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Anatomy For Artists – Bibliography

This is a running list of books, images, and diagrams that I refer to in my Anatomy for Artists workshop. It is length, so if you are interested in the ‘short list’, please check out my ‘Anatomy Resources‘ post where I share my favorites.

  • Anatomy for 3D Artists. 3dtotal Publishing, 2015
  • Bridgman, George B. The Book of a Hundred Hands. Dover, 1971.
  • Bridgman, George B. Bridgman’s Life Drawing. Dover, 1971.
  • Bridgman, George B. Constructive Anatomy. Dover, 1973.
  • Bridgman, George B. Heads, Features, and Faces. Dover, 1962.
  • Carter, Daniel, and Michael Courtney. Anatomy for the Artist. Parragon, 2003.
  • Civardi, Gionanni. Drawing Portraits. Search Press, 2002.
  • Civardi, Gionanni. Drawing Human Anatomy. Studio Vista, 1995.
  • Delavier, Frederic. Strength Training Anatomy. Human Kinetics, 2006.
  • Fairbanks, Avard T. and Eugene F. Fairbanks. Human Proportions for Artists. Fairbanks Art and Books, 2005.
  • Farris, Edmond J. Art Students’ Anatomy. Dover, 1961.
  • Gordon, Louise. How to Draw the Human Head. Viking, 1977.
  • Graves, Douglas R. Drawing Portraits. Watson Guptill, 1983.
  • Hale, Robert B and Terence Coyle. Anatomy Lessons from the Masters. Watson Guptill, 1977.
  • Hatton, Richard G. Figure Drawing. Dover, 1965.
  • Hamm, J. Drawing the Head and Figure. Perigee, 1982.
  • Hampton, Michael. Figure Dawing: Design and Invention. M. Hampton, 2013.
  • Hansen, John T. Netter’s Anatomy Coloring Book. Elsevier, 2019.
  • Jones, Patrick J. Figures from Life. Korero Press, 2018.
  • Iijima, Takashi. Action Anatomy. Harper Collins Publishers, 2004.
  • Lanteri, Edouard. Modeling and Sculpting the Human Figure. Dover, 1985.
  • Lauricella, Michel. Morpho. Rocky Nook, 2019.
  • Loomis, Andrew. Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth. The Viking Press, 1976.
  • Loomis, Andrew. Drawing The Head and Hands. The Viking Press, 1956.
  • Masters of Anatomy: Book One: The Ideal Male and Female Body, 2015.
  • Maughan, William L. The Artist’s Complete Guide to Drawing the Head. Watson Guptill, 2004.
  • Parramon, J. Human Anatomy. Watson-Guptill, 1990.
  • Peck, Stephen R. Atlas of Human Anatomy. Oxford, 1982.
  • Schider, Fritz. An Atlas of Anatomy for Artists. Dover, 1957.
  • Sheppard, J. Anatomy: A Complete Guide for Artists. Dover, 1992.
  • Sheppard, J. Drawing the Living Figure. Dover, 1984.
  • Sheppard, J. Realistic Figure Drawing. North Light Books, 1991.
  • Simblet, Sarah. Anatomy for the Artist. Dorling Kindersley, 2001.
  • Raynes, John. Human Anatomy for the Artist. Crescent, 1979.
  • Ryder, Anthony. The Artist’s Complete Guide to Figure Drawing. Watson Guptill, 2000.
  • Winslow, Valerie L. Classic Human Anatomy in Motion. Watson Guptill, 2015.
  • Vanderpoel, John H. The Human Figure. Dover, 1958.
  • Zarins, Uldis and Sandis Kondrats. Anatomy for Sculptors. Exonicus, 2014.
  • Zarins, Uldis. Anatomy of Facial Expression. Exonicus, 2017.

Anatomy For Artists – Open Registration

I’m please to announce that registration is now open for my ‘Anatomy for Artists’ webinar series.

  • Sunday, 9-12 PM, Every two weeks
  • ~1-2 hr lecture
  • ~1 hrs study from life and/or references
  • In Person or Online Zoom Webinar
  • Students will work with a live model
  • $19/3-hour session (model fee included)
  • Students are encouraged to ask questions and for feedback while they are working from the model.

    Upcoming Sessions
    I am currently remodeling my Studio. No classes are currently scheduled. Please contact me if you are interested in getting on a waiting list.

Anatomy Resources

These are some of my favorite anatomy references. I collect anatomy books, so this is by no means a list of everything that I own, but they are the ones that are my recommendations and favorites. A longer list is the Bibliography for my Anatomy for Artists workshops.

Recommended for art students (of any age and experience)

Books

Anatomy for Sculptors (Zarins)
If you are only going to buy one anatomy book, this is the one. Available in Hardcover, Paperback, and PDF. Significantly cheaper if you buy it directly from the Publisher instead of Amazon.

Atlas of Human Anatomy (Peck) [Amazon Affiliate]
Of the traditional art anatomy books, this one is a classic, and one of my favorites. Beautiful illustrations and detailed information. My copy is well worn, covered in clay, paint, and ink.

Optional references for advanced studies

Anatomy of Facial Expression (Zarins)
Available in Hardcover, Paperback, and PDF.

And for the sheer beauty of anatomy and the figure

Anatomy for the Artist (Simblet) [Amazon Affiliate]

Anatomy: A Complete Guide for Artists (Sheppard) [Amazon Affiliate]

Online Resources

General Anatomy

  • Proko
    • Tutorial webinars. High quality production with humor. Includes references, 3D models, videos, animations, and demonstrations. Expensive, but worth it.
    • Anatomy of the Human Body Course

Head and Neck Anatomy

Study Resources

Mobile Applications

Corona virus

Due to ‘Social Distancing’, I am postponing all classes until April 28, 2020 (at least). I will update the class schedule availability based on recommendations from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Oregon Health Authority (OHA).

You can sign still sign up for Anatomy for Artists and Figure Studies classes when classes resume. Any advanced registrations will be honored for future classes or are fully refundable if the class is cancelled.

Stay tuned. I will be sharing useful online resources and am looking at doing some live streaming.

Figure Drawing with Daniel Maidman

This weekend I am at a pre-conference workshop with Daniel Maidman, at the Figurative Art Conference and Expo. Daniel is someone whose work I have admired for years. It was such a privilege to be able to actually draw with him and have him critique my work.

Here are some of my drawings from the first day.

As Daniel pointed out, ‘These are for practice, not art’. It was good advice to just pick one thing to work on for the day (for me, it was value transitions). He also recommended I look at the work of Jennifer Balkan and Anders Zorn. I took the reference to Zorn as a compliment, as I’ve always been inspired by Zorn paintings and drawings.

Each of these poses was 20 mins. Long enough to accomplish something, but not long enough to try and finish everything.

Some other key points I picked up:

– Start with the block-in (outline), then create the shadow map. Erase the shadow map as you render tones.

– Don’t rush it. Better to leave something unstated than to just try to fill in.

– Tone from left-to-right or right-to-left, depending on handedness

– Strokes are defined by (in order of significance)

1. Handedness
2. Avoiding smearing
3. Form

– Along form on the edges of core shadow
– Across from in the core shadow

– If you see a large are of cast shadow with a common tone, you aren’t looking close enough. Look for the core shadow and reflected light to see to the sub forms.

– Work dark to light (usually).

– Areas of pigmentation (nipples, penis), just use the pencil (rather than including the white prismacolor) to keep the tonal range down.

– Art is being decisive about what you are stating and the audience can take it or leave it. When you discover that something isn’t correct anatomically, you get to decide if you care.

– Work from life if you can. Don’t work from photographs for at least ten years. Then you know what distortions there are and how to avoid them.

Sionna

Another week, another sculpture. Here are the results of my first day modeling with this pose. Life has conspired to keep me out of of the studio recently, but I’m glad to be back at it.

Today I went from zero-to-sixty, modeling quickly. I started from scratch with the armature and just went from there.

And here are some of the prep drawings I did a few weeks ago.

Portrait Sculpture with Dora Natella

I just finished a week-long workshop with Dora Natella on portrait sculpture. Dora was one of my favorite sculpture instructors as an undergraduate and post-graduate. This was a rare treat to work with her again because her workshop was at the Brookgreen Gardens. Brookgreen Gardens is one of the largest and finest sculpture gardens in the world. Brookgreen Gardens has an onsite instruction studio and works closely with the National Sculpture Society to sponsor Artists in Residence, workshops, and gallery shows.

The outline of class was:
Day 1: Lecture on the anatomy and proportions of the head. Dora doing a live demonstration of a generic head.
Day 2: Creating a generic head.
Day 3: Modeling a portrait from the model
Day 4: Lecture on sculpting the hands and feet. Modeling time of our choice of hand or foot.
Day 5: Finish modeling portrait from model. Demonstration on how to hollow the clay sculpture in preparation for firing.

This is the final portrait of ‘Donna’ after three days of modeling; two from life.

Clay

Here the hand that I modeled after lecture. This is about an hour or two worth of modeling.

In addition to an excellent workshop, I spent my lunches and evenings wandering through the extensive gardens.

And of course, of the hundreds of sculptures on display, I found a lifetime of inspiration.

Marc and Jessica

It is great when the models take their work as seriously as the artists. Modeling is hard work and some amateur models do not anticipate that and some experienced models get complacent. I have really enjoyed working working with Marc and Jessica independently, so it was a rare treat to work with them both in a joint modeling session.

All drawings are done with iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and Procreate.

The image below was a 5 minute sketch. Drawing one person in 5 minutes is challenge enough. Trying to get each figure and their relationship to each other in 5 minutes is just masochism. I’m always inspired by artists who draw quickly. I find that the spontaneity and economy of line on fast drawings make them feel less static.

I wasn’t sure about this drawing. The height and size difference made this pose s but awkward for Jessica. But once I got into it, it feels kind of like a superhero pose. Both heroes locking arms in stalwart defense against a villainous onslaught. It was a 20 minute pose

The following pose was my favorite for the evening. There was just a tenderness to this moment that I could see developing into a full sculpture. 20 minutes.

This last pose was longer, about 50 minutes total.

Tutorial: Sculpting Eyes

One question I hear often from beginning sculptors is, “How do I sculpt eyes?” My first response is usually, “The same way you sculpt hair, noses, hands, feet, and everything else. Observe the form and make that.” After that less-than-helpful response, here are some of my approaches and preferred references.

There are a few key points, which I will illustrate, but are worth listing as reminders. I actually use this as mental checklist when I sculpting myself.

  • There is more than one technique for sculpting eyes, and your style and the scale of the sculpture will influence which one you think it most appropriate. I use several techniques, but I am generally consistent within a certain scale, just changing when larger scale allows me to capture more realism with my clumsy hands.
  • The most important form of the eye is the edge that catches the light. It doesn’t really matter what forms you create as much as how they catch the light.
  • With an upright pose with standard lighting, the upper lid as it meets the eye lash is the most important form for defining the overall shape of the eye.
  • The form of the bottom eye lid is optional. But if you create it, the upper edge of the lower edge is the most important facet as it catches the light.
  • The crease under the lower lid is best left minimized or eliminated. In general, creases and folds, even if observed tend to make the sculpture look older than the model. I’m not sure why, but it does.
  • The eyeball is a sphere insert into the socket of the skull. That means it protrudes from the plane of the face.
  • The upper lid protrudes further than the lower lid.

Classical Approaches to Eyes

Painted Form

Personally, I would never use this approach, but it is common in early Egyptian and Greek sculptures. It is useful for using the same symbols to represent the eye as are done in contemporaneous drawing and painting, but I think it does a disservice to what you can get from actual light and it certainly is neither realistic nor characteristic of a portrait. at its worst, it looks like a face drawn with a marker on a balloon. At it’s best, it can still be beautiful. The difference is usually how convincing the form is under the painting.

Inlaid Hollow

A more realistic version of the Painted Form, particularly in classical bronze, the entire eye is hollowed out and the eyeball is inlaid with ivory and the iris is inlaid with rare minerals like lapis lazuli. This creates a much more realistic coloring. However, the brightness of ivory eyes against a dark patina bronze can be a bit unnerving. It tends to look more natural on marble sculpture, which were often painting with pigment to the color of skin and fabric from head to toe. Again, the colors of the paint and the stylization of the eye are more a form to present a painted surface than letting the light do the work for you.

Since many classical sculptures eyes were looted for their original rare materials, it is very common to see classical art without any inlay, and jus the hollow. Like classical sculpture often being found without limbs and heads intact after hundreds of years of neglect and//or earthquakes, it has become a cliche to actually leave the eyes intentionally hollowed to demonstrate a more antique style. I actually use this technique often depending on the size of the sculpture. For small sized portraits, the level of detail to capture the iris and the white of the eye may be finicky or just unnecessary. However, the larger the eyes, the more vacant and haunted this style will look. This may be the intent and makes for a useful emotional tool.

Stylized Edges

Particularly the eyebrow, the bridge of the nose, and the shape of the eye. This style has more natural shapes, but the edges tend tend to be carved with more acute edges, catching light directly to create direct highlights or cast shadows. These stylized edge can be used in an combination of techniques sculpting the pupils and irises below.

In my own work

Particularly at the scale that I typically work at 1:3 or 1:2, I like to create hard edges to cast deeper shadows. In the WIP sculpture below, I have deliberately sculpted long eye lashes to catch the light and cast a strong shadow.

Blank Eyes

The form around the eyes are modeled with realistic detail, including the shape of the upper and lower lid. However there is no distinction between the white of the eye, the eye, and the pupil. This is very common, and also one of my preferred techniques on smaller sculptures. From a pure form view, it is all the most anatomically correct version of the eye, as there is no surface delineation between the coloration of the iris or the pupil. In classical sculptures, some of these blank eyes may or may not have been painted.

Scribed Iris

The next level of detail includes a realistic modeled eye with a scribed iris. This is starting to let the light do the work for you. In this case, many of these eyes are able to show more subtle expression by showing the direction of the pupil facing. Typically, the pupil is not also scribed as that tends to make the eye look a bit creepy. Catching light all the way around the pupil is jarring. It is worth noting that rarely is the entire iris visible, except when the expression is surprise or wide-eyed horror. Scribing the entire iris in a stylized fashion tends to undermine the realism.

Carved (or Extruded) Highlight

My personal favorite, and my go-to method for portraiture if the scale allows is it to 1) carve the eye socket, 2) model and insert the eye ball (when using additive materials like clay), 3) Overlap with the upper lid, extruding the eye lashes to arch the light. 4) Support with the lower lid, carving the top edge to catch the light, 5) Scribe the iris, 6) Carve the pupil, leaving a highlight. I find this to be the most ‘sculptural’ approach letting the form do the work for you and creating an eye that appears ‘believable’.

Depending on the artist, this carved pupil may be stylized into the shape of a heart or a ‘Pac Man’.

In my own work

This is my preferred technique for life-size and larger work.

In other artists

This sculptor is roughing the irises to indicate the striation of color, carving the pupil leaving a highlight.

This sculptor carved out the iris completely, leaving only the negative space for the iris to catch the highlight. It is worth noting how voluminous the upper and lower eyelids are, really demonstrating how they wrap around the sphere of the eye ball.

Drilled Double Pupil

A version of the Carved Highlight is the drilled double pupil. With this technique, the sculpture actually used a drill to create two shallow holes, slightly overlapping, side by side. Personally, I don’t like this style, as the circular drills look artificial and the resulting highlight tends to be smaller than an actual highly, with a sharp edge. As there are no straight lines in the human body, there are also no perfect circles.

So, which technique do you prefer and why? Have you seen a style that I don’t describe here? Please share!

Julia and Brian

This Sunday’s drawing at the Whit was really fun. A rare treat to have two experienced models working together. And yes, drawing two models is more than twice as hard because you have two capture both figures and the relationship between them.

Their casual intimacy was really beautiful.

All drawings done on iPad Pro, Procreate, Apple Pencil

I was inspired for a number of sculpture ideas. Most of my figurative work is solitary individuals. I like the idea of a series of intimate, romantic–but not necessarily erotic figures together. One of my all-time favorite sculptures is the Rape of Proserpina by Bernini. The technical and emotional detail is exquisite. Unfortunately, as beautiful as the sculpture is, the canonization of rape is not my forte.

I would love to create sculpture that celebrates the intimacy love. More like Rodin’s, ‘The Kiss’.

What are your favorite romantic sculptures?

Figurative Art