Want Your Drawing to Stand Out? Learn Artistic Anatomy.

There are many stories I want to tell and my preferred method for telling those stories is through animation and graphic novels.

In order to give my stories the quality they deserve and to give the audience an experience they deserve, I need to draw well. And in order to draw well, I need to know human anatomy.

I first started studying anatomy in 1994, three years out of college, waking at 4am to sit at the kitchen counter in a roach-infested Brooklyn apartment. In the dark I vainly tried to make sense of all of the Latin-based names. There was no internet for me to consult, only the few books I could find including Gray’s Anatomy.

That attempt to learn anatomy eventually failed as did the multiple follow-up attempts. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around all of the names, origin points, insertion points and functions of the multitude of muscles. Once I did get far only to be stopped cold when I got to the large number of muscles in the lower arm and the leg.

But here are examples as to why I decided to try it again:

While I don't possess anywhere near the skill that these artists have, I DO know that these professionally drawn images contain anatomical mistakes that I want to learn to avoid.

I want to ultimately create the type of work that I like seeing from others, work that combines imagination with skill. 

That’s why I’m determined to learn artistic anatomy.