It's FINALLY Making Sense!

My first two artistic anatomy study guides. Notice the wear on them. I asked my parents to get me "Gray's Anatomy" when I was in high school.

When I was 25-years-old, I rented my first apartment in Brooklyn, NY. It was in Park Slope, roach-infested, had a drug dealer living on the first floor (who liked to vacuum the hall) and was almost broken into one day while I was at work (thank goodness I spent the several-hundreds-of-bucks to install a gate on the fire escape window. Otherwise my few belongings would've been stolen and it would've been my fault for not properly locking the window.)

I'd wake up early every morning (which was scary because…roaches), sit at the counter with "Gray's Anatomy" and the 1957 edition of Fritz Schider's "An Atlas of Anatomy for Artists," trying to learn artistic anatomy so I could pursue my dream of being an animator.

I tried.

And tried.

But trying to remember the Latin names of the muscles and their origins and insertions was impossible.

Now it's almost 26 years later, and finally—FINALLY!—I'm beginning to understand human anatomy.

Why am I just now beginning to understand anatomy? Better resources and instruction.

For years I took classes at the Arts Students League and studied the  books above but it just never came together for me. When I submitted my anatomy class drawings to MTV's "Daria" for an animation job, I got a note back saying I should…learn anatomy! (Yeah, that one was a soul-crusher especially since there was barely any animation in "Daria.")

But once I started learning from online instructors—particularly Stan Prokopenko but also Michael Mentler and Ron Lemen—combined with better books—particularly "Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist" by Stephen Rogers Peck plus Robert Beverly Hale and Thomas Coyle's "Albinus on Anatomy"—things began to click.

Stan Prokopenko (proko.com)

Ron Lemen

Michael Mentler (tsofa.com)

Peck's book has excellent drawings that give a sense of the dimensionality of the bones and muscles; the Albinus book presents the muscles individually to better understand their origins and insertions.

These two books have been essential to me learning artistic anatomy.

These books, especially that on the right, have tremendous insights into how the masters approached drawing the human figure.

An additional important resource has been the internet and 3D images. One of the great things about Proko's anatomy course is that he provides an online, 3D image of the bones and muscles. Being able to see the bones and muscles from any angle allowed me to understand the dimensionality of these things. And understanding that dimensionality helped me draw that object better.

I've also discovered that no one instructor has all of the answers and that combining teachings gives you a more complete understanding of what you're studying. So right now I'm in the process of learning human proportions by combining the teachings of Michael Mentler (whose system of measurement is the same as Robert Beverly Hale's) and Ron Lemen. I like both of their methods; they have similarities and overlap which reinforces my learning.

I'm going to share with you the best of their methods once I'm done learning it myself. I'm confident that if you've had problems understanding human proportions, the method I share with you will be of use. I'm also looking forward to applying the Mentler/Lemen figure proportions to Andrew Loomis's teachings which will make it easier to draw a figure at extreme angles.

From Andrew Loomis's "Figure Drawing for all It's Worth"—I can't wait to deconstruct this!

And THIS!

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