Hello! It’s about time I start working on my anatomy drawing skills (which I severely lack) so I was wondering if there’s anybody here who might have some advice, links to videos / articles, etc, for a beginner like me, on how to practice and how to get started? ^^
I practice anatomy in three different ways.
1. Gesture drawing. Getting the essence of a pose down on paper in about a minute. This helps you strip down a pose to it's bare minimum and quickly translate it to paper.
Good places for this are of course actual life drawing sessions, but online Croquis Cafe is a very good one. Posespace has a lot of good stuff as well, but here you'll have to just set a timer for yourself.
2. Indepth anatomy studies.
Basically; understanding how the human body works. Even someone who's very overweight will have a few 'landmarks' on their body where certain parts of the skeleton can be seen. Think of the elbows for example. So understanding the skeleton, even if it's just rudimentary, can be very helpful. Same with muscle groups and understanding how and where fat tends to pile up in our bodies.
Proko has very good videos on this.
The books by Andrew Loomis also helped me a lot and can be found here.
3. Surface renders. Studies where I really focus on what the skin looks like, what shows through, how light and color interact with it, etc.
That's what works quite well for me, however, so you might obviously find that you prefer different methods, and that's fine of course. There's not really one be all end all solution for something like this, but these might be a few useful methods.
1. Gesture drawing. Getting the essence of a pose down on paper in about a minute. This helps you strip down a pose to it's bare minimum and quickly translate it to paper.
Good places for this are of course actual life drawing sessions, but online Croquis Cafe is a very good one. Posespace has a lot of good stuff as well, but here you'll have to just set a timer for yourself.
2. Indepth anatomy studies.
Basically; understanding how the human body works. Even someone who's very overweight will have a few 'landmarks' on their body where certain parts of the skeleton can be seen. Think of the elbows for example. So understanding the skeleton, even if it's just rudimentary, can be very helpful. Same with muscle groups and understanding how and where fat tends to pile up in our bodies.
Proko has very good videos on this.
The books by Andrew Loomis also helped me a lot and can be found here.
3. Surface renders. Studies where I really focus on what the skin looks like, what shows through, how light and color interact with it, etc.
That's what works quite well for me, however, so you might obviously find that you prefer different methods, and that's fine of course. There's not really one be all end all solution for something like this, but these might be a few useful methods.
Sprokkelhout wrote:
I practice anatomy in three different ways.
1. Gesture drawing. Getting the essence of a pose down on paper in about a minute. This helps you strip down a pose to it's bare minimum and quickly translate it to paper.
Good places for this are of course actual life drawing sessions, but online Croquis Cafe is a very good one. Posespace has a lot of good stuff as well, but here you'll have to just set a timer for yourself.
2. Indepth anatomy studies.
Basically; understanding how the human body works. Even someone who's very overweight will have a few 'landmarks' on their body where certain parts of the skeleton can be seen. Think of the elbows for example. So understanding the skeleton, even if it's just rudimentary, can be very helpful. Same with muscle groups and understanding how and where fat tends to pile up in our bodies.
Proko has very good videos on this.
The books by Andrew Loomis also helped me a lot and can be found here.
3. Surface renders. Studies where I really focus on what the skin looks like, what shows through, how light and color interact with it, etc.
That's what works quite well for me, however, so you might obviously find that you prefer different methods, and that's fine of course. There's not really one be all end all solution for something like this, but these might be a few useful methods.
1. Gesture drawing. Getting the essence of a pose down on paper in about a minute. This helps you strip down a pose to it's bare minimum and quickly translate it to paper.
Good places for this are of course actual life drawing sessions, but online Croquis Cafe is a very good one. Posespace has a lot of good stuff as well, but here you'll have to just set a timer for yourself.
2. Indepth anatomy studies.
Basically; understanding how the human body works. Even someone who's very overweight will have a few 'landmarks' on their body where certain parts of the skeleton can be seen. Think of the elbows for example. So understanding the skeleton, even if it's just rudimentary, can be very helpful. Same with muscle groups and understanding how and where fat tends to pile up in our bodies.
Proko has very good videos on this.
The books by Andrew Loomis also helped me a lot and can be found here.
3. Surface renders. Studies where I really focus on what the skin looks like, what shows through, how light and color interact with it, etc.
That's what works quite well for me, however, so you might obviously find that you prefer different methods, and that's fine of course. There's not really one be all end all solution for something like this, but these might be a few useful methods.
Thank you so much for replying and taking the time to type this out!! I look forward to go into depth with the links and learning C:
There might be something under Practice Tools or References in this thread you may find useful. 
Anatomy can look overwhelmingly complicated at first. Whenever you run into a bump, just divide your goal into smaller chunks - so if you're feeling frustrated with the hands in your drawing, take a break, then draw a page full of hands and try again. Repetition is key to building up the memory banks in your brain. Have a look at 'iterative drawing' on youtube.
You're guaranteed to notice progress if you keep at it!
Anatomy can look overwhelmingly complicated at first. Whenever you run into a bump, just divide your goal into smaller chunks - so if you're feeling frustrated with the hands in your drawing, take a break, then draw a page full of hands and try again. Repetition is key to building up the memory banks in your brain. Have a look at 'iterative drawing' on youtube.
You're guaranteed to notice progress if you keep at it!
rat wrote:
There might be something under Practice Tools or References in this thread you may find useful.
Anatomy can look overwhelmingly complicated at first. Whenever you run into a bump, just divide your goal into smaller chunks - so if you're feeling frustrated with the hands in your drawing, take a break, then draw a page full of hands and try again. Repetition is key to building up the memory banks in your brain. Have a look at 'iterative drawing' on youtube.
You're guaranteed to notice progress if you keep at it!
Anatomy can look overwhelmingly complicated at first. Whenever you run into a bump, just divide your goal into smaller chunks - so if you're feeling frustrated with the hands in your drawing, take a break, then draw a page full of hands and try again. Repetition is key to building up the memory banks in your brain. Have a look at 'iterative drawing' on youtube.
You're guaranteed to notice progress if you keep at it!
rat wrote:
There might be something under Practice Tools or References in this thread you may find useful.
Anatomy can look overwhelmingly complicated at first. Whenever you run into a bump, just divide your goal into smaller chunks - so if you're feeling frustrated with the hands in your drawing, take a break, then draw a page full of hands and try again. Repetition is key to building up the memory banks in your brain. Have a look at 'iterative drawing' on youtube.
You're guaranteed to notice progress if you keep at it!
Anatomy can look overwhelmingly complicated at first. Whenever you run into a bump, just divide your goal into smaller chunks - so if you're feeling frustrated with the hands in your drawing, take a break, then draw a page full of hands and try again. Repetition is key to building up the memory banks in your brain. Have a look at 'iterative drawing' on youtube.
You're guaranteed to notice progress if you keep at it!
Thanks for the advice!! I’ll definitely look more into the thread later, it seems very interesting
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