Hey guys, I thought it would be fun to create a thread for people to discuss how they study anatomy, what resources they use, what their "homework" usually looks like, etc.
Animal and non-humanoid anatomy welcome, as well -- [but as a humanoid artist I'm personally interested in humanoid, ho-ho]
I am not very good at anatomy but I've been trying to do more studies. I really like Proko's videos. I also own some Japanese artbooks that give pretty good simplified drawings for reference. Kinokuniya Bookstores often have these in stock. If you ever visit NYC, check the one in Bryant Park -- :)
I would share pictures but a lot of my studies are very all over the place.
Pinterest all the way. There's definitely some bad ones and good ones. I often try to find a good balance and try out different styles from different sources. I think the most accurate way to study anatomy is still real photos but it's not something I personally like. Referencing from drawn poses and anatomy is just easier for me to understand. Here's my board full of different things if you wanna take a look https://pin.it/4GYX8uV
it's always really difficult for me to practice admittedly, but what i do is get images from pinterest and bring them into my art program. i lower the opacity on them and trace (yes, trace- it's fine to do for practice!) out the basic shapes of the figure afterwards. after i get the general idea, i replicate the pose with those shapes in mind on my own without tracing it out, and, hopefully, get a good end result out of it.
it also helps a lot to look at artbooks too! i especially like seeing how different artists apply anatomy to their characters, and it really helps with building up your own way of drawing figures.
(edit: speaking of figures, those are great references too. i don't find much use in the wooden posable figures, but action figures i have of my favorite characters really help in me in coming up with ideas for poses ^^)
For stock photos - Unsplash. It has a really good diverse library of photography! I also got 'Anatomy for the Artist: A Complete Guide' a while back, which breaks down muscle groups really well, but I think the book is out of production now. Since I use Clip Studio Paint, I find their catalogue of 3D human models really handy when I'm trying to figure out difficult poses or angles, and it helps keep proportions looking realistic; eventually, after drawing with a model for a while, you commit the proportions to memory and can work without one.
For drawing heads, I find the Loomis Method really useful! I'm still a little rusty on the brow angle, but it helps me get the proportions of the head right and is fairly quick to pick up.
Anatomy is such a drag to study and I feel like it's still one of my weak points, but getting a handle on it really does boost your art (and confidence!) by a million percent.
when it comes to really dynamic poses or similarly hard stuff ive learnt a lot by pulling up someone elses art and trying my best to copy what i see. as much as i’d like to do many many more of em, doing pure studies is very boring and tedious for me and this is what i normally do and ive learnt a lot from doing it :) also a looooot of stock photos and pinterest refs for specific stuff
i mainly just reference images for anatomy. if i cant find an image with the pose i want but really cant draw freehand, i'll take a picture of myself doing the pose and then reference that. it is very embarrassing to do but it works
oh, and sometimes when i actually feel like practicing i do those challenges where i find a bunch of reference images, then try to draw each of them in less than a minute. really forces you to block it out with simpler shapes and get a general feel of what your guidelines will look like. bad guideline anatomy means bad sketch and line art anatomy
What I do is save a separate folder on websites/apps I use just for references, like for Pinterest when I am browsing, I tend to come across good sketches about how others do anatomy (I tend to prefer sketches rather than colored ones, as they are easier to follow than real life photos or fully colored drawings. When I need to use it, I try replicate it as well as I can(I do sometimes trace for practice, but I often draw on paper so there's that I guess-). Once I feel like I got the hang of it, I like to go on free pose generators and see if I can draw a pose accurately using a similar style to the artists I tried to replicate the art from beforehand, and if it looks good enough, I tweak it so it feels more like my style.
Understanding the skeleton of things makes it easier for me personally, and the placement of key muscle structures. For me, it has a lot to do about shapes/outlines of the body or body parts.
One way I have found is looking at anatomy books and tracing over diagrams or even stock photos of people dancing to just get my hand used to the shapes. I only recently starting studying this way, I used to look at stock photos and try to strip away the layers of muscle and skin in my mind to get the shapes (which...mmm sounds morbid)
But it really is worth the time and effort to learn anatomy, my art instructor once told me "if you can draw the human body, you can draw anything" and it's pretty true. You can take what you've learned and apply it to creature designs and or whatever your heart desires and it will look relatively believable. I have a long way to go but I'm slowly getting there!
Most of the time I run across an angle I've never drawn before, so of course it's going to turn out bad if I just wing it lol because my mind doesn't understand it yet.
But also Burne Hogarth!!! His books are amazing!!! Such dynamic poses and style wowie wow
I'm just now really getting into studying anatomy o.o I'm gonna be using probably proko vids and the anatomy books I have downloaded o.o
I'm gonna be copyng the figures in the books and trying to understand what goes where and practice without refs , maybe even trace over photos to memorize where certain parts are to better learn structure o.o and also do gestures from vids I find on YouTube o.o they time their poses and I'd say they do help you learn the human form o.o
Just trying to find the best structure for me to draw bodies