Basics: How to learn the anatomy

I want to share with you some tips and thoughts about learning anatomy. Did I mention that I’m a self-taught artist? Being self-taught definitely has some pluses, but you always have to take care of your knowledge by yourself, and sometimes it can be complicated.

At the beginning of my learning-the-anatomy-journey I’ve been making a lot of mistakes – I mean not factual errors in muscles and bones, but mistakes in approach to study.

The first thing people discover when they learn to draw is that you must see through shapes. For example, if there is a vase behind the other vase you need to see the full shape of it to draw the lines correctly.

The complexity about the anatomy is that you should not only see, but also know what to see. Here is a trick - if you are good at only one thing out of these 2, your artworks will never look professional.

Traditional way

The classical way is to study anatomical models before starting to draw from a live model. It is done to learn the ideal body, so you can see all the main features (bones and muscles) on a non-perfect body and not confuse them with fat/wrinkles/birthmarks of a living body.

Head of David

Mistakes I've been making

One of the most popular mistakes people make while learning the anatomy is copying for copying, not for learning. What do I mean? You have to analyze and memorize, because mechanic copying is useless. How to distinguish mechanic copying from analyzing? Pretty simple. If you are spending hours to throughly copy every stroke on the rib cage from an art book - you are wasting your time.

Of course, it applies only to learning, if you want to draw a super detailed feature of the body and show it as an artwork - do it.

I've wasted a lot of time carefully copying every stroke from anatomy books

And remember, you don't need to learn all the names of the muscles! It's better to learn where they are located and where they are coming from than to know how they are called. Moreover, I bet that throughout the process of studying and copying you will unconsciously learn the names.

The journey of learning

- I recommend to start the process of learning by watching videos - it's always good to meet the basics of anatomy with the help of the tutor. The most well known lecturer is Glenn Vilppu.

- The learning usually starts from the skeleton, because you need to know to what the muscles are attached.

- Don't forget to learn the proportions.

- It's always good to concentrate on one thing for a long time, especially, when you learn the location of the muscles. For example, instead of leaning the whole body, it's better to learn each part separately. It sounds like an obvious thing, but not so many people are spending more than an evening on one feature.
I would recommend to separate the body on big parts like - head, lower limbs (leg, foot), upper limbs (arms, hands, shoulders), torso and back. You can combine the parts together on one drawing (like torso and arms), but don't draw too many features at the same time. After you'll become acquainted with all of the big masses of the body, you can pay more attention to small parts like shoulder blades, details of the muscles, etc.

Drawing from The Russian Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg

There are a lot of things that you can copy from:

- If you are a beginner or simply afraid to draw the real person, you can always come to the local museum and draw sculptures. It's always good to study the masters of sculpture.

The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna

David (detail) by Michelangelo

- Buy art books. There are a lot of books dedicated to anatomy for artists. And don't forget to copy from your favorite artist.

- Also it's good to buy anatomy atlases and copy from them. But remember not to be too accurate. If you are copying one small feature of the body for 45 mins, there is a huge possibility that you are not learning, but mechanically copying.

As I've mentioned before, you'll need to see through shapes, that is why so many artists draw the skeleton near the main drawing
(Drawing from The Russian Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg)

- Obviously, copy from photos. But you have to be very careful, because not every photo is good to study from (especially for a beginner). Some of the teachers have a strong belief that you can't feel the form of the body and become better when you copy from photos. However, photos are a very powerful source.
I will definitely cover the theme of "how to choose a proper photo to study from" in a separate post.

That's all for this time. Have a nice study!

P.S. Oh, I didn't expect that the post will become so big! One of the next articles will be more practical - what books to buy, links to videos, etc.

Dirty Brushes