Where do I even begin learning anatomy and perspective?

[Davicho]

These are the two hurdles that I feel really cripple my progress as an artist...they are endlessly frustrating concepts that I don't know even where to begin learning.

I am attending school for art, but will be transferring from a community college to a proper university next year, so I'm saving important classes like life drawing for post-transfer.

In the meantime I need to buckle down and try to nail this stuff. Whenever I try to draw from my head, the image is there in my brain, but the anatomy and perspective just destroy my motivation and confidence in my abilities. My bookshelf has at least a dozen anatomy books including: 5 Hogarth books, Bridgman's Complete, Simblet's Anatomy for the Artist, Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters, Jack Faragasso's Mastering the Human Figure, etc.

First of all, I don't even know how to utilize these books to get a head start before moving to life drawing. When I try to draw a figure in front of me from life, my mind just blanks out completely...I'd do better from my imagination, although still not 'good'. The books are full of anatomical terms, and diagrams, etc...it just doesn't seem practical. Should I just sit there and copy the drawings page to page?

I need some advice, how did you folks first break that artistic ball and chain of anatomy? What can I do to systematically improve my knowledge?

[Nerahla]

DAvicho, I looked at your sketchbook and you have some really great imaginative work! Some of that stuff is /super/ it really is, well done :)

As far as anatomy goes - I have the very same books you do.

Just - copy them. Put up the page of one book to your left, sketchbook to your right -- and copy it.

Like you did with the DaVinci work (which was nice btw)

Just keep referencing the human form... it will be tiresome, and drudgery at times, but keep at it. Believe it or not, after awhile, it begins to seep into your mind, and you will learn anatomy this way.

Every else always says Life Drawing as well - I cannot do this but everyone else seems to think this is THE way to learn, so I have to mention it.

As far as utilizing the books -- read them. Look at the pictures - then make copies! It can actually be quite meditative to just copy from reference.

[panchosimpson]

also, dont try to take in too much at once...I'm trying to teach myself anatomy too, and like you said, it's confusing to look through books with 10 billion illustrations. What i suggest is becoming best friends with your school's biology professor...seriously though, they usually have skeletons in their classrooms tha you can draw from....once you have the bones down, it'll be easier to move on to major muscles, then minor muscles etc. or, you could take it one piece at a time...spending a week drawing and redrawing the muscles in the upper leg for example, until you memorize them, then progressing from there. Anyway, best of luck to you!

PS. ur line quality is rly rly nice

[Nerahla]

yeah I'm sorry I didn't elucidate enough.

back in March I put myself to a design of sorts. I bought 4 100 page sketchbooks from Utrecht and said that I would not touch my tablet until all 4 sketchbooks were full.

I would only be studying anatomy in those 400 pages.

What I decided to do was take apart the body and do individual body parts. I began with facial features (the most familiar to me) - eyes, noses, lips, chins, ears. Then faces (this may be arguably the hardest but for me, it was the best starting place).

Then I moved onto the skeletal structure. I never did bone copies, but I did a couple.. not as many as muscular.

Torso - shoulders - upper leg - lower arm - calves... etc

Then, I went on a rampage of learning to get proportions down un-referenced... and whaddya know, all that practice really helped. I could do a straight - on frontal figure pretty good. No muscle masses - but proportions were spot on. Then I did muscle masses, frontal shot, until I had those right.

I got comfortable enough I wanted to try poses - and was SO AWFUL I decided I needed to take a couple steps back.

That is what this learning process always is. Two steps forward and one step back. Remember that, and persevere and you will go long and away far beyond what most people realize with this journey.

So, I have this excellent book by Vanderpoel. His pencil studies are breathtaking. I went and decided to copy every single pencil sketch in his book. I'm currently on arms! And you know what? A couple of my studies I'm actually /proud/ of. 120 pages into this little exercise I put myself to and I make a little step forward.

It's hard work. It's so boring sometimes I fall asleep while I'm doing it. But I stick to it. I see my goal, I know I can achieve it and I stick to my guns. That's 95% of the battle right there. Never give up. :)

Anyway, give it a try. Take the bridgman and just copy every torso til your blind. Then copy them again. Pretty soon, you will start to understand where those ribs connect with the shoulder blades... it's a /wonderful/ feeling :)

[Davicho]

I'll give it a go...this thread was definitely inspired by one of my "what in the hell is wrong with me, why can't I just get it right?" moods, I need to just stop being a pansy and study!

Should have known there's no easy way out of hard work....I'll probably rename this thread and post my progress, hopefully get some useful crits...like panchosampson said is his thread here, the sketchbook section doesn't seem to be the place for getting actual criticism...

[heartbeat]

Just another idea- draw a picture from the book,then do it without looking at the picture to see have you saved it in your memory,have you understood it.

[Nerahla]

I don't think that's a great idea heartbeat, actually, I think that is just going to set up people for disappointment.

We don't do studies to memorize each particular study - we do studies to firm up the basic and general idea of anatomy and proportion - so when we draw from our imaginations, we can do that right.

That doesn't take 1 study to 'cement' in our memory.

Just do days and days of studies, then go and draw something out of your imagination once, and see how well you do it then. Or even better, draw a figure from your imagination /before/ you do the studies -- then go off for days and days or even weeks doing studies - then go back and draw the same figure from your mind.

9 times outta 10 that second figure is gonna be a whole lot better.... because the repetition trained your mind and eye, not a one trick copy.

[molotov_billy]

Runecaster, it's actually not such a bad idea. It's one of the first things that Vilpu talks about in his drawing manual about learning to draw the figure from the mind - the key thing that he stresses is to ANALYZE the model, not just copy the lines you see. Looking at a pose and then drawing it without referencing it again forces us to analyze what we're seeing instead of just copying one line at a time.

I haven't gone down that route too much yet, but I've heard from others that it works. Sit in front of the TV, or life drawing class, or wherever you can find poses of humans. Look at a pose and copy it with gesture - not any detail, just quick studies of the pose. The motion, relative positions, etc.

Anyway, it's the first step in his process. There are a million other ways to learn anatomy as well. Personally, I'm doing them all at once, heh. I'll figure it out eventually!

[Enydimon]

I'm currently working on my anatomy too.

Actually, I've been slacking too much but I'd have to say the motivation can be hard. I guess you just gotta keep at it! After I did about 3 pages of bunch of sketches for anatomy studies, I noticed I could see things when looking at a real person that I couldn't before. That might just be me.

I tend to draw quick, its just something I've always been able to do and I burn out quickly on those studies. I also have a hard time determining space between the things I see so copying from anything, life or books make it hard. I agree that its two steps forward, one step back. We just gotta stick through it.

[Kfeeras]

I don't think you have to attend life drawing classes/sessions to learn anatomy, look at Marko Djurdjevic's work.

[Zimzibar]

http://www.fineart.sk - look at Loomis' books, especially "figure drawing for all it's worth", i'm finding it not only really useful to improve my figure drawing, but also a great read in general :)

[Nerahla]

Loomis is a god at helping someone who isn't familiar with all the 'nomenclature' to understand. He's fabulous at laymen's terms for the new aritst. I adore my Loomis!! :)

Anyway - please, give us an update on how its going - I'd love to see!

[Davicho]

lol, imagine my surprise to find that Loomis book averaging over $100! Some of the ones on Amazon are going for several times that. Looks like I'm sticking with the web version...I'll definately post some progress!

[Fjooner]

Glad to see there are more of us starting late.
I'm also 25 and just started taking some animation-classes and work on my drawing.

I began looking at Glenn Vilppu's dvds, at www.vilppu.com.
They don't show you stuff you can't learn from anatomy-books, but they work great as a kick in the butt to get going. And they're not that expencive. (edit: Ok, they are a little bit expencive when you're a student, but just save up for one at the time. ;] )

Checked out your sketchbook, and it looks like a great start.

Cheers!

[enelrad]

OR HERE http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=26748
:D

[Nerahla]

Bah don't feel bad @25, you're a spring chicken compared to me. I began a year and a half ago, when I was 32. >.>

[Rblackmore]

For anatomy, I recommend Mr. Mentler's book of bones thread. I simply saved every image in the thread and started with learning the pelvis, then torso cage and spine, then shoulder girdle, legs, arms, and finally the skull. Once you've got the skeleton down well(really easy to get proper proportions with his cranial unit system btw!), I recommend the Bridgman books(free online if you can find 'em, perhaps project gutenberg?) for learning the muscular system. I still don't know it all, but its a VERY quick way to learn and in the end you'll be able to throw an accurate figure in any pose from any view from imagination. Just look at what Mr. Mentler can do!
EDIT: Oh yeah, perspective. Lets see, here (http://www.teamgt.com/ft-tutes.htm), here (http://drawsketch.about.com/library/weekly/aa021603a.htm), I'll see if I can find others, I found a lot more when I was learning perspective but can't seem to find the better ones. :(

[Favila]

For perspective, take a look at Scott Robertson dvd's ( Workshop) they totally ROCK he explains it very nicely and it really helps. Then you can study "successful drawing" by Andrew Loomis.

[jt4470]

www.alienthink.com
Buy the dvds. They're around $45 without shipping and contain more about anatomy than any textbook you ever bought. Go go go

[SpookyFish]

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=RivenPhoenixThis guy on youtube has hundreds of videos on anatomy and other really interesting drawing techniques. I've found his lessons very helpful. You should really check these out.