Body Studies/Anatomy/Concept Art: Where to begin?

[ohGr]

I haven't been drawing at all lately because I feel extremely intimidated about where to begin figure drawing without a reference. In August last year when I first began figure drawing with models/pictures, I figured that was the gateway to learning the human figure from heart. A year later and I'm equally as clueless and impaired on drawing the figure without a model. I then asked myself 'why can't I draw it?' and the same answer comes back every time: anatomy. The closest book to anatomy is my George Bridgman's "Constructive Anatomy" which was recommended to me by a friend. I didn't find it all that useful because I might not see how to use it or what. I was in Barnes and Noble the other night and saw this giant tome named "Anatomy For The Artist" by Jeno Barcsay and paged through it. It seemed like a comprehensive guide but I'm still just confused as to how to apply the information. And I'll tell you what; I'm starting to get pissed. I've purchased five figure drawing books and I don't feel any more confident than I did before buying/reading the books. This is getting me very frustrated and discouraged.

So I guess my first question is if I should get the "Anatomy For The Artist" book. I'm not looking to spend another $20 on a book I won't use but if you think it may be necessary, I'll come up with the money. Next would be body studies and how to go about them in a knowledgeable manner. Should the skeleton/bone structure be my main emphasis rather than fussing over useless contours? When I'm doing this, how do I do this in a way that I will learn something from it? All tips would be appreciated.

I'd like to list the books that I own and how I can't seem to learn from them to avoid recommendation for books I already own:

Life Drawing in Charcoal - Douglas R. Graves; Some great concepts here but, as the title implies, can only be applied to charcoal. The whole idea that the entire figure can be 'drawn' without lines is almost genius in my opinion yet entirely impossible when attempting to draw quickly with pencil.

The Artist's Complete Guide to Figure Drawing - Anthony Ryder; I'm not entirely through the book but so far it's great for see-and-draw approaches as well as technique. Unfortunately it has yet to teach me a damn thing about anatomy and how to draw without a model. The book seems promising for vital secrets to figure drawing with a model but I'm not sure it's what I'm looking for.

Drawing the Head and Figure - Jack Hamm; This book attracted me because of its many drawings of arms and legs and other body parts quite comprehensively. It may be me but I see Jack's approach in six steps to draw the figure as cheap and absolutely useless. I'm about 30 pages in and I haven't learned anything.

Dynamic Figure Drawing - Burne Hogarth; This was my first figure drawing book and it's the most useless of them all. I swear this book is just a show off book of Hogarth's that says 'look what I can do and you can't'. The book provides no instruction but instead pretty useless studies that I can't seem to ever put to use. I also have his Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery which is a great improvement that has a lot of terrific teachings but still lacks the actual instruction which I'm not sure I prefer or not.

Constructive Anatomy - George Bridgman; As I mentioned above, this book too was useless to me. It shows bits and pieces of the figure constructed but I can't understand how the hell that is supposed to help me. I don't understand at all the limitations of the arms, legs, torso or anything nor the anatomy it fails to convey.

The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards; With a real lack of confidence, I deigned myself to pick up this book and read it to convince myself that maybe I'm not such a great drawer and that perhaps the basics would teach me a great deal. The book is interesting at most with the brain studies but half way through, I haven't learned much that I didn't already know.

I now pretty much concede defeat with figure drawing and that it is a bitter white lie that people can learn to draw the figure. I've spent hundreds of dollars on materials, books and a desk and I can't draw anything better than I did before I owned all this useless crap. If you can sense resentment, you're dead on.

I then tried to go to perspective drawing and bought a very highly acclaimed book by Ernest Norling entitled "Perspective Made Easy". I read through about half of this book and just found it boring. I did learn some from it but I'm primarily confused about one big concept and that'd be eye level. This combined with the belief that drawing with straight-edged guides makes the drawing look disagreeable and I'm back on the road to defeat.

Honestly, I hate posting these threads. This has gotten to be my fifth or sixth cry for help on these forums and I think you all are getting as sick of it as I am. I am impatient about my drawing and I have a serious problem with thinking material things will help me draw better (I.E. a new pencil/book "A bad craftsman always blames his tools" as one of my favorite sayings goes). I've been talking to my psychologist about this and it seems every area of my life aside from drawing I can take in steps such as weight loss and such. I'm very pressured to draw and to draw well because if I can convey the ideas that flow in my head, that is money. And it gets me green with envy to see people whip out amazing pieces of work on this forum like it's nothing whereas I am truly struggling with my sanity here.

I really need direction here that I can't seem to give myself. I have a goal to be able to draw acceptable concept art by October when I start school but it just doesn't seem plausible. I've been frequently asking myself if art is for me and it really seems that it should be considering how expressive I am but I HATE drawing. I hate it so much because it's never ideal, never perfect. And to be brutally honest, if I can't draw and depict my ideas in my head, I just won't feel compelled to live. It's gotten that bad that I have a true deadline that I can't fail to meet. Talk about pressure, eh?

I hope this thread will change things and get me back on the right read and off this horribly depressing road that I'm on right now.

[Darkside]

hi ohGr, i know this problem and the answer is: drawing.
you can have 20books on anatomy you read, but you have to actually draw the skelleton and figures, poses, muscles etc.
I think you should read the loomis book Figure Drawing for all it´s worth (http://www.gfxartist.com/actions/go.php?ID=7639) to get some construction. read and learn about how he draws the underlaying mannikin and quick set ups of proportions. his perspective technique is also very handy. when you know all about this, take your bridgeman and get the anatomy of humans right(loomis is very old fashioned with his figures).
this should be one of many effective ways to learn drawing the human body.
hope I didn´t make to many typos :)

[Elwell]

Loomis will definitely help. Don't just look at the pictures; read the between chapter essays too.
Ryder is all about observational drawing. He can't teach you anything about structure or invention because they aren't part of his process.
Don't sell Jack Hamm short. Sure, the drawings themselves are the worst sort of mid-century hackwork, but there's actually a lot of sound information there.
How are you studying with the books you have? Are you just reading and expecting to learn through osmosis? Read with a sketchbook alongside, and try put everything into practice. You'll learn more by copying every figure in Bridgeman once than by rereading the book 100 times. Drawing is a physical as well a mental activity. A lot of it is muscle memory and developing the nueral connections between hand and brain.

[Mike Frank]

Hey man, don't be too hard on yourself. I'm sure there are many of us that are in the same boat, trying to learn how to draw the human form without reference. The hardest and most difficult thing you will have to get over at this point is your intimidation of drawing the figure. Once you set the pencil on the page and really crack down and study you'll be getting somewhere.

I have been pursuing this same goal and am really starting to get into anatomy right now. My first intro to figure drawing was Glenn Vilppu's drawing manual. Very good stuff, helps you simplify the body down to simple shapes and to analyze the form you're seeing instead of simply copying. That is the place to start (If you haven't gotten this far). Bridgeman, Hogarth, Vilppu, Loomis, they all pretty much say the same thing - simplify the body into its largest masses, learn how to depict form with 3d shapes. Always always analyze. Learn from doing drawings from reference, and apply to stuff without reference. Try to use the same processes for both.

As far as anatomy goes, this has been my approach so far. Learn (by learn I mean draw) the skeleton and where bones articulate with one another. This will help you know the limitations of the body. Then start learning the muscles. I am primarily using a book that at first was very frustrating for me to learn from, called Human Anatomy for Artists by Eliot Goldfinger. Its a very thorough book, it doesnt simplify anything for you and is filled with medical type descriptions of things. But I think the best aspect of it is that it shows you muscles individually, where they originate and where they insert at. It makes it a lot easier to see how the muscles relate to each other. Learning the relationships is the key part. After you try to apply the muscles to a certain area a few times, you start to see where you've got some things missing. You got to break things into parts, just like how when you draw a face you know there should be eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

Remember that when you draw without a reference you are only drawing what you know (like Mentler says). If you don't know something well how are you supposed to draw it? So don't be that hard on yourself. If there is something that looks wrong, just look it up and try to fix it. The more you do that, the more you get it right, and the better you get at depicting the figure. Don't be afraid of a lack of knowledge, be afraid that you are not willing to learn.

And yea what Elwell says is right on. You wont learn much at all until you start drawing. Its after you've drawn something a bunch of times that you can read about it and things will start clicking.

I'm no master or anything, but thats my two cents.

[Darkside]

yeah, vilppu is great. only got through one chapter so far but the whole book is just awsome. a little expensive though.
I wouldn´t recommend Hogarth. I bought it when I didn´t know anything about drawing humans and it didn´t help me out of anything. he has also a very stilistic style. do that loomis thing and you will be ok :thumbs:

[mentler]

Good starter list here!!
http://www.marshallart.com/drawingtexts.html
I would not get Bridgman's Complete guide it is a edited version of all his smaller books and loose focus and intent ~ some of the pictures are even upside down ~ I have spend a lot of time with Bridgman and recommend starting with the books in the order they were written and intended as they deal with the figure from different points of view
(1) Constructive Anatomy (2) Life Drawing (3) The Human Machine
I also like Art Anatomy by William Rimmer ~ this was considered the Bible on figure structure before Bridgman ~ It is still one of my favorites.
I have almost every book ever written on anatomy and figure drawing that is worth owning ~ some book are better for some things and some are better for others ~ the point is that you need to own more than one.
Also I forgot to mention Glen Vilppu, many start out with his material.
Also I am posting new studies and demos all the time
check Boneyard link below and go thru galleries on upper right!!!

[zou]

Hello

I think you're in a very bad situation, but this bad situation is perhaps the solution. It depends on you. I will not talk about drawing or books-drawing.

When the people find themselves in a very bad situation cause of a dictator, they make a revolution. If the situation was not so bad, this will rest on it.

I'm i situation like you, but not as pessimist. I'm trying to get out of this, but i have also material problems (can't get the books you talk about)
But i got a very good book... about psychology.Don't have a title for you, find it yourself :)

You've got to ask ask yourself questions after reading these books. Judge yourself, but there no guilty or innocent one. Break your habits, and get away from drawing: then after thinking about it with the receding. You'll choose to return to the battle or find another battle.

[mentler]

You start with stick figures ~ you add mass with basic shapes ~ then you refine those shapes ~ then you spend the rest of your life refining those shapes.
Even though I have been drawing most of my life, I really started drawing the figure from memory about 3 years ago. The process is simple but it does take work ~ the problem is the solution is so simple no body does it ~
Here the approach I would take if I were starting to learn today. I would draw 3 stick figures everyday: front view, side view, and back view (Loomis is good source for this) do this from memory. mass up the figure with basic shapes from memory. (Vilppu or Loomis or Bridgman's book "Life Drawing" are all good sources for this) then add as much anatomy from memory as you can. Then go to reference and correct what you have done.
If you do this exercise everyday you will see results I promise.
I have been doing this exercise totally from memory for several weeks.
I work on things I am having trouble with. Click on Hanging Flesh below.
There also is a out of print book by Doug Jamison called draw from your head that has a decent system (the drawing in this book suck) I have worked with his system a little and it seems to be a pretty good approach!
Unfortunately it is ofp and fairly expensive. You have to just start drawing figures from memory do thumbnails at first ~ just do it ~ there is really no other way.

[Main Loop]

How much drawing are you doing a day? at the very-bare-bones minimum you should be doing 20 mins a day, a decent amount is an hour, and many people here do much more than that.. Youll never get much out of the books if you dont apply the info.. a lot of people say "read loomis" but they assume youll actually do the exercises.. a lot of people gave good info in this thread.. Mentler gave you really good info as well, in fact i think ima go do what he said heh

[winjer]

get the learn to draw comics the marvel way. Its awesome. hulk and spider man teach you stuff. im not kidding its got good tips.

[Leopoldo]

There's millions of people out there that can draw but don't have any ideas.
There's millions of people out there with ideas but who can't draw.

Example - Look at Mr. Mollo's drawings for costumes on Star Wars Ep3 and 4. All his ideas are there and his drawings aren't professionally polished.

If it's perfection you want you're in the wrong place.
Practice won't make you perfect but it will make you a hell of alot better.
You see, there's always going to be someone better out there, no matter how good you are. Even if you're the best out there there will be someone better. How's that you say? Taste. People's taste vary so much that you can't please all people all the time. And your own taste is the hardest to please because you know what the vision looks like your head and it's not what's on the paper.

The tools of the trade can never recreate what we see in our heads. They're too primitive.

Questions is, can you be good enough to make a decent living out of it, if that's your ambition?

I'm following the exercises in Andrew Loomis " Drawing heads and hands (http://www.fineart.sk/index.php?cat=14) " and after about 30 pages I pretty pleased with the way he presents it. And it's free, downloadable.

Dedicate yourself to the arts and follow through and you might or might not "make it" - whatever that is.

I simply want to make a decent living for myself, take care of my family and live a nice ok life. Am I good enough at drawing to earn that kind of money? Perhaps, but I still have to work at it. It's a job. A fun, interesting and creative job. And sometimes a bit stressful and frustrating.

Perfection demands patience, focus, preservance and passion. As a student for life I'm currently learning patience, anatomy and perspective.

/L