Anatomy, Anatomy, Anatomy
January 9, 2010 1:42 am
Anatomy Sketches
Any first year art student knows if you want to draw the figure you need to know some anatomy, and if you want to draw the figure well, you need to know anatomy very well. Simply put, when you draw something like a table, what you see is what you get. A box is a box. When you draw the human form what you see on the outside is given its shape by what you do not see underneath on the inside. Hence the need to know anatomy to represent the figure well.
When I was younger I used to sit filling sketch books with sketches of anatomy. I’d fill them tirelessly over and over every chance I had. Waiting for a bus, eating lunch, watching tv. Every chance I got. As I grew older and more interested in things like color, style and other more expressive aspects of art I seem to have fallen out of the practice of doing anatomy sketches.
While I think the style aspects of my art have progressed nicely as I look at my art these days I am somewhat unsatisfied with my technical abilities. I didn’t sit around very long looking for answers on how to remedy this before coming to the obvious conclusion that I need to get back to doing regular anatomy studies. And so it begins…
On a related note. I was thinking how in “The old days” many artists would observe cadaver dissections in order to better understand anatomy. This is something I am currently looking into to see if its even possible for artists to do these days. I may be open to doing that. Def need to check out the Bodies exhibit as well.
