Complex Anatomy

[morg]

It's related to the amount of time you spend practicing drawing humans. If you spend more time doodling landscapes, then you'll find yourself slowly perfecting them. In return, investing more time drawing your faces will help you notice a significant improvement. It has nothing to do with talent or ability, it's all about practice.

Starting off by reading books and studying articles is a bad idea because a) Art is a creative study and can be learnt by practice and experiment only. anatomy is the only thing that might need a bit of research on, and even then skimming through a few picture tutorials on Deviant Art would suffice b) It takes a fun out of it. Art is something we do out of passion and a way of letting out your inner creativity, and that concept gets trampled on when you study it just like any other subject at school. I mean have you ever met an art teacher who enters class and asks his students to open to page 35 or write an essay about art?
Obviously there are a few guidelines that should be followed but that shouldn't be your main focus, otherwise you're going to find difficulty creating a personalized art style.

In short: practice makes perfect, so sit and doodle more faces.

[Sonomi]

(Disclaimer: I'm about give advice that most artists would probably not reccomend but a method that worked for me. My background came from drawing by reference. I tried various anime styles with my older brother when we were little...miss that :')

NialGrenville, in order to improve I think you need to focus on the style you want to draw. Anatomy is great...when I was starting out this is not the route I took. No matter what you observe, you'll eventually get a feel for that anyhow. I'm only here to offer a different perspective, not to contest anatomy though (it's obviously useful).

1) It looks like you want to do anime-style proportions. So my first tip is to open up Google and do an image search on your favorite anime. Download a few pictures you like and really look at them (zoom in and look at different parts). I have a sizable rack of Shonen Jump magazines, so this might do as well if you don't need color.

2) Practice drawing one part of that picture. If you need help with eyes, zoom in on the eyes and examine how the parts are put together. Spend as much time as you need on this. After drawing something so many times, you will eventually development your own personal methods for drawing each part of the body.

3) If you get stuck, watch some speed drawings on YouTube for inspiration. Don't get too hung up on why you can't reproduce the same quality of art at once, but instead focus on what you can learn from what you just saw.

4) Find out proportions by looking at one part of the body and asking yourself "how many x can fit in the space between this". Let me give another example with eyes. The typical anime character's eyes have a gap of one eye length between them. That is, taking a measurement with your thumb and index finger, that's about how much space is in between them (results may vary). I really don't care how silly this sounds.

Do not be afraid to try different styles and use anatomical references. Even Kishimoto used to draw fan art of DBZ, and when he struggled with hands he filled an entire book with nothing but practice sketches until he felt comfortable with it. The style he developed is very different from Toriyama's though. We all learn from each other in order to improve ourselves. Take the opportunity to learn from others as much as possible.

Free to take it as a grain of salt. My approach to many things are not always orthodox.

[NialGrenville]

Finally after all this practice. Granted it was 29% anatomy, and 71% suggestion.

I still have a bunch to do. Which is why the construction lines are still present. This was my first digital drawing after I drew a bunch on paper. Which I'll be posting in the near future, when my scanner has returned.

Thank you all so much!

[Bladewild]

One way of tackling is by drawing poses, lots and lots of poses. Everyday if possible. Just take 10-15mins. Even 30mins to a few hours. This will give you a natural understanding of how the human body is structured and what it looks like. You know what a book looks like, it's easy and simple. You see it often (i hope). However, a human body is complex and most people never can quite get how it truly looks just from their imagination. Because there are a lot of subtle things you have to keep in mind.

http://www.posemaniacs.com/
http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice- ... e-drawing/
(You can try the hands and feet also)

I started out not understanding how the body naturally behave but eventually you get the habit of visualizing it once you do it more and more. Eventually you simplify parts into boxes and circles to represent the chest or the head. You notice how the back actually has depth or that the the curve is very important depending on what area of the body you are drawing. If you really want to get better, learning your fundamentals will put you far ahead.

Anime or cartoons is basically the simplification of real life. Once you understand how real life works, simplification gets easier. Also if you want to make something cute, always refer to baby pictures or cute things. (especially babies).

Though some anime stuff I still don't quite understand so I just sort of wing it.... It really depends what style you want.

Still, one of the biggest problems I can see with most beginning artists is the lack of depth or 3d. So keep in mind what the picture will look like if it's seen from a different angle.

[procutemeister]

If you want to draw natural-looking anatomy, you'll want to at least study realistic drawings and pictures (if not draw in a realistic style). Anatomical references are extremely important, you won't be able to learn properly without them. Draw from life if you can. The more you practice, the more natural the proportions, poses and such will become to you.

So, since I just studied anatomy in art school, I'll outline what my professor had us do. It's very useful for learning and becoming acquainted with the human figure.

A good way to start drawing anatomy is not by going straight for drawing a full human figure. Start by drawing stick figures and articulate the joints. This will help you nail basic proportions and poses without having to worry about musculature, etc. Stick figures are the foundation of your whole figure. They may seem basic, but they are fundamental.

Add onto the stick figure with basic shapes like cubes and spheres (not squares or circles) to help you master the form of the body in 3 dimensions.

Once you've gotten used to this, consider trying to draw the human skeleton, then the musculature. It's difficult and complicated, but it helps to learn about the construction of the body, and to build further upon the stick figure that you already have. Once your stick figures are proportionate and appropriately posed, the bones and muscles should sit upon this framework naturally.

After that of course you draw a "proper" figure, with skin, hair, etc. Draw from life if you can, again; either attend a drawing class with a sitter/model, or go people watching and just draw who you see. (The challenge here is to draw people quickly, since they're not going to be posing in 1 pose for you. It trains you to look at the body and quickly pin down the pose and the person's features.)

Once you have all of these basics you should be able to vary body types, facial features, and so on because you have a solid foundation to work on.

*Disclaimer that this is for a realistic style of drawing. If you want to stylize your drawings--say, in an anime style--studying real anatomy is helpful because once you know the rules, you'll know how to bend (or break) them. Also, studying others' art is extremely helpful, especially the art of artists whose style you wish to emulate. What aspects of their style do you like or dislike? You can incorporate these into your own style, but of course don't become a carbon copy. As well, the study is useless without practice; you'll only improve and develop your own unique style if you actually go and draw.

Wow, I didn't realize how long this had gotten, but I hope it helps

[mard]

Well, this is something I learned close to a decade ago in an art class I was taking, for when it comes to drawing people. Find a base image to practice with. Now then, when you are trying to draw the image, turn the image you are trying to draw upside-down. If you're looking at it right side up, you will get all proportions wrong, and nothing will look realistic.

This idea translates to any image. If you draw it upside-down, the image tends to come out more natural, and more realistic looking, due to the way the brain perceives images. If you look at it right side up, you use one side of the brain, when in practice, you want to be using the other side.

Basically, when it comes to drawing, especially with things such as people, drawing the image upside-down will yield better results.

It sounds weird I know, but it works, and is in reality quite practical.