Reddit reviews Artistic Anatomy: The Great French Classic on Artistic Anatomy
We found 9 Reddit comments about Artistic Anatomy: The Great French Classic on Artistic Anatomy. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Watson-Guptill
I just want to start out by saying: screw those haters. All good artists started out as excited novices and got better through years of practice. I've been drawing for over a decade, and I started out at the same skill level that you did. No one just picks up a pencil and immediately has a flawless understanding of how to make art. You're one of my very favorite people on reddit and an exemplary moderator, and people who hate on beginners are people who don't understand how learning works.
/fume
General Art Advice for Beginners:
I did actually volunteer teach an art class on drawing people for middle schoolers, so I've worked with beginners before. Something important to understand is that humans are very difficult to draw. Even though people make very interesting subject matter, it's kind of like picking up a violin for the first time and trying to play Beethoven's 5th symphony by ear. Sure, after a few thousand attempts you'll probably have it down, but you'll have a much easier time starting with boring basic stuff like notation and scales. I'm going to talk about the way I taught their first few classes, because it seemed to work pretty well.
The first day of class, we talked about learning the tools, and how to get a full range of shade out of the pencil. A good beginning art exercise in general is to try to produce a smooth gradient from the lightest shade you can make to the darkest. I still draw gradients all the time in the margins of my notebooks, and it's the first thing I attempt when I pick up a new tool. Light and shadow is how you create the feeling of depth in art, so being able to produce a full range of shades with your tools is the first step to being able to draw believable 3D objects. Even if you plan on drawing people in a minimalistic (source) or stylized (source) way like these examples, being able to draw light and dark, thin and thick lines will help you to give dimension to the image. Even these 'simplified' drawing styles use line weight and shading to show the form of the person.
The next step I recommend for beginners is to draw some simple 3D shapes. For the middle schoolers, I brought in a bunch of building blocks/simple kids toys and a flashlight. I pointed the light at the blocks from different angles and pointed out to them where the highlights and shadows were, did a bit of talking about why some areas are in shadow and how it helps the brain understand the object, and then we all drew spheres/pyramids/cylinders/cubes together for a few hours, trying to get it to look as detailed and 3D as possible. This is really easy to do at home, is a very beginner-friendly exercise and it makes excellent practice.
A few classes later, I showed them how you could stack some cylinders on an angled triangle block and make something that looks like a leg. We used the blocks to make 'people' shapes and tried to draw the block person. It's a really good exercise to break complicated shapes into simpler ones- I still will pretty much always start figure drawings with the arms as simple cylinders, the hips as a bowl shape, the feet as triangles. You can do this with every day objects too- a bed looks like a rectangular box, a water bottle looks like a cylinder etc. It's pretty easy to draw a rectangular box in perspective, and it's much easier to draw bed details on top of a rectangular box than it is to freehand a bed in perspective with no guidelines. While you're learning, I recommend periodically drawing simple objects around your house- its generally easier than drawing people, and it's great practice.
Those are the fundamentals that I would recommend you work on before looking at resources on how to draw/paint people. Art tutorials will often start with framework/simple shapes, but having control over the tools, understanding how to draw 3D shapes and working on breaking down complex objects into simple ones really makes a good foundation for the information in tutorials.
Learning Resources: I want to echo what /u/GodlessGravy said and point you towards the books of Andy Loomis. This book in particular was recommended to me by my figure drawing teacher, and does take you through figure drawing step by step. I'd also recommend (eventually) investing in a good anatomy book for reference. I use one called Artistic Anatomy and have found it to be very thorough- and it fits in well in a budget. There's also this tumblr blog which is a great compilation of resources.
My personal favorite place for art tutorials is youtube. I'm a pretty visual learner, so nothing does the trick for me quite like a video. These are the all the art channels I'm subscribed to (a lot of different styles, some quite advanced stuff mixed in here):
For Tutorials:
And for speedpaints:
Advice for IWBM specifically: Based on what I've seen of your work, it looks like whatever you're using for digital painting does not have pen pressure capabilities (or maybe the pen pressure isn't enabled, or maybe you just have a very steady hand?). For digital artwork, ideally you want something that reacts to how hard you press on the pen, and responds by making the lines thinner/thicker or lighter/darker. Working without pen pressure makes your job much harder!
If you're interested in graphics tablets which will have dynamic pen pressure, the cheapest ones are around $50-$80. If you're willing to pay extra, good tablets are a solid investment. My Intuos3 has held up for at least 8 years now.
But you don't need to get one right away! You can get a better range of shades in your art just by messing with the brush opacity, which is a feature all good digital art programs (even free ones) should offer. Just turn down the opacity of your brush, and then you can lay in lighter lines and work up to darker ones. You can quickly do a loose sketch with a low opacity brush (maybe 20%?) and then reinforce the lines that look right or that you want to be bolder by passing the brush over it again. That's a good way to 'cheat' in some of the advantages of pen pressure. I find that a small brush at a low opacity, set to a 'multiply' blending mode will imitate the feel of a hard pencil quite well. If you really can't seem to get a dynamic range of shades with your digital tools, I recommend switching to traditional for a while.
And as always, the best advice for any artist: practice! The more you draw, the faster you'll improve. :D And if you ever need an essay about some art-related topic, feel free to bug me for it. I can be one of your free resources.
(Obligatory apology for the wall of text. Obligatory reminder that I love you and you're awesome.)
That first link is a great kind of superficial guide.
I'm curious as to which book you prefer, I hope you update us when you have the chance. On the topic, I've always been partial to artistic anatomy
Artistic Anatomy by Dr.Paul Richer is what I learned from :)
It's been 8 years since I graduated and I haven't found work as a 3d artist yet but I think I could give some advice to get you started. Feel free to take it with a grain of salt because, as I said, I haven't found work yet.
Get a goal as an artist. Jack-of-all-trades is good. But I think its better if you focus on one and make it your own. If you are shooting for a job in games then you may want to showcase that. If you're going for a general 3D artist position you probably have a bit more freedom. In your case I think your modeling needs work. Get into some high res modeling like mudbox or z brush. The thing about modeling is you have to know your subject matter like the back of your hand. For you I might suggest getting a few good anatomy references and learning about muscle structure (and to properly learn that you will need to know a bit about bone structure). If you are going to model weapons (which I really haven't done) I would say to learn how they are made where does one part meet another, and so on.
While I don't have tons of experience with rigged animation your rigging looks pretty solid. I'm pretty sure you can get work as a rigger but most places will want you to do animation too. Many artists seem to fall into being either a animator type artist or a modeler type artist. And you pick up a few things to accompany that focus.
Presentation You're going to want to learn a bit about lighting and rendering when you rework your reel. The black background is a bit harsh to look at. I tend to have two extremes, one where I show my model with a Final Gather/ GI render and then other times (if its a game model) I'll show it just as it is in the Maya window with the hud removed. There are several other ways to go about this I'm sure. Oh and show wireframes when showing off your modeling.
The biggest thing is to Keep Working and Learning If you are going to redo your site you might be messing with some web software and with the reel some video editing and/or compositing software and so you will be ready to sink your teeth into a good project. Do that.
ALSO You're leaving the warm comfort of college and its peer review goodness. You are about to enter your bubble where you create pretty much on your own. Try your damndest to step out of that when you can. NETWORK! If you can get on board with a good group thing jump on it. Sometimes they suck but when they are good they tend to produce excellent portfolio work.
Just be tenacious. Don't be scared by my eight years I had a few unfortunate personal events that held me back. I am still at it too. Also, if you don't live in California consider it. Just consider. There are several other hotspots in different industries around the US. I really hope this has been helpful.
www.3d.sk - great photo reference of people. Lots of stuff you can use on an image plane.
My favorite anatomy book
I would say, if you really want to make fast progress, yes, art classes would help you tremendously! But of course, you could also very much manage on your own via resources like books (Artistic Anatomy helped me a bunch with male torsos)and online tutorials. The problem with that is that, sometimes it can be difficult to figure out what you’re doing wrong when you don’t have someone who knows art more than you to tell you what to fix.
I can also recommend one artist on YouTube who is both an online art teacher and does extremely in-depth tutorials; I learned so much from her it’s honestly ridiculous. She’s not a furry artist in the slightest; however, she specializes in character design and portraiture so a lot of concepts she’s taught in her videos I have applied to my own furry drawings. She, (Instebrak) does do online private tutoring though I’ve never participated.
Paul Richer's Artistic Anatomy is effin amazing, and what my anatomy classes in school used.
I also like Hogarth's work as well, although it's a bit more stylistic, and doesn't go as well into the muscular system IMO. Anatomy book+figure drawing+yes, Loomis is also awesome= learning. Drawing from life in everyday situations helps as well.
I would suggest picking up a couple anatomy books and simply copying them. Like I said, you'd be surprised at how much this teaches you. First, take a look at Bridgman's guide It's very loose and probably easier to learn from because of it. But there is complete accuracy in the looseness of his drawings, so I know I learned a ton about the figure from him.
Secondly, I'd pick up Richer's Artistic Anatomy This is a ton more informational, and the drawings are much tighter, but spot on figures and great info. This is one of my teacher's favorite reference books, and he's been published in Spectrum 13 times, and worked for George Lucas.
Like this one?
Anything specific you can recommend? I was actually going to buy some books. I mean there's so many to choose from
Thanks
Yes, as you've mentioned the head is tiny, knowing is half the battle I guess. The contours are pretty nice, but the picture is missing value/shadings so it looks incredibly flat. A lot of folks here will recommend anatomy lessons, which would certainly be a good start. Understanding how the the arms relate to the chest, the chest to the head and neck, all the processes in the skeleton that compose the human figure and how they all interact with one another will greatly improve how you see those things.
If I may, I'd like to elaborate on something that is easy to miss as an upcomer: people in real life almost never stand up perfectly straight or are never seen straight on by the eye in a perfect symmetrical orientation. The body is not perfectly symmetrical in most cases. In this picture, we see your model looking off to the side while holding the bow, but it looks uncanny and stiff. The hand on the hip exacerbates this flaw because usually when the hand is on the hip, the body's weight is usually leaning into it even if it's only slightly. Shifting the body's weight will help make the pose less stiff and more natural.
My recommendation is to draw from a photograph or some other reference (real models are awesome)! If you don't have a friend that likes being drawn, there are some sites out there that can help you refine your chops. Then, you can revisit an imagined piece like this and be able to make the adjustments that will make her come life. One site frequently recommended on here is the Pixel Lovely Trainer (also in the side bar); it cycles through tons of different pictures that you can sketch out at your own pace.
Some books about Anatomy:
Artistic Anatomy
Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist
An awesome tome about Figure Drawing:
Figure Drawing for All It's Worth
Gesture Drawing Tutorial (video) - something that may help you develop your skill
Additionally, and some folks may not like this, but taking some kind of drawing course might help you build your skills efficiently. I know when I did a 101 Drawing class for a college elective, it kept me focused, forced me to explore different elements of drawing that I would never have considered, and really helped me understand the relationships of different shapes and objects in a space. (another thing it helped me do was force me to work within a deadline window, which becomes fairly important when looking for confidence).
All in all I think you are onto a great start and with a little direction you can improve pretty quickly. There's a shit ton of information out there and it's all waiting for you to check it out!