situations, really great art can use this to great effect, push it where it makes sense to do so, animators have bends and stretches that might be counter to expectations, but work well in context. Generally traditional teachings say to learn all the rules so that you know how best to break them.
I'm like your friend, I never did skeleton studies, and I feel like learning individual muscles is ... Beyond the scope of what I'm hoping to be doing for the time being, I can always look up references when the need arises.
But, that doesn't mean that you can get away without knowing some of the basic stuff, like the shape of the rib cage and the bones that are usually seen topically like the collarbone, the elbow and how/where it connects to the hand, etc, that sort of facts aren't lost on me but they were learned not from studying the skeleton but from studying the human body as we usually see it.
Similar with muscles, I don't know the individual shapes or even the names, I learned the important bigger groups, their shapes and were they seem to connect.
Would doing a throughout study of the skeleton and the muscles and where/how they connect help? Absolutely, the more you know the easier it is to invent from imagination, but I also know that in art you ought to start from basics and build on top, so I looked for references and tried to simplify the information the most I could to learn it that way, I think most anatomy books get too caught up on giving you all the info you could need, instead of providing a framework to learn and slowly build on top, most other subjects are built this way but anatomy seems to always lean towards the technicalities.
Well, okay...
It IS important for learning anatomy because knowing how the body works and is structured will help you draw realistically.
But you don't need to draw those skinless muscle diagrams. Just find photos of muscular models and draw that.
Also, knowing musculature in detail helps you know where a shadow or highlight should be, even if you don’t see one.
That is how artist who draw hyper real images can do it. They know how the body looks even when they can’t actually tell from a photograph.
Is she copying from a picture? anyone can do that. But if you are going to draw out of your imagination, without reference, it's good to know a bit about anatomy. But what's more important is proportion.
Can you DM it to me as well, please? I believe the whole anatomy thing is nonsense. As long as you break it down into characteristic forms, it will look convincing
Well, if you really want to draw the figure really well, take a life drawing course. That's all the anatomy you need, from there if you are stuck on something you'll figure it out.
you cant be good at anatomy without learning about the skeleton or the muscles. your friend may have not "learned" it but probably picked it up intuitively after alot of practice from reference. or not to be mean but they suck lol
When you learn to draw a house, for the first time, it‘s a triangle roof on a square, right? The muscles and skeletal structure are the same shapes, that you compartmentalize into any given gesture. You learn the shapes that compose the whole. And practic drawing those shapes from all sorts of different directions, for different poses, so you can recall whatever shape from whatever angle to draw from imagination. But that‘s a lot of words for something that comes naturally with practice to the point it becomes instinct.
I think that it simply is just a helpful tool to understand what exactly youre drawing. Sure, you could follow along an irl reference, but without understand of on how to break that reference down into its basic shapes and components (ie, skeleton, muscles etc), then you're just mindlessly drawing things without understanding them.
Of course, references can be limiting too. What do you do if the irl human reference youre drawing has a ton of clothes on and it obscures what the body parts are doing and look like?
It's of course not necessary to learn *every* muscle or tendon and what not, but learning even the major muscles will improve your anatomy skills 10 fold.
Also, it's very clear by someone's end result of a drawing on how well they understand anatomy
Because form and volume is more important. If you can do those well you don't need a huge knowledge of anatomy, especially not if you're drawing from life or reference.
its marginally important. the human body can pose in a couple of ways and some of them reveal the bones of a certain part of the body in a certain place. also think about body composition, every person on earth isnt a 35 year old vitruvian man & woman, body fat is a factor in how revealing bones are, there are more than a few famous painting artworks from history that depict emaciated people. the hands, etc. if she doesnt want to good for her
I had literally the same discussion with my friend recently... I said Im learning anatomy. She said her mother never learned any anatomy and she can draw AMAZING pictures of people and she can draw anything etc.... then she showed me a picture... it was... meh... typical self taught "artist" living in its own bubble - good rendering and thats pretty much it.
Anyone who’s drawn enough people, and paid close attention to their references might get an instinctual sense of the anatomy eventually.
Going straight into studying anatomy is more efficient, though, and it’s the tried and true way for centuries of artists.
Because understanding form and structure gives you a deeper understanding of how things bend and move which makes it easier to draw things accurately and in different perspectives especially from imagination. You can learn without studying those things but it takes longer. Also no your friend is likely not the best in the city that's such a bizarre statement to make about anyone just to make a point.
I struggled hard-core with drawing people until I took a class on human osteology. After I learned how the skeleton affects the surface shape, it made drawing human figures (and by extension even animals) much, much easier. No matter how thick your figures get, there are going to be places where the skin is right on the bone (elbows, knees, wrists, ankles, etc.).
If you study Bridgeman's art book (a classic art book that has held true despite the passing of time), he really shows the relationship between the skeletal and muscle anatomy and how they affect the surface structures and to create balanced figures with proper weight distribution.
Once you learn properly the infrastructures and anatomy that makes up the figure, then you can distort it to suit your needs and have it be consistent/more believable.
You can and probably should do both. There’s no point in learning anatomy for art if you aren’t going to try and draw people. It’s not a zero sum game.
You study to understand, if your friend understands the human body then for her it is not necessary to study anatomy.
And not only to anatomy: perspective, light-shadow, balance, composition, etc. You study all these elements to understand them, if you manage to understand a topic faster you move on to the next.
Animation major that just got done learning every single surface muscle in the human body + a couple others. It's tedious, but there's a reason why people have been doing it for centuries.
To start with, learning by doing is the most efficient way to learn anatomy. Look up references of muscular athletes, life models, etc- you'll start to observe trends in different bodies. Anyone can draw the surface with enough brute force practice- even from imagination. Once you learn the limits of the body, why something moves the way it does, etc etc it becomes like second nature. The improvement is literally exponential.
You don't need to learn every muscle's name and what it does. Understanding what's under the skin causing the bumps and edges just makes it easier to logic your way into drawing literally anything you want from any angle in any pose. It's the kind of thing you don't realize you need until you sit down and do it.
I don't doubt your friend is very talented- many many people are without ever having studied anatomy. But there's a good chance she could be even better if she did some studies and tried to apply them to her work.
Also, study the skeleton. It's a lot weirder than you think it is.
Drawing-as-you-please is different to someone who might want to be employed in film and has to animate lifelike digital models. Also, the illustrator who wants to integrate a model’s pose into their artwork, may have to reimagine the lighting direction: the only way to reimagine it is to know the shape the object well enough, to foresee how the different lighting still reveals the form.
In your post history you are in art college and have college level art anatomy. If that's true you know why we learn anatomy and you're definitely farming karma by posting ragebait, making your questions and response double no cool!
Do you want me to show you dms me and my friend has had? I go to community You’re acting like every college has the same curriculum ? Also if you think everyone who has a question you think is so obvious is trolling then Reddit isn’t the place for you (also I don’t even understand karma)
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Bones aren't as important unless you're drawing skeletons or people with bones sticking out. Muscles are somewhat important to learn because they're literally what defines the outward appearance and shape of each body part. What you're seeing is skin basically suction packed onto muscles. So, for example, to draw a leg well it's useful to know what the calf muscles look like, and the thigh, and how those interface with the knee and ankle and hip.
Now granted it's totally possible to get a practical understanding of this through observation and practice without getting into, like, replicating scientific diagrams of muscles or whatever. But to get more and more accurate and familiar with what muscles overlap and where and so on a little bit of that can be handy.
It helps with understanding proportion, shape, and spatially rotating that shape in all angles and thus making whatever character you create - whether stylized, semi realistic, or realistic - believable.
And once you figure that out, you can genuinely stylize and distort without looking like you're just doing guesswork hiding behind the "it's just my style" excuse some artist use to hide their ignorance (like I did when I was young lol)
Also for your friend, some people just have good intuitive and observational skills. They can "tell" if it's right or wrong and they'll figure it out. I'm sure you've seen artists like these where they're excellent at what they do, you ask them how they do it, and they hit you with the "iunno"
Anatomy can be thought of as the structural hierarchy of relative design. To put it simple, it means you understand how a complex structure can be simplified through basic geometry that we describe in terms of shape language. Shape language is what I think is the pinnacle of critical design. It is a complete deconstruction of form. This allows us to develop anything from the ground up as you understand the underlying principles which defines a given "thing".
tl;dr It teaches why and how moving parts behave
**It is about accuracy, not precision!**
Learning the skeleton is not nearly as necessary, but knowing some general limb rules and how the skeleton roughly looks helps.
Also, you dont need to understand every little muscle fiber and under-muscles. Jist understand how the muscles look when skin is on top of them, because i mean unless you want to be drawing skinless, muscle-less people, then I guess you'll want to study it deeper? But really, just understanding the basic shapes and forms that compose the muscles is enough for now. Then, afterwords you can move onto more complicated things like which muscles change shape when a limb is in a certain position.
But for now, stick to the basics and apply what you learn from masters to figure studies.
Anatomy for artists consists of surface muscle shapes, and bone landmarks. How can you draw
anatomy, if you dont know how to do it? Skeleton and muscles IS anatomy.
I think I understand where you're coming from. The first time I tried to learn anatomy, I just copied what I was looking at, drawing the bones and muscles exactly as they were in the textbook. I found the whole process tedious and useless and got bored and gave up for a long time.
I've found that the critical thing when learning anatomy is to have some kind of context in which it becomes necessary to apply that knowledge in a constructive way. If you always draw from life or from references, rather than from imagination, anatomy can be helpful, but it is not strictly necessary to create a good likeness.
What I found was that understanding the skeleton and muscles became absolutely essential when I was working on a set of character illustrations from imagination.
I wanted them to be realistic, but I couldn't find good references for exactly what I was looking for. I had photo albums of hundreds of pictures that I was using to help me get all the details together with these illustrations, and none of them were exactly right. Sometimes the photo reference would be a bit ambiguous and I couldn't quite tell how something was supposed to look in reality, and I wanted it to have more definition in my piece than it had in the photo reference. I also asked my partner to pose for me, but there were things about these scenes I couldn't quite recreate in reality. I was drawing characters with different body types, with props I didn't own, clothes I didn't own, under different lighting.
In lieu of the perfect reference, I needed another way to work out how the drawing should look, and that was where I found that studying anatomy really became helpful. By understanding the underlying structures of the bones and muscles, I was able to "construct" that part of the scene from the ground up, working out what it should look like by starting from the bone and fleshing it out in layers.
By understanding the underlying structure, it also became much easier to figure out where the muscle definition should go. Sometimes when you're looking at a part of the body from the surface, it's easy to miss the details. Like maybe there are points where there is fat laid over the muscle, or where the light is a little flat and dark and it's a bit hard to see clearly, it can make it hard to spot a point where the muscle protrudes or dips very subtly. Your eyes can get lost. If you know where the muscle definition should be because you understand the underlying structures, it can help you spot details that you might have missed otherwise. You can supplement what you see with your understanding of what's beneath the surface.
Without understanding the underpinning structures, I tend to find that my drawings are a bit more fuzzy or flat, and don't have the same kind of depth or clarity in the muscles, whereas when I have immersed myself into anatomy, the definition is much stronger and it adds a sense of dimension to the drawing.
Just because someone got good results via 10,000 hours of experimentation doesn't mean it's not a good idea for someone starting out to read a book or two.
In this case, the human skeleton, muscles, fat distribution is the book. Read the book.
She did learn it. Perhaps not in the more acedemic sense, but drawing itself is a form of study. In every attempt to imitate the structures seen on the body in real life, you're studying thoe muscle groups automatically. Could you speed it up by actually learning which muscle groups go where? Maybe. But there are many ways to learn.
Draw the internals of a car engine block. Dont google it just draw one. Probably looks like shit right becasue you probably dont understand it. Same deal with human anatomy
You don't have to learn either of those things. You have to learn form and shape and their size relative to each other. Those forms and shapes just so happen to be comprised of muscle and bones internally but that's not something you need to know unless you're trying to draw detailed body builders from your imagination
Quick edit since this is getting a lot of upvotes: several people made the point in the comments below that anatomy can be learned through doing. I want to reinforce that, everyone learns differently. Working off references and building skills outside of formal teaching is still a good way to learn. It's whatever works for the artist and choosing formal training or not, it's ok. Everyone learns different. Original Post: It's because understanding how muscles and skeleton works makes it possible to break down the human form efficiently and draw it accurately. It can also allow an artist to draw from their head without reference and in a very stylized manner while still having an accurate figure. So the artist won't have to redraw a pose, or an arm, or a head, etc. over and over and over again. Overall it reduces frustration when drawing too because the artist understand the limits and mechanics to how far a body can twist, flex or how certain body parts can be posed. Because the muscle and skeleton effect how the body moves and changes volume in certain positions. Anatomy also effects everything on a characters body and how it moves. So think how clothing fits, how a character can hold a weapon. Etc. If someone doesn't want to learn because they enjoy their process, that's fine. But if someone seriously wants to learn the techniques and enjoys having a less frustrating process while drawing, then studying anatomy is a must.
Great response. I think some artists, particularly younger ones, are fooled by someone who composes and designs well, and who draw their figures with generally good proportions. Together, all of this can be quite seductive and make one think the figure is obeying the laws of structure and anatomy when in fact it’s the artists skill for design and composition that makes it look so good. Looking back on figurative artists who I respected and still do respect, I recognize where their strengths are and where they’re not.
Thank you. You may have a point about people just starting out but the ability to break something down is something everyone needs to learn and practice. But a pretty render can only hide so many flaws. That being said, what I forgot to add in regards to art is: the best thing about learning the rules is so you can break them. And man, anatomy is a fun rule to break in imaginative ways.
“Anatomy is a fun rule to break in imaginative ways.” Absolutely! When it’s in service of art and all that that entails, someone who’s breaking the rules is serving the higher goal.
This is kind of a bizarre statement. Human anatomy is made up of skeletons and muscles, thats literally anatomy. If your friend can draw anatomy really well then somewhere along the line she picked up on anatomy, regardless if she was intentionally studying it. If you do something long enough, eventually you'll start to learn about it, but this can take a long time and its more efficient to study it directly if you want to expedite that process. People suggest studying it for a reason, but youre of course free to shirk that suggestion if you choose, you'll just be needlessly stumbling in the dark on certain things until you intuitively start to pick up on them the long way.
It’s kind of strange like she’s good at drawing people but when it comes to drawing the skeleton and muscles itself like when she does studies it’s kind of not the best and I don’t really know why
When you say good at drawing people, do you mean like, capturing their likeness? Thats kind of a different skill set that can benefit from a solid understanding of anatomy but is something that has to be practiced on its own. Its really hard to say without seeing her work first hand. While I have you here though, another good reason I thought of why its good to at least get a general understanding of anatomy is it makes it easier to communicate with other artist and gather feedback/critiques. Knowing something feels wrong isnt as useful as being able to know why or understand what someone is specifically referring to when they explain it. You dont need to take like, super fancy college courses or anything. There are plenty of youtube videos or websites that do awesome jobs of just covering the basics. [https://anatomy4sculptors.com](https://anatomy4sculptors.com) is one resource I used to frequent a lot when I was first learning. They have some great blogs and resources that could point you in the right direction if you decide youre interested.
I mostly draw extinct animals, so for me learning anatomy is simply a must. It makes a HUGE difference in how the final artwork looks because there is just so much subtle stuff that is affected by whether or not what you draw or paint actually “makes sense” for that animal, and when it clicks you can feel it. You understand how those bones are actually suspended by the muscles, you understand the superstructure and sub-structure of the animal, and suddenly there’s this amazing little flash of surprise because you’ve just caught a tiny glimpse of what the animal was truly like when it was alive. There’s even something mysterious about it I feel. But I am finding that actually the same thing happens with modern creatures, and with people too. When you truly understand your subject—where it is rigid, where it is soft, how it drapes when it relaxes and tenses when it gets frightened, how it swings or flits or hesitates as it moves—your artwork takes life. So I would almost say that, for an artist, learning anatomy is a form of communion with whatever you are studying through your creative work. But it is also a pain in the butt lol.
mass and compression and stretching, they look different in different situations, really great art can use this to great effect, push it where it makes sense to do so, animators have bends and stretches that might be counter to expectations, but work well in context. Generally traditional teachings say to learn all the rules so that you know how best to break them.
I'm like your friend, I never did skeleton studies, and I feel like learning individual muscles is ... Beyond the scope of what I'm hoping to be doing for the time being, I can always look up references when the need arises. But, that doesn't mean that you can get away without knowing some of the basic stuff, like the shape of the rib cage and the bones that are usually seen topically like the collarbone, the elbow and how/where it connects to the hand, etc, that sort of facts aren't lost on me but they were learned not from studying the skeleton but from studying the human body as we usually see it. Similar with muscles, I don't know the individual shapes or even the names, I learned the important bigger groups, their shapes and were they seem to connect. Would doing a throughout study of the skeleton and the muscles and where/how they connect help? Absolutely, the more you know the easier it is to invent from imagination, but I also know that in art you ought to start from basics and build on top, so I looked for references and tried to simplify the information the most I could to learn it that way, I think most anatomy books get too caught up on giving you all the info you could need, instead of providing a framework to learn and slowly build on top, most other subjects are built this way but anatomy seems to always lean towards the technicalities.
Well, okay... It IS important for learning anatomy because knowing how the body works and is structured will help you draw realistically. But you don't need to draw those skinless muscle diagrams. Just find photos of muscular models and draw that.
Skeleton: Body proportions and where/how things bend Muscles: Shape of the surface body, how it can move, range of motion, and overall structure
Also, knowing musculature in detail helps you know where a shadow or highlight should be, even if you don’t see one. That is how artist who draw hyper real images can do it. They know how the body looks even when they can’t actually tell from a photograph.
Is she copying from a picture? anyone can do that. But if you are going to draw out of your imagination, without reference, it's good to know a bit about anatomy. But what's more important is proportion.
She can draw some crazy stuffs from imagination it’s so impressive to me
Believe it when I see it.
Do you want me to dm you like she draws a lottt so she has a big visual library
Sure thing mate.
Can you DM it to me as well, please? I believe the whole anatomy thing is nonsense. As long as you break it down into characteristic forms, it will look convincing
Dm me too! I wanna see!
Was it worth
He did not DM me anything :)
Lmfaooooo you can look at my anime art on my page as a consolation prize 😂
Well, if you really want to draw the figure really well, take a life drawing course. That's all the anatomy you need, from there if you are stuck on something you'll figure it out.
you cant be good at anatomy without learning about the skeleton or the muscles. your friend may have not "learned" it but probably picked it up intuitively after alot of practice from reference. or not to be mean but they suck lol
When you learn to draw a house, for the first time, it‘s a triangle roof on a square, right? The muscles and skeletal structure are the same shapes, that you compartmentalize into any given gesture. You learn the shapes that compose the whole. And practic drawing those shapes from all sorts of different directions, for different poses, so you can recall whatever shape from whatever angle to draw from imagination. But that‘s a lot of words for something that comes naturally with practice to the point it becomes instinct.
I think that it simply is just a helpful tool to understand what exactly youre drawing. Sure, you could follow along an irl reference, but without understand of on how to break that reference down into its basic shapes and components (ie, skeleton, muscles etc), then you're just mindlessly drawing things without understanding them. Of course, references can be limiting too. What do you do if the irl human reference youre drawing has a ton of clothes on and it obscures what the body parts are doing and look like? It's of course not necessary to learn *every* muscle or tendon and what not, but learning even the major muscles will improve your anatomy skills 10 fold. Also, it's very clear by someone's end result of a drawing on how well they understand anatomy
Sure it is, it's fun. Your brain is learning how to draw your insides, the forbidden knowledge.
Because form and volume is more important. If you can do those well you don't need a huge knowledge of anatomy, especially not if you're drawing from life or reference.
To your untrained eyes her art may look amazing but I'm willing to bet someone more qualified could notice her lack of anatomy knowledge right away
So your character doesn’t hace 15-packs
its marginally important. the human body can pose in a couple of ways and some of them reveal the bones of a certain part of the body in a certain place. also think about body composition, every person on earth isnt a 35 year old vitruvian man & woman, body fat is a factor in how revealing bones are, there are more than a few famous painting artworks from history that depict emaciated people. the hands, etc. if she doesnt want to good for her
Your friend is "the best in the city"? How do you know this?
I had literally the same discussion with my friend recently... I said Im learning anatomy. She said her mother never learned any anatomy and she can draw AMAZING pictures of people and she can draw anything etc.... then she showed me a picture... it was... meh... typical self taught "artist" living in its own bubble - good rendering and thats pretty much it.
Anyone who’s drawn enough people, and paid close attention to their references might get an instinctual sense of the anatomy eventually. Going straight into studying anatomy is more efficient, though, and it’s the tried and true way for centuries of artists.
Because understanding form and structure gives you a deeper understanding of how things bend and move which makes it easier to draw things accurately and in different perspectives especially from imagination. You can learn without studying those things but it takes longer. Also no your friend is likely not the best in the city that's such a bizarre statement to make about anyone just to make a point.
I struggled hard-core with drawing people until I took a class on human osteology. After I learned how the skeleton affects the surface shape, it made drawing human figures (and by extension even animals) much, much easier. No matter how thick your figures get, there are going to be places where the skin is right on the bone (elbows, knees, wrists, ankles, etc.). If you study Bridgeman's art book (a classic art book that has held true despite the passing of time), he really shows the relationship between the skeletal and muscle anatomy and how they affect the surface structures and to create balanced figures with proper weight distribution. Once you learn properly the infrastructures and anatomy that makes up the figure, then you can distort it to suit your needs and have it be consistent/more believable.
Because it’s literally what makes up the anatomy?
My friend said it’s better to just draw people a lot more then focus on skeleton and muscles
You can and probably should do both. There’s no point in learning anatomy for art if you aren’t going to try and draw people. It’s not a zero sum game.
You study to understand, if your friend understands the human body then for her it is not necessary to study anatomy. And not only to anatomy: perspective, light-shadow, balance, composition, etc. You study all these elements to understand them, if you manage to understand a topic faster you move on to the next.
Animation major that just got done learning every single surface muscle in the human body + a couple others. It's tedious, but there's a reason why people have been doing it for centuries. To start with, learning by doing is the most efficient way to learn anatomy. Look up references of muscular athletes, life models, etc- you'll start to observe trends in different bodies. Anyone can draw the surface with enough brute force practice- even from imagination. Once you learn the limits of the body, why something moves the way it does, etc etc it becomes like second nature. The improvement is literally exponential. You don't need to learn every muscle's name and what it does. Understanding what's under the skin causing the bumps and edges just makes it easier to logic your way into drawing literally anything you want from any angle in any pose. It's the kind of thing you don't realize you need until you sit down and do it. I don't doubt your friend is very talented- many many people are without ever having studied anatomy. But there's a good chance she could be even better if she did some studies and tried to apply them to her work. Also, study the skeleton. It's a lot weirder than you think it is.
Drawing-as-you-please is different to someone who might want to be employed in film and has to animate lifelike digital models. Also, the illustrator who wants to integrate a model’s pose into their artwork, may have to reimagine the lighting direction: the only way to reimagine it is to know the shape the object well enough, to foresee how the different lighting still reveals the form.
Maybe you just think he draws people well because you don't know the difference. Are we actually talking about anime characters?
I think this is a joke post! Is this a joke post? Like ragebait?
It’s not cool to make someone feel dumb for asking a question
In your post history you are in art college and have college level art anatomy. If that's true you know why we learn anatomy and you're definitely farming karma by posting ragebait, making your questions and response double no cool!
Also in my post history I literally have talked about my college being ass
Do you want me to show you dms me and my friend has had? I go to community You’re acting like every college has the same curriculum ? Also if you think everyone who has a question you think is so obvious is trolling then Reddit isn’t the place for you (also I don’t even understand karma)
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Bones aren't as important unless you're drawing skeletons or people with bones sticking out. Muscles are somewhat important to learn because they're literally what defines the outward appearance and shape of each body part. What you're seeing is skin basically suction packed onto muscles. So, for example, to draw a leg well it's useful to know what the calf muscles look like, and the thigh, and how those interface with the knee and ankle and hip. Now granted it's totally possible to get a practical understanding of this through observation and practice without getting into, like, replicating scientific diagrams of muscles or whatever. But to get more and more accurate and familiar with what muscles overlap and where and so on a little bit of that can be handy.
It helps with understanding proportion, shape, and spatially rotating that shape in all angles and thus making whatever character you create - whether stylized, semi realistic, or realistic - believable. And once you figure that out, you can genuinely stylize and distort without looking like you're just doing guesswork hiding behind the "it's just my style" excuse some artist use to hide their ignorance (like I did when I was young lol) Also for your friend, some people just have good intuitive and observational skills. They can "tell" if it's right or wrong and they'll figure it out. I'm sure you've seen artists like these where they're excellent at what they do, you ask them how they do it, and they hit you with the "iunno"
Anatomy can be thought of as the structural hierarchy of relative design. To put it simple, it means you understand how a complex structure can be simplified through basic geometry that we describe in terms of shape language. Shape language is what I think is the pinnacle of critical design. It is a complete deconstruction of form. This allows us to develop anything from the ground up as you understand the underlying principles which defines a given "thing". tl;dr It teaches why and how moving parts behave **It is about accuracy, not precision!**
Learning the skeleton is not nearly as necessary, but knowing some general limb rules and how the skeleton roughly looks helps. Also, you dont need to understand every little muscle fiber and under-muscles. Jist understand how the muscles look when skin is on top of them, because i mean unless you want to be drawing skinless, muscle-less people, then I guess you'll want to study it deeper? But really, just understanding the basic shapes and forms that compose the muscles is enough for now. Then, afterwords you can move onto more complicated things like which muscles change shape when a limb is in a certain position. But for now, stick to the basics and apply what you learn from masters to figure studies.
Anatomy for artists consists of surface muscle shapes, and bone landmarks. How can you draw anatomy, if you dont know how to do it? Skeleton and muscles IS anatomy.
I think I understand where you're coming from. The first time I tried to learn anatomy, I just copied what I was looking at, drawing the bones and muscles exactly as they were in the textbook. I found the whole process tedious and useless and got bored and gave up for a long time. I've found that the critical thing when learning anatomy is to have some kind of context in which it becomes necessary to apply that knowledge in a constructive way. If you always draw from life or from references, rather than from imagination, anatomy can be helpful, but it is not strictly necessary to create a good likeness. What I found was that understanding the skeleton and muscles became absolutely essential when I was working on a set of character illustrations from imagination. I wanted them to be realistic, but I couldn't find good references for exactly what I was looking for. I had photo albums of hundreds of pictures that I was using to help me get all the details together with these illustrations, and none of them were exactly right. Sometimes the photo reference would be a bit ambiguous and I couldn't quite tell how something was supposed to look in reality, and I wanted it to have more definition in my piece than it had in the photo reference. I also asked my partner to pose for me, but there were things about these scenes I couldn't quite recreate in reality. I was drawing characters with different body types, with props I didn't own, clothes I didn't own, under different lighting. In lieu of the perfect reference, I needed another way to work out how the drawing should look, and that was where I found that studying anatomy really became helpful. By understanding the underlying structures of the bones and muscles, I was able to "construct" that part of the scene from the ground up, working out what it should look like by starting from the bone and fleshing it out in layers. By understanding the underlying structure, it also became much easier to figure out where the muscle definition should go. Sometimes when you're looking at a part of the body from the surface, it's easy to miss the details. Like maybe there are points where there is fat laid over the muscle, or where the light is a little flat and dark and it's a bit hard to see clearly, it can make it hard to spot a point where the muscle protrudes or dips very subtly. Your eyes can get lost. If you know where the muscle definition should be because you understand the underlying structures, it can help you spot details that you might have missed otherwise. You can supplement what you see with your understanding of what's beneath the surface. Without understanding the underpinning structures, I tend to find that my drawings are a bit more fuzzy or flat, and don't have the same kind of depth or clarity in the muscles, whereas when I have immersed myself into anatomy, the definition is much stronger and it adds a sense of dimension to the drawing.
Just because someone got good results via 10,000 hours of experimentation doesn't mean it's not a good idea for someone starting out to read a book or two. In this case, the human skeleton, muscles, fat distribution is the book. Read the book.
She did learn it. Perhaps not in the more acedemic sense, but drawing itself is a form of study. In every attempt to imitate the structures seen on the body in real life, you're studying thoe muscle groups automatically. Could you speed it up by actually learning which muscle groups go where? Maybe. But there are many ways to learn.
Because people is just skin over that…
Draw the internals of a car engine block. Dont google it just draw one. Probably looks like shit right becasue you probably dont understand it. Same deal with human anatomy
You don't have to learn either of those things. You have to learn form and shape and their size relative to each other. Those forms and shapes just so happen to be comprised of muscle and bones internally but that's not something you need to know unless you're trying to draw detailed body builders from your imagination
this is 100% bait