What is Reddit's opinion of Classic Human Anatomy: The Artist's Guide to Form, Function, and Movement?

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Classic Human Anatomy

I can't seem to find the clothing book at the moment, but I'll get back to you if I find it.

I hear you. Without the live drawing classes on my calendar every Monday I likely would have already given up. If Figure Drawing sessions aren't an option right now here's a link to what I have been told is an outstanding anatomy book -Classic Human Anatomy: The Artist's Guide to Form, Function, and Movement. I am hoping to get in the very, very near future.

<strong>Amazon</strong>, and thanks, as I was looking that up for you, as I found out she just published a relatively new book I didn't even know about. I'm definitely going to pick it up and it's called: <strong>Classic Human Anatomy in Motion: The Artist's Guide to the Dynamics of Figure Drawing</strong>

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.

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.