Reddit reviews Classic Human Anatomy: The Artist's Guide to Form, Function, and Movement

> I was thinking on drawing 50 arms, 50 legs and so on,

This will accomplish absolutely nothing if you aren't sure what you're doing in the first place. So, let's go over a few things to help you with this instead.

Let me tell you a few things that I picked up as soon as I saw your drawings:

• You aren't actually paying much attention to the subject you're drawing; especially if you have a reference, you're going to have to measure up and make sure what you have looks right. There appears to be lots and lots of guessing here, which is a habit you'll have to break if you aren't sure what to guess.
  
• You don't have a good grasp on perspective yet; this can be seen in examples 1 and 4 where you have the figures in such unnatural looking positions.
  
• You have lines in example 1 which seem to be you measuring her height using the head as a reference, which is interesting to me, as you appear to have grown impatient and drawn what you though would make her look better. I think some of the frustration here lies in the fact that her head is too tall, which made the rest of her body not line up the way you wanted it to.
  
• Your muscles look masculine, even with your women, and they also aren't what natural muscles look like.
  
• Your clothing textures are actually decent (some more practice and I think you'll have these down, definitely!), and aren't really much of a weak point for you.
  
  Let's take this apart step by step and see where some progress can be made. First, the face:
  
  
• You know what a face looks like, though you're having some difficultly constructing one. To learn how to actually make a face, one way to do it is by drawing a face head on so you get an idea of how the proportions work. It's also much easier to get a straight on look at a face and make less mistakes along the way, as you'll have the proportions directly in front of you. When it comes to drawing faces at an angle, however, this'll be more difficult, as you won't have the same guidelines to help you. Once you draw lots of faces head on, with practice on value/shading, etc. then it should be easier to construct one in your head and have an idea on what to work on for various other angles you're trying to accomplish. So here's a nice video that can go about showing you how to draw a face from different angles and here's another one that provides commentary along the way, and is a bit more straightforward as well.
  
• Your faces, similar to your muscles, all look very masculine, which tells me you don't know what women look like. I'm more so just pointing this out as something you should work on, so here's an article that goes over differences in drawing faces between men/women it'll take some getting used to at first, but it's something to study and fix before you try getting too involved with faces (otherwise you'll get good at making mistakes, which you don't want)
  
  Next, the body:
  
  
• Okay, you and I both understand that proportions/anatomy aren't a strong point for you. Not to worry, you can fix this! Proko is a great source on YouTube you'll see mentioned a lot here if you're having trouble with anatomy, since he goes over things in an easy to understand fashion. There's also Draw with Jazza whose channel I love, since he goes over material quite well. What may also help here is enrolling in a class in a university or community center that'll allow you to a draw a live model, where you can get feedback from a teacher and other students as well. There's also some books on anatomy, such as Atlas of Human Anatomy (keep in mind this one is not really a tutorial, just something to help give notes on anatomy), and this book, which is a bit more beginner friendly and has more instruction in it.
  
• Instead of trying to simply draw 50 arms and 50 legs, it helps to have some guidance on what exactly you're drawing and how to draw it. This is a clear tutorial that can help with that , and in case you also need a bit of reminding of what limbs are supposed to look like, this here can help you with body proportions so you can make sure your limbs match up, and gives extra tips on how they can do that. One thing I will note as well, is that it's not just your limbs that need work, so don't feel like you should only be focused on them when you work on the body, as you need to make sure the entire human form is comprehensible and works together. What's the point of having nicely drawn limbs if you have a shitty torso, for example. I'll also remind you that drawing limbs is a pain in the fucking ass and that it's not something that you'll pick up quickly (this is especially true of digits, hands/feet were and still are a pain for me to draw!). Speaking of hands, you seem timid when it comes to these subjects, and you're going to want to get over that, since if you don't know much about hands/feet, then many of your gestures won't look as appealing (plus, it's only going to hurt you since you'll get frustrated time and time again trying to get them right). Luckily, Draw with Jazza has a tutorial on those, and you can also purchase a hand mannequin if you'd like some extra help. Another great resource is looking at your own hands/feet, since they're always available and can get the job done in some natural lighting.
  
  Lastly, your (lack of) shading:
  
  
• Since there's no shading to speak of in these pieces, you're doing yourself a huge disservice as you aren't actually drawing the human form, but rather an outline of it (which in itself, isn't giving any details to speak of, which is adding to your lack of success with drawing people). This tells me you either a. aren't too familiar with how to create form, or b. simply don't understand yet understand the importance of shading when learning how to draw. This is all fine and dandy, as this link here will tell you all about form and how to shade properly. Some exercises you can practice for this are drawing objects in real life in shading them, and getting used to not erasing while you do so (when you don't erase, it prompts you to make less and less mistakes further along the road).
  
  And here's a last:
  
  
• Go slow. Drawing is a not a race, you don't have to finish everything within a set time limit. If it's taking you a long time to learn something, don't sweat it. There's no such thing as someone who is good at drawing everything when they first start out. Everyone sucks in the beginning, so it's better to take your time and focus on what mistakes you make so you can take note of how to improve later. And since you want to work with people, which is difficult because a. not only is the human form in itself hard to draw, but you have to make a human body be recognizable since unlike drawing animals, which don't have any particular likenesses that are completely relevant (for example, you can draw a golden retriever, and I can look at it, and see it's a golden retriever because animals don't have that look to them that really separates them), meanwhile humans have facial and body features that are distinguishable to us since we recognize our own species, and b. there can be a lot going on in a human drawing, such as us holding something, wearing certain things, having certain hairstyles, etc. which by themselves can be difficult to master. So taking your time and realizing that it won't be perfect right away will only help you in the long run.

You made his pectorals concave almost, and the neck way too thick (even accounting for a scarf). Bring them out and make them pop. Widen the shoulders and retract them a little. His lats should be visible from that position. His biceps origin should be higher than that. He wears his pants above his pelvis. His Quads/Hams/Glutes should be prominent and less flare to the pants below the knee (and he wears boots that would be that high)

His wrists look too thick to go in to the hand. His head is too puffy looking and doesn't look strong.


Work on anatomy and perspective (you shouldn't see his right external obliques from that position)

If you have a familiarity with anatomy you'll know how to draw a muscular figure. I'd suggest the three books paired together here to learn a bit more.

It does get boring, it's study. It's up to you to learn to have fun with it.

Divide your time between the study and the fun, spend some time doing gesture drawings(they serve as great warmups), then some time doing figure drawing, then move on and draw something for you.
I think the key to it is focusing on what you learn while drawing from life, and learning how that translates to styles you love.

As for resources, I personally believe for character/figure work, a good anatomy book can go a long way. Figure drawing design and invention by Michael Hampton or Classic Human Anatomy by Valerie Winslow are my personal recommendations, but there are plenty of great books out there. The idea is when you get stuck on something then you reference it, and study it; work it out on the side of your drawing, or on a separate sheet/layer, but understand it as best you can before moving on.

Online recommendations, like most people mention, Proko is great, good information, and easy to understand.
For environments and design Feng Zhu's Design Cinema is a goldmine of solid tips.
I've found Kienan Laffarty to have a lot of good general information on all sorts of topics, like color, design, etc.

finally I think watching other artists work in real time(not the 400% sped up timelapses) can be indispensable in understanding how to handle the nuances of creating believable forms, or just how to progress your work from rough to finished, if you go in with the mindset to study what they're doing.

Neck too long, shoulders too narrow, lips too large, skull too small. I refer you to this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Classic-Human-Anatomy-Function-Movement/dp/0823024156/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347889568&sr=8-2

Also, you know how a lot of artists have those wooden figures that sort of move? Yeah, they're good for learning proportion.

Hey Greypuppy, I just made an image laying out some of your anatomy errors and ways to fix them, Imgur, they're numbered so you can look at what I'm talking about as you read. ^ ^

1.) Placement of the shoulders; to allow for a full range of movement, they're set a little lower than you have them, and the collar bone is set lower to reflect that (and is also part of what keeps our shoulders where they are, if you set your hand on your collar bone and lift your shoulders you can feel how it changes.)

2.)How the chest, armpit, and shoulder all come together; this is a common issue that most ppl fix once they realize that all those muscles connect on the shoulder. The hollow of our arm pit is formed by the muscles bending around the arm bone to reach the outside of the shoulder. The reason our pecks bulge when we pull our shoulders in is b/c those muscles are what's doing the pulling.

3.) The s-curve of the spine; Unless you're forcing the spine flat, the spine has a natural curve from the tail-bone to the base of the skull, this don't just effect the side-view, but also how the pelvis and rib-cage position themselves. The best way I could depict the way they tilt if with the two pink cups in the drawing. I exaggerated the tilt of the hips in the example drawing, but it still gives you a good idea what they're doing, all the same.

4.) The muscles on the top of the legs; just as we have the bulges of muscles on our butt and back of the leg to pull our leg back, we also have muscle running from our pelvis to our knee that helps us lift our leg. Even if you're not very beefy, you can still see part of that curve on the top of the leg, think of it as however bold the under-leg curve line is, the top one is at least half as bold a curve line.

5.) The muscles and tendons meeting behind the knee; you're drawing wouldn't bee far off the mark on a character with a heavyer build, but with someone so skinny, the hollow behind the knee would be more apparent. This is because behind the knee there's a hollow where the muscles have pulled to either side so they can attach to the kneecap. Sometimes there is a sort of square lump that lines up with the kneecap itself (forgot to draw that version, sorry, ^ ^ ' ) but for a skinny person, usually it just dips in right behind the knee as appose to a little below it as you've drawn.

6.)Where the thumb connects; not a big issue here, more just that there's another link to the thumb, and the flesh attached half-way across the palm. Went ahead and gave you a clear drawing of the hand bulges and pads, I find it helps for the placement paw-pads.


Whew
Hope that wasn't too overwhelming, I figured I would tackle this critique with all I could think of since I'm thinking of writing a 'how-to' book on drawing figures at some point.

There's some minor issues with knee to ankle to paw placement, but since I didn't know how exactly to explain it, I couldn't add it to the drawing.

And if you ever want to really get a good feel for anatomy, the book I would recommend is Classic Human Anatomy. It's full of good drawings and a lot of technical anatomy stuff (which was a little daunting when I first looked through it,) but it's really helped me to understand not just how things look, but also why, which is great when you're having to make images in weird poses from scratch.

TL:DR - Just go look at the pretty picture, Imgur

You need to pick up an anatomy book because right now you're inventing muscles and applying too many shadows until the whole drawing becomes visual noise and it doesn't read clearly.

First off, I'd recommend you study Figure drawing for all it's worth by Andrew Loomis. You can probably find a PDF of it online for free and it's not overly complicated for a kid to understand. Then, if you feel you want to stick with drawing in the long run convince your parents to invest in these books:

Atlas of human anatomy for the artist

Human anatomy for artists : The elements of form

Classic human anatomy: The artist's guide to form, function, and movement

Figure drawing: Design and invention

How to draw: Drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

How to render: The fundamentals of light, shadow and reflectivity

Color and light: A guide for the realist painter

Here is the mobile version of your link

I would also add Valerie Winslows' Classic Human Anatomy and/or Classic Human Anatomy in Motion. Eliot Goldfinger Human Anatomy for Artists is also an amazing book.

Howdy there.

So positives first: I like that you're trying a moderately challenging post, that's good. The legs and feet are pretty good, got some knee action going on and the legs aren't just vague shapes, they taper well according to form. Shows you're looking, or are copying someone who was looking and you noticed. The feet are basic, but similarly well-shaped. There's a good sense of weight to the whole figure, you've shifted her torso and head forward to account for the arms sticking out back.

Now, there are some proportion issues. The head is at an angle that is notoriously hard to draw (looking up at it from below) so that's excusable, but that arm is very long. The length of the arm from shoulder to fingertip should go to mid-thigh. That arm goes to at least mid-calf. It also doesn't show the sensitivity to underlying shapes that the legs do. Arms are not tubes, they have a pretty distinct shape when they're stretched out like that.

So everyone in this thread is giving you the delightfully vague advice of 'study anatomy'. What they mean is that stylized drawings like this (especially with the Eastern influence you have going on) rely on a very weird combination of 'correct' and 'simplified' anatomy which is more or less impossible to intuit. So the best thing you can do for yourself, especially at this early sage is get a textbook that takes the body apart bit by bit and study it. My favorite anatomy book is in a box somewhere and I suddenly can't remember the author's name and all anatomy textbooks have basically the same name so I'm not finding it. Whatever, my old professor wrote a pretty good one that lots of people like. Copy some of the individual parts listed in that book and take note of how they interact together. It will kick-start your understanding of the human form and help your cartoons out immensely.

Keep it up! Good luck.

http://www.amazon.com/Classic-Human-Anatomy-Function-Movement/dp/0823024156

Stay away from Chris Hart books though, they're nightmare fuel.

Think about it ... how can you sculpt a human if you don't know what to sculpt? The surface contours of a human or animal are defined by the underlying structures, the bone and muscles. Hence you need to study those structures so you know how to actually sculpt or model a human or animal. The following are books on Amazon on anatomy for artists:

Anatomy for Sculptors: Understanding the Human Figure

Anatomy for 3D Artists: The Essential Guide for CG Professionals

Basic Human Anatomy: An Essential Visual Guide for Artists

Classic Human Anatomy: The Artist's Guide to Form, Function, and Movement

An Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists

Or you can use Makehuman.