An Anatomy Tutorial
Heya sorry this took so long!! OK so just a disclaimer before I begin: I still have a LOT of room to improve as an artist, plus I actually don’t take the time to study anatomy very much myself lol so take my words with a grain of salt. My personal opinion is that when it comes to drawing, it’s more important to understand how to approach bodies + understand forms and proportions than it is to necessarily know anatomy, so this is a general guide on that I suppose (with some words along the way about my thought process when drawing).
First of all, I need to link you the single book that every artist needs ever: Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth by Andrew Loomis. PLEASE GET ANDREW LOOMIS’S BOOK ON FIGURE DRAWING this book taught me like everything!! It is the second image on this page; while you’re at it, you can grab his other books too. There are many other good books out there but I honestly can’t think of one that would be a better starting position than this one.
The most important thing to getting anatomy right is the proportions of the body. Even if you know and can draw all the individual muscles of the body, if the proportions are off, the entire body will look very off. You will find that even for very stylized bodies, they follow many of the basic proportions, which goes to show how important they are. Below is a quick demonstration with two different body types - you’ll see that the proportions apply to both. There are many more than these, but these are the primary proportion rules I personally keep in mind. (Note: Take #6 with a grain of salt because it’s just something I’ve generally observed myself, not an actual rule) [hi-res image]
After you come to understand proportions of the body more, you can move on to constructing the body. A really important thing is to break the body down into a handful of basic solid forms, essentially simplifying them before you add details on top. A lot of people like to use stick figures or spheres and cylinders - personally I’m not a fan of either since they tend to lead to rather rigid bodies, so I like to use forms that are based off of a modified skeleton. The skeleton (devised by Loomis, by the way) is what I sort of keep in mind when I do the next step below this one. [hi-res]
When actually drawing sketches, I simplify the skeleton and draw the body with solid forms. The torso in particular can be kind of tricky - it’s easier to think of it like a flexible jellybean or a bean bag. Additionally, try to draw all of the body at once quickly, you’ll better capture the movement of the body as a whole and the pose will look more natural than if you were to start with details at one end. Below are some quick example sketches close to what I would usually start with. The general order that I draw a body in is: torso -> legs -> arms -> head. (Note: The vast majority of movement in a figure is carried in the body and legs; after that it pretty much doesn’t matter where you put the arms and head because they only change the general impression of the illustration a marginal amount.) [hi-res]
After this point I start to rough out the general shape of the body, getting the major muscles and forms. Think like a sculptor and get the main forms down, but leave the details for later. It’s only after that that you can start to add more details for the actual muscles of the body. Below are the main muscles and forms I think of, which probably aren’t accurate at all so you may want to consult an anatomy book lol. Even when it comes to muscles it’s important to think of them in terms of solid forms! Think of them as solid lumps or wedges that piece together. [hi-res]
It will probably take a while to get the hang of doing this, because in reality, even if you know to think of bodies in terms of proportioned solid forms, it will take much longer to train your mind’s eye to actually instinctively think that way. In a way, becoming better at drawing is more like becoming better at the way you imagine things in your head, rather than becoming better at drawing lines on the page. Additionally, besides just drawing these forms, it’s good to get out there and draw people from real life! Draw models, draw ordinary people on the street, draw everybody. All in all, it’s a long journey but it’s a very rewarding one!!
And I think this concludes my tutorial(?). Apologies for the length, to be completely honest this is a topic that I’ve wanted to talk about for a really really long time. A lot of stuff here took me years and years to realize (god forbid some of the old ways I used to start my sketches) and I hope I can maybe save someone out there all the trouble of figuring this stuff out! In summary, it’s all about learning the basic forms of the body, changing the way you think of drawing, and applying that to the paper.
