[KOC]

I am a portrait artist who wants to get into figure drawing now. In the past I have worked from self-taken photos for my portraits. I now want to expand my creativity and work with figures and action. I am looking for reference pics of the male and femal anatomy including bone/muscle structure and also outward appearances. My draw-from-scratch imagination is not so great and I need to study up on it. Can anyone help me out?

KOC

[EviLToYLeT]

WEll...the first thing you should do is take figure drawing classes. Although I've never taken em, I hear they're pretty good.. SEcond thing.... umm other than that do a search on nude/anatomy/whatever references on the forum and you should find it.

[nova]

Nude photo galleries are a good resource. Search for anatomy dealies on the net, too.

And draw people around you, it doesn't always have to be nude.



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*nova
!

[KOC]

thanks guys...I guess I know it doesn't always have to be nude, it's just more fun that way right?! Mostly I just want to study muscle structure and such.

[Ben Barker]

Yeah, it's more fun until you get some wrinkled ass old lady.

[zarprey]

Well I am not the best person to ask about figure drawing...but...I am taking an anatomy for artists class right now at my college and my professor reccommended the book "Human Anatomy for Artists" by Eliot Goldfinger.

While it doesn't appear to have many full body photographs of models it appears to be a very good reference for bones and muscles. The plates in the book are very good and it goes very in depth about the musculature and bone structure.

I'm not saying this is the best anatomy book, but i'm inclined to agree with my professor in thinking it is a rather good one.

Zara

[Freddio]

heh

[quaternius]

Have you already done a "search" under this topic in the archives of this Forum? There's tons of info. in there.

How close is Montevideo to a decent community college - or Minneapolis? There should be wed., Sat. Sun., drop-in studios available for life-drawing. Cost is usually very reasonable. I pay $5.00 per session here on Saturdays.

Have you done a search on amazon.com or are you looking for free sources? Online you can try muscle magazines and fitness magazines; or look for "fitness" models - there's lots of reasonable photos out there that aren't porno which will show muscle definition and active poses for both men and women.

Another quick trick is using the 3D program POSER. A guy named Schlabber has put together an amazing collection of action poses that you can download for free. I'll sometimes use Poser to set up characters so I can light 'em and spin 'em around until a viewpoint or an angle looks interesting, with good light and shadow definition. I'll use that as a starting point for an illustration or study, 'cause with a complicated action pose the shadow definition is much more accurate from a 3D model than trying to do it simply from imagination. Plus, with the built-in 3 light system you get a "primary", a "fill" and "backlighting" which you can change the colors on and get some really groovy things happening. Works for me... I should probably post something on this shouldn't I? Well, one more thing on the list... I'll get to it at some point.

Good luck,

Q

[jzero]

At the risk of sounding repetitive:

"Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist"
by Stephen Rogers Peck

"Constructive Anatomy"
by George Bridgman

/jzero

[Freddio]

yep those are good ones