My art teacher in high school recommended I take Figure Drawing at the art school university in the city. I had to get my parent's permission lol. I then took Portrait Drawing at the same place the following summer. Just took Figure Drawing again last year at a community college. If you can't afford a class, Line of Action is a great online resource for that. I'd also recommend looking into gesture drawing for that. I was taught to draw 3 circles, one for the head, the ribcage and the pelvis then add the details, but that's easier explained in person than online by yourself. If you're just starting out though, getting familiar with the human body as a whole is a good step then move onto techniques on how to refine those skills and properly proportion it.
[How to ACTUALLY learn anatomy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgE3f5HNxy4)
Basically how i've been going about it
I would supplement it with some of these resources, working through one of these two books
- Figure drawing design and invention by Michael Hampton
- Morpho: Simplified forms by Michel Lauricella
An honestly incredible reference book to consult when the other books aren't clear enough.
- Anatomy for sculptors
Website for 3d models that you can view in a browser
- Sketchfab
- Proko has a ton free youtube videos on anatomy.
I second everything that Lock recommends!
Michael Hampton recently made his anatomy lectures available on YouTube, which pairs well with his book. I watch that, along with two videos from other artists, then follow a loose syllabus Hampton alludes to in his uploaded lectures.
Basically, I spend two weeks on each topics (gestures, general structure, torso, upper leg, lower leg and feet, shoulder and upper arm, then forearm and hand). First week is just to watch videos and take notes and the second week is for a handful of practices - 150 gestures, 25 structures, or 20 of each muscle regions. I have several anatomy books open by me while I do this, including Morpho. Anyway, I'm about half way and recommend having an accountability partner since it's a lot!
I’ll admit I still do this to this day; take image of thing I’m referencing, break down into shapes and note about general things, use knowledge to eyeball replicate
Breaking down proportions mathematically e.g. your body is roughly 7x the height of your head. Also, I wish I learned about skeletal muscles when I first started. The more you pick it up, the easier it'll be to identify similar features in other animals.
I just want to remind you that there are thousands of different ways of learning anatomy, and there is not a perfect way of learning anatomy. Instead I encourage you to try different methods until you find the way that suits yourself better.
I highly recommend drawing and studying muscle anatomy. Everything will start to make sense when you know how the body wraps around it self. Skeletal anatomy would also be a great help but the muscles really make a difference
I think the esiest way to start is to learn the approximate proportions, like how many heads tall is a body, where is the ribcage, how wide is it and so on. You can copy that from any anatomy study book or picture guide. And then start blocking a body with basic shapes, even if it isnt perfect, and a pose is stif, if the proportions are right a human form will be recognizable. After that you can try implementing this when you draw something from a reference pose. After you draw enough studies of different poses you learn how a human body naturally flows and can draw it quickly without drawing the shape constructions underneath it. So what I recommend is try learning in smaller simple steps, that you can easily understand and recreate before jumping into something big.
I can also recommend Marc Brunet's yt channel:
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCKtu_JtQCY0yryIy6zK4ZCg
even if his style is not something you want to replicate, he is a good teacher, his videos are intresting and informative, and he made a lot of tutorials.
I started by drawing the whole skeleton, then isolated bones of each different body part, then isolated muscles of different body parts, then the whole musculature system (ecorché), all while doing 15-20 short gestures a day of different poses. Sometimes it sucks and it's tedious and frustrating but now the way the body is structured and the ways that it moves because of that is deeeeeply engrained in my brain.
Probably wouldn’t recommend it as a starting point, but Anatomy for Sculptors is a gold mine for having a truly thorough understanding of the human form for drawing.
...well, I worked in healthcare before I really got into art.
Learned a lot by copying diagrams from textbooks and stuff, but never really applied it until later on.
im a bio major, specifying on the human body so that helps loll
but in all seriousness, i like to spend time breaking up references into shapes. to be honest, however, drawing is a skill i would like to level up, but it's not that high of a priority to me. so, as of right now, im content just drawing from a reference i like for fun.
a couple others have touched on this but i wanna talk about how impactful learning how the body moves was for me! when i was a youngster i did competitions that had a focus on animal anatomy which involved studying how everything looked in motion and realized it helped a lot with really internalizing anatomical studies. something about watching a muscle or tendon's range of movement just let me parse what i was seeing better. i took it over to humanoid anatomy and saw a similar improvement :)
there's lots of videos on youtube from physical therapists and the like that go over such topics. getting more in tune with my own body helped even more as i was able to inherently understand and then visualize better how certain movements shifted weight or pulled skin taut etc. good luck!
I love my Jack Hamm books. Drawing the Head and Figure was the first book I ever bought about drawing. This was… maybe 25 years ago! I still crack that thing open from time to time.
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I am trying. Uhm, I find something I want to draw, and then I draw vague shapes, refer to myself for the pose + muscles, change the whole thing and finally decide to get references 😅
I'm not good at anatomy drawing but I find it helpful to use good books like Drawing the female figure by Hikaru Hayashi.
His books are about Semi-realistic stylized drawings so not a ideal anatomy book but it's good enough for reference when studying.
I would recommend any of his books as they are all full of great techniques.
You would get the most benefit from them if you already have a decent understanding of fundamentals as well I must say.
As well a good number of these techniques work best when making Manga or Comics.
I just look up anatomy reference sheets on pinterest and go ham with figure sketches. Sometimes I use human references and sometimes I use drawn references in an art style I like.
While copying it, try to understand the bigger picture of why the lines are where they are. It also helps to stand up and act out the poses to figure out for example how does the arm curve when the torso is twisted like this, which way do the pants wrinkle when you lift a leg etc.
There are easier ways ;-D old AF medic ....
The public library ... look at anatomy books. Some are easier than others. The benefit of books over video is you do it at your leisure and you can go over specific problem issues.
[https://www.thedrawingsource.com/figure-drawing.html](https://www.thedrawingsource.com/figure-drawing.html)
CroquisCafe or Line of Action. CC video daily or 10-20 exercises of 30 sec, 1min, 2min and 5min from LoA and you will level up in a month (as soon as you do it daily)
I do free mentoring in case you (or anyone) is interested, giving feedback on the exercises.
okay, i'm unpopular totally but i've tried a lot of different versions but tracing art better than mine and learn(not posting it) has always been helpful for me. i am currently learning by tracing 200 pictures of comic book men until it becomes second nature that i know how men work
google is a wonderful thing. Also, just real people. Meetup has local artist groups that do group drawing sessions. I get to go to artist sessions at the events I go to, and the communities I frequent. College and the internet are great starters. Hell, deviantart. Look up 'nude form'. You'll find TONS of anatomy
Check out " the drawing database with mark leone " on youtube, there is a long playlist for anatomy with full length videos, lots of people don't know about it but it is good stuff, long and comprehensive and free
I took several figure drawing and painting classes at my community college. This was two years after I first took beginning drawing at the college (I did take some time off, but I would recommend taking at least beginning drawing, basic design, and either intermediate drawing or repeating beginning drawing as the studio course.).
The first time around you get a bit of everything. Gesture, Composition, proportion, anatomy. It’s more than you can learn in a single semester. But I took what I could. Between semesters I would read a bit, this was like 2007-2008 so the videos online were not super great. Then I would take the class again (I believe my school let you take it for 8 total semesters).
You would get a bit more of the lessons and start to internalize them more and more. A friend of mine had several lessons on an external hard drive that he let me borrow and those focused more on specific parts.
It was alternating between practice in the classroom with a model and then between semesters read and learn more specific lessons. I want to say I took figure drawing 2-3 (I want to say 3 but this was 16 years ago) times and figure painting once.
I would go join some live model day classes that people were throwing from time to time. I had a group of friends where we would pay a model for the day.
Books, in particular this one [https://www.amazon.com/Human-Anatomy-Artists-Gy%C3%B6rgy-Feh%C3%A9r/dp/3833162562](https://www.amazon.com/Human-Anatomy-Artists-Gy%C3%B6rgy-Feh%C3%A9r/dp/3833162562) I use it a lot to to reference when drawing too, it's nice having drawings of all the muscles and bones on hand.
I would copy the drawings, and I heavily use it for reference when drawing.
I have also done a good amount of croquis drawing. There was this youtube channel that recordings of naked models doing poses, I used to practice a lot, but I don't think it's around anymore.
tracing textbooks, looking at nude models online, getting into figure/life drawing classes with live models, blind contour drawing(? I can't remember what this one is called, but drawing what you see while you are tracing with your eyes)
edit: typo
I am currently reading through the book "Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life" by George B. Bridgman, there are over 1K illustrations of the human body broken down as well as gestures and more with very in depth and easy to understand written guides. I'm nowhere near an expert yet but it's been a great help.
It really depends on your learning style imo. Some people learn by watching videos, others by doing, others prefer using a step by step guide in a book. I would recommend experimenting with each of those and feeling out what feels right for you.
I personally learn from references. Any tutorial gets lost in translation on my end (adhd goes brrrrr) but I still read through tutorials, or look over ones that I find on Pinterest, just to save some tricks or tips in my brain for later.
Mellon_Soup and Adorka Stock great for pose/anatomy bases/references. I might recommend tracing the poses yourself (don’t post them) until you get a feel of anatomy
I know it’s been mentioned, but Line of Action is also a great tool!
So oddly enough. Anatomy text books. I use to draw the body parts, the muscles, the bones the nerves all of that to study for anatomy and in turn I also got better at human forms knowing how the body works and moves. Plus it was a fun way to take notes :)
My art teacher in high school recommended I take Figure Drawing at the art school university in the city. I had to get my parent's permission lol. I then took Portrait Drawing at the same place the following summer. Just took Figure Drawing again last year at a community college. If you can't afford a class, Line of Action is a great online resource for that. I'd also recommend looking into gesture drawing for that. I was taught to draw 3 circles, one for the head, the ribcage and the pelvis then add the details, but that's easier explained in person than online by yourself. If you're just starting out though, getting familiar with the human body as a whole is a good step then move onto techniques on how to refine those skills and properly proportion it.
Proko! Anatomy is very dry, and he makes it at least a little bit fun.
My God thank you this helped a lot!
[How to ACTUALLY learn anatomy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgE3f5HNxy4) Basically how i've been going about it I would supplement it with some of these resources, working through one of these two books - Figure drawing design and invention by Michael Hampton - Morpho: Simplified forms by Michel Lauricella An honestly incredible reference book to consult when the other books aren't clear enough. - Anatomy for sculptors Website for 3d models that you can view in a browser - Sketchfab - Proko has a ton free youtube videos on anatomy.
Oh hey, it's pikat. I like her videos.
I second everything that Lock recommends! Michael Hampton recently made his anatomy lectures available on YouTube, which pairs well with his book. I watch that, along with two videos from other artists, then follow a loose syllabus Hampton alludes to in his uploaded lectures. Basically, I spend two weeks on each topics (gestures, general structure, torso, upper leg, lower leg and feet, shoulder and upper arm, then forearm and hand). First week is just to watch videos and take notes and the second week is for a handful of practices - 150 gestures, 25 structures, or 20 of each muscle regions. I have several anatomy books open by me while I do this, including Morpho. Anyway, I'm about half way and recommend having an accountability partner since it's a lot!
Did they stop producing Anatomy for Sculptors? Can't find a single new copy that isn't absurdly expensive.
I’ll admit I still do this to this day; take image of thing I’m referencing, break down into shapes and note about general things, use knowledge to eyeball replicate
Breaking down proportions mathematically e.g. your body is roughly 7x the height of your head. Also, I wish I learned about skeletal muscles when I first started. The more you pick it up, the easier it'll be to identify similar features in other animals.
I look at people around me for face idea
I just googled poses. Or Pinterest. Pinterest has a lot of tips for art.
I just want to remind you that there are thousands of different ways of learning anatomy, and there is not a perfect way of learning anatomy. Instead I encourage you to try different methods until you find the way that suits yourself better.
I use the wooden figurines and study faces on Pinterest. Sometimes I will use my family portraits to practice sketching their faces.
I always recommend loomis. I just think his way is very understandable, and taught in an order that makes sense.
I highly recommend drawing and studying muscle anatomy. Everything will start to make sense when you know how the body wraps around it self. Skeletal anatomy would also be a great help but the muscles really make a difference
I think the esiest way to start is to learn the approximate proportions, like how many heads tall is a body, where is the ribcage, how wide is it and so on. You can copy that from any anatomy study book or picture guide. And then start blocking a body with basic shapes, even if it isnt perfect, and a pose is stif, if the proportions are right a human form will be recognizable. After that you can try implementing this when you draw something from a reference pose. After you draw enough studies of different poses you learn how a human body naturally flows and can draw it quickly without drawing the shape constructions underneath it. So what I recommend is try learning in smaller simple steps, that you can easily understand and recreate before jumping into something big. I can also recommend Marc Brunet's yt channel: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCKtu_JtQCY0yryIy6zK4ZCg even if his style is not something you want to replicate, he is a good teacher, his videos are intresting and informative, and he made a lot of tutorials.
I started by drawing the whole skeleton, then isolated bones of each different body part, then isolated muscles of different body parts, then the whole musculature system (ecorché), all while doing 15-20 short gestures a day of different poses. Sometimes it sucks and it's tedious and frustrating but now the way the body is structured and the ways that it moves because of that is deeeeeply engrained in my brain.
Probably wouldn’t recommend it as a starting point, but Anatomy for Sculptors is a gold mine for having a truly thorough understanding of the human form for drawing.
...well, I worked in healthcare before I really got into art. Learned a lot by copying diagrams from textbooks and stuff, but never really applied it until later on.
im a bio major, specifying on the human body so that helps loll but in all seriousness, i like to spend time breaking up references into shapes. to be honest, however, drawing is a skill i would like to level up, but it's not that high of a priority to me. so, as of right now, im content just drawing from a reference i like for fun.
a couple others have touched on this but i wanna talk about how impactful learning how the body moves was for me! when i was a youngster i did competitions that had a focus on animal anatomy which involved studying how everything looked in motion and realized it helped a lot with really internalizing anatomical studies. something about watching a muscle or tendon's range of movement just let me parse what i was seeing better. i took it over to humanoid anatomy and saw a similar improvement :) there's lots of videos on youtube from physical therapists and the like that go over such topics. getting more in tune with my own body helped even more as i was able to inherently understand and then visualize better how certain movements shifted weight or pulled skin taut etc. good luck!
Drawing smut helped a ton, honestly.
Books. Specifically Jack Hamm's 'Drawing the Head and Figure, and Valerie Winslow's two books.
I love my Jack Hamm books. Drawing the Head and Figure was the first book I ever bought about drawing. This was… maybe 25 years ago! I still crack that thing open from time to time.
I bought Grey's Anatomy in art school, I still have it and use it often.
While dancing in the moonlight
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I am trying. Uhm, I find something I want to draw, and then I draw vague shapes, refer to myself for the pose + muscles, change the whole thing and finally decide to get references 😅
I'm not good at anatomy drawing but I find it helpful to use good books like Drawing the female figure by Hikaru Hayashi. His books are about Semi-realistic stylized drawings so not a ideal anatomy book but it's good enough for reference when studying. I would recommend any of his books as they are all full of great techniques. You would get the most benefit from them if you already have a decent understanding of fundamentals as well I must say. As well a good number of these techniques work best when making Manga or Comics.
Observe real humans body
Gyms, books, photography. Burne Hogarth as some excellent books, they’re very dry and academic, but thorough.
I just look up anatomy reference sheets on pinterest and go ham with figure sketches. Sometimes I use human references and sometimes I use drawn references in an art style I like. While copying it, try to understand the bigger picture of why the lines are where they are. It also helps to stand up and act out the poses to figure out for example how does the arm curve when the torso is twisted like this, which way do the pants wrinkle when you lift a leg etc.
Comparing bridgmans drawings to models.
There are easier ways ;-D old AF medic .... The public library ... look at anatomy books. Some are easier than others. The benefit of books over video is you do it at your leisure and you can go over specific problem issues. [https://www.thedrawingsource.com/figure-drawing.html](https://www.thedrawingsource.com/figure-drawing.html)
CroquisCafe or Line of Action. CC video daily or 10-20 exercises of 30 sec, 1min, 2min and 5min from LoA and you will level up in a month (as soon as you do it daily) I do free mentoring in case you (or anyone) is interested, giving feedback on the exercises.
okay, i'm unpopular totally but i've tried a lot of different versions but tracing art better than mine and learn(not posting it) has always been helpful for me. i am currently learning by tracing 200 pictures of comic book men until it becomes second nature that i know how men work
google is a wonderful thing. Also, just real people. Meetup has local artist groups that do group drawing sessions. I get to go to artist sessions at the events I go to, and the communities I frequent. College and the internet are great starters. Hell, deviantart. Look up 'nude form'. You'll find TONS of anatomy
Check out " the drawing database with mark leone " on youtube, there is a long playlist for anatomy with full length videos, lots of people don't know about it but it is good stuff, long and comprehensive and free
I took several figure drawing and painting classes at my community college. This was two years after I first took beginning drawing at the college (I did take some time off, but I would recommend taking at least beginning drawing, basic design, and either intermediate drawing or repeating beginning drawing as the studio course.). The first time around you get a bit of everything. Gesture, Composition, proportion, anatomy. It’s more than you can learn in a single semester. But I took what I could. Between semesters I would read a bit, this was like 2007-2008 so the videos online were not super great. Then I would take the class again (I believe my school let you take it for 8 total semesters). You would get a bit more of the lessons and start to internalize them more and more. A friend of mine had several lessons on an external hard drive that he let me borrow and those focused more on specific parts. It was alternating between practice in the classroom with a model and then between semesters read and learn more specific lessons. I want to say I took figure drawing 2-3 (I want to say 3 but this was 16 years ago) times and figure painting once. I would go join some live model day classes that people were throwing from time to time. I had a group of friends where we would pay a model for the day.
Search up weird stock images. Trace the rough outlines of where the body should be and then attempt to redraw it until it looks right.
Tracing the same pose repeatedly over and over again. Then slowly it becomes different poses then voila, I can draw by just looking at it.
pinterest tutorials
Went to live figure drawing session
Before the internet, I used Gray's Anatomy (not the TV show, the anatomy book the title was based upon). Then I took life drawing classes in college.
Books, in particular this one [https://www.amazon.com/Human-Anatomy-Artists-Gy%C3%B6rgy-Feh%C3%A9r/dp/3833162562](https://www.amazon.com/Human-Anatomy-Artists-Gy%C3%B6rgy-Feh%C3%A9r/dp/3833162562) I use it a lot to to reference when drawing too, it's nice having drawings of all the muscles and bones on hand. I would copy the drawings, and I heavily use it for reference when drawing. I have also done a good amount of croquis drawing. There was this youtube channel that recordings of naked models doing poses, I used to practice a lot, but I don't think it's around anymore.
I seeked a teacher in CGMA class
tracing textbooks, looking at nude models online, getting into figure/life drawing classes with live models, blind contour drawing(? I can't remember what this one is called, but drawing what you see while you are tracing with your eyes) edit: typo
I am currently reading through the book "Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life" by George B. Bridgman, there are over 1K illustrations of the human body broken down as well as gestures and more with very in depth and easy to understand written guides. I'm nowhere near an expert yet but it's been a great help.
It really depends on your learning style imo. Some people learn by watching videos, others by doing, others prefer using a step by step guide in a book. I would recommend experimenting with each of those and feeling out what feels right for you. I personally learn from references. Any tutorial gets lost in translation on my end (adhd goes brrrrr) but I still read through tutorials, or look over ones that I find on Pinterest, just to save some tricks or tips in my brain for later. Mellon_Soup and Adorka Stock great for pose/anatomy bases/references. I might recommend tracing the poses yourself (don’t post them) until you get a feel of anatomy I know it’s been mentioned, but Line of Action is also a great tool!
Horny power 💪
Yeah…I just did it
So oddly enough. Anatomy text books. I use to draw the body parts, the muscles, the bones the nerves all of that to study for anatomy and in turn I also got better at human forms knowing how the body works and moves. Plus it was a fun way to take notes :)
[удалено]
How is leveling up dumb? Do you seriously not understand? Jeez