Whats the Best Artist to study anatomy from?

[Bigtayter]

Im just curious about this...Ive been trying to get a mixture of different anatomical studies.Lately ive been studying Hogarth and Leo da Vinci.Believe it or not,Da Vinci has some great anatomy studies.So my question to you guys are...what is your personal favorite?

[TASmith]

"Believe it or not,Da Vinci has some great anatomy studies."

Who woulda thought?

You need to look up Bob Mentler on this site. I plan to get his DVD soon, and I'm also interested in Villpu's DVD's. They're expensive, but I think they're worth it. Also, try and find a model skeleton to draw from, and any anatomical models.

Somewhere on the net, you can download Bridgeman books, but I'm not sure where. That's usually the main advice around here. I did find these links through CA:

aztecfirefly: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81093
mentler: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=72362
E.M. Gist: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=135935
KChen: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1432
Loomis: http://www.fineart.sk/index.php?s=48&cat=13
Frank Reilly: http://www.dhfa.net/Artiststatement2.html

[central]

I've defintely found Hogarth to be a great source of inspiration, especially the dynamic series .. great stuff. I don't wanna post about torren*s over here but there are a lot of great ones with almost all the great teachers in them ... but you didn't hear it from me ...

[Peter Coene]

Rey Bustos (I took his class at ACCD)
Hogarth
DaVinci
Michelangelo
Vilppu

[TASmith]

Just so you know, Hogarthe is a bit of a bad name around here. Some people criticize his distortions. They're done on purpose, to illustrate his points, but some figure, why distort the figure at all? If you're points are true, you shouldn't need to. One example is his showing of all muscles flexed at once to highlight their existance/placement. All muscles can't be flexed at once, and you need to remember the relationships between one muscle flexing and another relaxing.

[corky13]

I give you a "Welcome Cpt. Obvious" for the DaVinci sentence

I might sound like Cpt Obvious myself but a great "artist" to study anatomy from is life. You might want to attend some life drawing classes =)

[Saturns Gate]

Yes life studies are good, though make sure you have some kind of understanding of whats going on beneath the surface of the skin. You need both to really make it click. You could study life models for a year and have only 20 (not fact, make up percentage on my part ) percent understanding of whats going on underneath the surface.

[Arshes Nei]

I'd also give a heads up on Gottfried Bammes I've only seen pdfs of his German books online though. I know you can probably purchase them though on Amazon.

Life studies are great but remember people still need a good instructor or guide. There's nothing worse than an instructor that says draw but gives no guidance. I've had an instructor that was more interested in teaching you how to make egg tempura paints than giving you simple guidance on what to look for when you draw, and how to look for mistakes.

[biglu]

There's Lucian Freud. I had a drawing teacher in foundation who studied under him and she used to present some of his anatomical studies. That guy's incredible.

[Barber]

find yourself a nice corpse to study.

no?

ok,save up and go to www.freedomofteach.com


worthy investment indeed.

[Interceptor]

Just so you know, Hogarthe is a bit of a bad name around here. Some people criticize his distortions. They're done on purpose, to illustrate his points, but some figure, why distort the figure at all? If you're points are true, you shouldn't need to. One example is his showing of all muscles flexed at once to highlight their existance/placement. All muscles can't be flexed at once, and you need to remember the relationships between one muscle flexing and another relaxing.

People can see the body without distortion everyday when they walk odwn the street, get a cup of coffee, or take the subway. exaggerating you form helps people see things thier eyes never really catch on to. There's alot of people here also who swear by Hogarth. So don't just completely dismiss him because some people may be missing the point of what he's doing. Different people learn in different ways.

[CCThrom]

Gotta say, I do well by Hogarth. His bio-mechanical distortions helped me understand what's going on under the skin at a time when observation alone wasn't doing it any more... and when the more medically accurate studies were confusing rather than clarifying.

[Arshes Nei]

Gotta say, I do well by Hogarth. His bio-mechanical distortions helped me understand what's going on under the skin at a time when observation alone wasn't doing it any more... and when the more medically accurate studies were confusing rather than clarifying.

I used to think this but then when I discovered Bridgman, Hogarth's distortions made less and less sense.

Then I discovered Bammes... forgot to put at least sample plates to show his books, the American one is more of student drawings doing projects but his German ones are an extremely large wealth of info that helped me go into the next phase of drawing.

Mentler has mentioned using many of the books posted previously in the thread to conduct his own studies fyi. This doesn't make him bad, but it's good to go and see why he was using them for study.

http://graphic.org.ru/tors.html Bammes plates.

[Peter Coene]

All muscles can't be flexed at once.

Unless you are on PCPs

In all seriousness you make a very good point. I think though that for learning muscle placement he is great as his immages are easy to follow and help the artist to understand the 3 dimentionality of the figure. As with everything an artist has to pick and choose, and no artist is perfect. There is a lot that can be learned from Hogarthe, and I feel that using his shortcomings as an excuse to rule him out alltogether would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Oh, and in my earlier post I forgot Gunther von Hagens. Go to one of his exhibits. Learn what you need to.

[Elwell]

Hogarth's Dynamic Figure Drawing has good information on inventing the figure. His head drawing book features a canon of proportions that's just plain wrong, though. For straight anatomy you can do much better than Dynamic Anatomy; Bridgman for structure plus Peck for accuracy is a good combination. Bammes is great if you have access to the German version.

[TASmith]

I just want to clarify, I never made an opinion. As with all things art related, I'm still a novice.

[Art_Addict]

Ted Seth Jacobs 's 850 page book on structure is coming out around new year.

That will be the must buy for 2009.

[CCThrom]

I'll keep my eyes open for Bammes... looks great!

Right now, Peck is my "go to" reference.

[Bill]

I would think that who you'd look to for direction would depend on where you'd hope to end up. I'm sure, for instance, that there are plenty of pretentious "High Art" types who wouldn't give a second look to what Art Adams does though the guy can probably outdraw the vast majority of gallery types... IMHO.

On the topic of accuracy I tend to think that it's the inaccuracies that make a figure drawing interesting whether it's Sean Galloway, Glen Keane or C.F. Payne. That said I've seen a few of Mr. Payne's college figure drawings and the guy can, of course, do accurate figure drawing with the best of 'em.

It seems to me that more than anywhere else it's SVA who puts out the nastiest drawers and painters. Kadir Nelson*, Dice Tsutsumi, James Jean, Tomer Hanuka, Sam Weber, etc. etc. etc. etc....

If Tristan happens to read this I'd be curious about your perspective regarding the SVA drawing instruction?

[Elwell]

Actually, I think Kadir went to Pratt.
I won't argue with the rest of your post .
One advantage SVA has is that, between the illustration and fine arts departments, there's a really big and diverse drawing and painting faculty (SVA's fine arts department has always been much more open to representation than many.)

[Bill]

Actually, I think Kadir went to Pratt.

Doh! Well he's still pretty good ...

I know at the 2 state schools I spent time at the different areas were pretty compartmentalized and the individual departments didn't seem to interested the growth or interests of students outside of their own areas. In fact I'd say that the different areas were actually snide to each other at times. Mentioning Norman Rockwell in a fine arts painting class would get you laughed at, for instance.

From the time I got to be around CCAD you got to see the advantage of a program where the individual disciplines are open to students outside of their own. The illustration faculty as well as fine art both want to see you succeed, and drawing is really held in high regard. At least it is relative to where I had been previous. This was my impression anyway and it's a quality I'd look for in a program if I were looking to enter art school.