Anatomy for Artists: A New Approach to Discovering, Learning and Remembering the Body

Bring Your Figure Drawings to Life

To draw the human body with accuracy and confidence, you have to know how its anatomy functions beneath the skin. But like many artists, you may struggle to apply traditional anatomy courses to your work in a meaningful way. This unique guide bridges the gap between observation and creative expression by showing you how to use your own body as a reference tool for better work.

Whether your goal is to achieve tight realism or stylized illustration, Anatomy for Artists goes beyond perceptual instruction, enabling you to blend what you see with what you learn and feel to be true about human anatomy. This active, physical approach to anatomy will allow you to develop rendering skills that capture the human form with greater richness and clarity.

Unlike conventional anatomy books, this guide focuses on the body's movements as opposed to its static structure. As you follow along, you will not only learn the relationships between bones, muscles and tendons, you'll observe these relationships in your own body as you perform various motions and exercises. Detailed illustrations reveal intricate anatomical features and also illustrate how the body's individual parts function together and affect one another.

When you begin drawing again after completing this book, you'll see improvement in your work right away, from rendering details to achieving proper proportions. You'll also experience a greater satisfaction from your drawing as you capture the essence of the human form with greater speed and ease.

Anthony Apesos is an artist and professor at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. He has exhibited throughout the eastern U.S. and in California and China, has done major commissions, and has been reviewed/published in the Boston Herald, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, New Art Examiner (regular reviewer), San Francisco Art Week, Art and Arts Exchange.

Karl Stevens' graphic novel Guilty is in Harvard's Fogg Art Museum and won a 2004 Xeric Foundation grant for comic self-publishing (established by Peter Laird, creator of the highly successful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Stevens has been compared to such renowned comic creators as Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes and Joe Sacco. He draws a regular strip for the alternative weekly oston Phoenix.