I recognize my need to know more about the anatomy for the human body so I’m going to try and set aside one day out of the week where I do some anatomy study.
It’s important to me to not just work from books that show anatomy of perfectly posed figures showing the basic shape of a muscle, because it doesn’t ever work that way in real life. The models in my life drawing class always take some interesting poses that obscure the muscles in some way. This is why as an artist we need to know more then just the names of the muscle but also their origins and insertions and we need to memorize how the muscle works and looks from many different positions.
So why study anatomy? Stan Prokopenko answers that question really well with his intro video to his anatomy series. I will be following this series also.
Here are some other great resources I’m going to be using to help me study anatomy.
Frederic Delavier Strength Training Anatomy
This may seem kinda odd, but the illustrations in this book are amazing and there are literally tons of plates showing many positions of every muscle.
Human Anatomy for Artists by Eliot Goldfinger
For learning the origins and insertions of every muscle in the body Goldfingers book is perfect. There is also descriptions about how each muscle moves the skeleton. The wealth of information in this book will take years to absorb.
Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck
I will also be working form this book, the illustrations are well done and very detailed and will be a good addition to trying to get an understanding for how the muscles look in many different positions.
Here is my setup for study tonight, yes my cat was helping me. Its important that I match what I’m learning to a real figure so I started out drawing the female figure from photograph then began matching muscles to her and illustrating them as they are on the figure. I didn’t get very far, and even this took over an hour tonight. I have long way to go in studying anatomy it seems.
