Anatomy Reference Practice Thread *SFW with nudity*

[ClockHand]

This thread is made so people can practice anatomy, look at the practice of other users and can look at their improvement through time.

For this, we are going to place pictures of people, who must be used to capture the anatomy, volume, dimensions, the form and the silhouette, without being stained by styles. The other way to work, and preferred ones you have mastered or learned the first, is colors, using the images as a reference for color, light and shading.

You don’t need to be perfect, sketches, raw draws, everything is good, the main goal is to capture the anatomy, the shapes and the structure of an individual. So over production on the work is not needed; painting can wait ones you control in a better level what you are drawing, and so shading.

You don't need to draw the whole bodies, even so is recommended; this is because going in details in certain parts of the human body, trying to capture the shape in certain parts of the body, is as equally good than doing a overall body.

You don't need to be afraid on drawing body parts, neither to censor. As this is for anatomy practice and this is an art forum, I believe there is an agreement between users and the medium ones we deal with human body.

Again, this thread is about studying anatomy, not to be used as a reference for actions to your own personal style, neither to bend the bodies on the pictures on a personal style. It’s all for the sake of human anatomy.

Sexual pornographic material are not allowed, as this is a thread to learn about anatomy, not to sexualized, objetivize or gave sexual intentions to the human body.

Tips, try to pick one or two pictures, focus on those, work them, and post your results here. Go slow, ask here for critiques and help, look at other who have picked pictures similar to yours and see what can you take from them. Feed yourself from the products of others.

Male Anatomy.
http://i.imgur.com/9Svot.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/fEIAah.jpg

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3ltzfeDNT1rrdb8lo1_1280.jpg

http://www.scott-eaton.com/wp/wp-content/bodies_in_motion_sword.jpg

http://www.scott-eaton.com/wp/wp-content/bodies_in_motion_01_tn.jpg

http://www.fineart4men.com/pics/ph0312.jpg

http://www.fineart4men.com/pics/ph0563.jpg

http://www.fineart4men.com/pics/ph0979.jpg

http://www.fineart4men.com/pics/ph1129.jpg

Female Anatomy.
http://i.imgur.com/IpzxL.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Lbjk7h.jpg

http://www.met-art.com/g1/mosteroticteens1302106.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/TDfiU.jpg

http://philip.greenspun.com/images/pcd2668/three-graces-straight-full-27.3.jpg

Face.
http://images.beijing2008.cn/20070905/Img214148319.jpg

http://www.simonhoegsberg.com/faces_of_new_york/images/01_faces.jpg

http://files.myopera.com/arshamr/albums/685704/Beautiful%20Faces%20Around%20the%20World%20(15).jp g

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/photogalleries/africa_faces/images/primary/faces_p62.jpg

http://img.izismile.com/img/img3/20100901/640/wrinkled_faces_640_04.jpg

Hands.
http://www.drawninblack.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/WindsweptSummer-Left-Hand-Reference.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dwu-kcO94DY/TPJ4PvIM-BI/AAAAAAAAAL0/ONV_FenBktw/s1600/white%2Bhands.jpg

http://static.europosters.cz/image/460/8385.jpg

http://wallpapers.freewallpapers.im/images/2011/02/333x250/hands-rose-2462.jpg

Feets.
http://div.dyndns.org/references/femalefeet/images/feet%20(21).jpg

http://div.dyndns.org/references/femalefeet/images/feet%20(10).jpg

http://div.dyndns.org/references/femalefeet/images/feet%20(12).jpg

http://div.dyndns.org/references/femalefeet/images/feet%20(9).jpg


Extra anatomy (too big for the forum:
http://www.artist-reference.com/wp-content/gallery/human-anatomy-for-artist-com/sebastian_standing_07.jpg Male Anatomy

http://www.artist-reference.com/wp-content/gallery/human-anatomy-for-artist-com/dobroslav_15.jpg Male Anatomy

http://test.fineart.sk/sites/default/files/photos/ervin_standing/78751-ervin_standing_25.jpg Male Anatomy

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs21/f/2007/289/5/f/Nude_Male_Couple_1_by_Felixdeon.jpg Male Anatomy

http://i.imgur.com/SWS80h.jpg Female Anatomy

http://fineart.sk/sites/default/files/photos/67478brunozina01jpg/67478bruno_zina_01.jpg Couple

http://thestthomasblog.com/wp-content/uploads/faces16-big.jpg Granny Face.



Jens (rubisko) Contribution:
So if you guys have the need for more pictures, you can check this website that give you pictures according to things you want to find.

http://www.lovecastle.org/draw/

Pretty good and thanks for it. I guess if you guys are new try to stick with the images we have, so we can have a scale to compare. If you guys feel a little brave, go and use the site.


Tzvety (Toast) Contribution:
Shit everyone should read.
http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/Loomis%20Figure%20Draw.pdf


Idea by: Bya.
Execution by ClockHand.
Image researcher: Toast.

[kamisoyokaze]

Are you trying to make us all feel insecure about our bodies :P hehe. Anyway, those hand pictures are great! I've saved them to my pc, I have real trouble with hands. Cheers!

[ClockHand]

Post your progress with those in here. As you might now, saving pictures on your computer is not enough to get better.

[Demonfyre]

Snapshottes a couple of images on my iPod :) I'll draw them out and post up the finished copies later :D

[eltoroguaco]

sorry to be picky but... shouldn't this thread have a nudity warning? And the full body pictures under Spoiler tags? Cause we got some under age members and I'm afraid some will get disturbed by the naked pictures there. I don't mind though :P Especially not the girl ones. But I think of the younger members.

[Shindoutou]

Okay, I'll start. I hope I got the idea of the thread right.
A sketch of the old man's smiling face:
http://www.mangatutorials.com/file/pic/photo/2012/06/Shindoutou-face-pract-1-2_500.png?t=4fdf8a58e8734

[Demonfyre]

^ One good sketch you've got there :D

Here is mine:

'Nakedness is so wrong.' ~Asura, Look if you dare.


Sorry, messed up on the face :/

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/FemalePose2.jpg

Got two males coming up as well but one went disasterously wrong so i'm repeating and i'm halfway through the process on the second :) get them uploaded tomorrow!

Also can I ask, I was using 'negative spaces' to draw this rather than making a skeleton structure, was this the correct way to draw the pose?

[toast]

Hey guys :D

Shindotou: I think you did a great job with trying to emulate the expression the old dude made. There are, however, still problems with proportions. The nose is quite off, as it's too short and doesn't point down enough. It's also quite unsymmetrical. Both the forehead and beard are also quite short. Also, the eyes are too large and are still too stylized. When sketching a face, look at the spacing between different parts of the face, how far one thing is from another, what shapes make up the face. Forget that you're drawing an eye or a nose, just think of it as a shape. I won't comment on any shading, as I think it's important that you understand proportions first. But this is great for your first post, and I look forward to seeing you improve (:

Demonfyre: Seeing that you experimented with negative spacing makes me happy! It shows, as the shapes in parts like the hips and thighs are similar to the picture. I think you still should have used some type of guidelines however, as many of the proportions are still quite a bit off. The knees are quite wonky, the hips aren't quite wide enough nor aligned well, etc. Also, the arms arent leaning to the side enough. But it's good that you used negative spacing, and I think mixing that with using some type of structure will really help. You could always draw some guildines on the photo, as well, and then try to sketch those guidelines to get a better understanding of the proportions.

[Shindoutou]

You did well on that sketch, Demonfyre!

Thanks for all the pointers, Toast! It was really a quick sketch, this time I'm taking a little bit more time.
Here's what I've got for now, are the proportions any better? (for as far as you can see, since I've only drawn half a face)
http://www.mangatutorials.com/file/pic/photo/2012/06/Shindoutou-face-practice-2-3_500.png?t=4fdf97f14adb9

[ClockHand]

New site has been added to the list of reference picture. Pretty good, I recommend to stick more with the images that have been posted as we have a better sense to compare your work with those, but be free to use the site added. Thanks to jens.

[toast]

You did well on that sketch, Demonfyre!

Thanks for all the pointers, Toast! It was really a quick sketch, this time I'm taking a little bit more time.
Here's what I've got for now, are the proportions any better? (for as far as you can see, since I've only drawn half a face)
http://www.mangatutorials.com/file/pic/photo/2012/06/Shindoutou-face-practice-2-3_500.png?t=4fdf97f14adb9

It is definately looking a lot better :D The bridge of the nose is still a bit too thick, but otherwise you're doing very well with shading, detailing, and proportions

[Demonfyre]

Thanks for your reply Toast And I'm glad I'm doing the right thing with negative spaces :) didnt get enough time today to finish off the males so I'll post them up tomorrow and I'll use guidelines and negative spaces to finish them off :D

[SuperKasey]

I may or may not go through these in order since I'm boring. We'll see. Did the first one in SAI.
http://i.imgur.com/X7A6h.jpg?1

[toast]

o jeez, that looks great kasey, you really did a good job with colours O:

[Evil_Cake]

berry nice

[Rubisko]

I don't care if you do them in order or not Kasey, as long as you keep on doing them because your practice piece really inspired me to push mine :)
Ok, so I don't know about you guys, but I've been trying to do studies from photographs and from life since February, so what little experience I have I thought that I should share. So I'll explain my method for doing a study. It may not work for you, but I think it works well for me :)
http://www.mangatutorials.com/file/pic/photo/2012/06/Rubisko-anatomy-study-120620-120621.png
1. I don't know about you guys, but myself I have a couple of weak personality traits. I'm lazy, proud and a perfectionist to name a few. But someone once told me that even weaknesses can be strengths if you play your cards right. So for several when I have studied for exams, the very first thing that I did was to take an exam used a previous year and sit down and try my best at it. Since I'm lazy I almost always failed this first one, but since I'm proud I also got real angry with myself and studied hard for the real thing, and since I'm a perfectionist I almost always got the highest grade. Huzzah!
Now I've found that this method also works well for drawing studies, so I begin by sitting down and do an initial drawing. As you can see, I missed on everything from figure to proportions, but I didn't notice until I compared it with the reference (I don't show this step, but it's pretty simple: since I'm doing digital I just drag and dropped the reference photo onto my canvas and dropped its opacity until I could see both layers)

2.Ok, so I'm really angry at myself now, and this helps me focus. I do an extensive analysis of the reference, measuring angles and proportions carefully as I do my sketch. This time I'm also in awe of Kasey's piece above, and I'm determined to do something that's at least equally good, so I actually measure really carefully (like every line I drew I then redrew at least 20 times lol). Then I render the forms as carefully as I can. Having a good underdrawing helps, but I'm still super happy about how the torso turned out. In the end, after screwing up on the head and face several times I just made a note that I need to study head and face next week, as I have other stuff to do today (sadly, cause this was really fun), and at that point I hadn't started hands and feet either, so I had to make even more notes on stuff to study.

3. What's the point of doing your homework if you don't learn anything? as I just mentioned I was a little short on time, I'd like to do this step more properly later. But what I want to do here is to make a general approach, because let's face it; I couldn't do anything as nice as #2 without reference, and if we could get a ref photo of everything we wouldn't need to learn how to draw. Since this is a human body I try to use the simple mannequin approach from one of Loomis' books, but I don't think I nailed it from memory. Need to look that up too.

So yeah, that's that. Again, this is just the method I like to use, and if you have any suggestions on how I could improve it.. I'd be grateful yeah :)

[toast]

I, too, am an extremely lazy perfectionist. However the lazy me usually trumps the perfectionist, which angers me into doing better. : D

I really like the steps you went through however. Like you put down what you thought was the general form, really went into detail by fixing proportions/adding muscles/etc, then the generalization part was awesome and something I want to start doing. It turned out awesomely too, and you also taught me a new study habit lol. Great post!

I actually have Loomis' book right here, which I think everyone who's practicing in this thread needs to take a look at:
http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/Loomis%20Figure%20Draw.pdf
All of its glory in PDF format

[Demonfyre]

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/MalePose1.jpg

I'm sure his head is too small and that im terrible at this :/ anyway here is the finished version

[Mr_Liebe]

I have that pdf, I'm planning on leafing through it.

[Byakuran]

http://i49.tinypic.com/11kefyp.png

Asian face(done in gb), i saw that the ear/back skull is out of place when i drew the hair (which i rushed -.-;..)
But it was good practice! i like this thread lawl.

Also i'm going to try that Rubisko, thx :D. I really have trouble grasping anatomy since i never take the time to fully UNDERSTAND. it.

I think next time i'll try to do a grayscale/colour since i still need to understand the forms it makes and stuff. But anyway, gonna go through that pfd Thanks toast.

[toast]

Demon: You're doing better :D The body is still quite long, but the fact that you're practicing so much will definately help you improve!

Bya: Looks rad. Just gotta say, the angle of the face is off compared to the photo. The kid's head in the photo is a bit more slanted. You colored the lips too dark, as well, and the mouth is too high up. Otherwise you're doing great poopchan

the grayscale idea is great btw

[Demonfyre]

@Toast - Oh good :D thanks for replying and i'll try to stop elongating the torso's :L

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/AnatomyStudy6.jpg

Messing about with the proportions and this is the one I find I can work well with, is there anything wrong with them that I should fix?

[Rubisko]

Yes, knees are way too low and torso is extremely long. Take a look at the pdf that Toast left a link to

[Demonfyre]

Ok was worried that would be the case, i'll go back to that one on the pdf, only problem is when I was using the guidelines the book suggests the results come out looking horrendous :/ i'm not sure what im doing wrong.

[Rubisko]

Try to follow Loomis as best as you can, post it, and we'll be able to help each other. Not much point to study anatomy if you make it up as you go after all :P

[Demonfyre]

It wasn't really made up, I'll try to find the guide I used on DA tomorrow, too sleepy to concentrate at the moment :L

Tomorrow i'll try again, hopefully they won't turn out like burnt corpses like today... :/

[toast]

Here's a photo example of loomis' ideal female body drawing, if this helps any

http://fineart.sk/sites/default/files/imagecache/node-gallery-display/photos/005/005_2.jpg

[Demonfyre]

Thanks again toast, working on the proportions now, it's going ok so far

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/FemalePose3.jpg

[Psiartist]

I had fun with this but it took waaaay too long. D:

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q195/PsiArtist/513fb0d5.jpg

[toast]

Demon: The body's thin, and remember what I said about working on landmarks! The necks also quite long. Try dropping the anime heads as well, dude. You're doing much better however
Psi: Looking awesome. All I gotta say is that, her face is a lot softer in the photo, and you seem to have given her a more determined look or something :P Great though, looking forward to more

[Demonfyre]

Demon: The body's thin, and remember what I said about working on landmarks! The necks also quite long. Try dropping the anime heads as well, dude. You're doing much better however

See that is what I don't understand, I'm measuring the waist out and stuff according to that book and that was the results I got, urgh this makes so little sense >.>' also I have no idea how to draw a normal head :/ thanks for feedback i'll try to fix those areas

[Shindoutou]

See that is what I don't understand, I'm measuring the waist out and stuff according to that book and that was the results I got, urgh this makes so little sense >.>' also I have no idea how to draw a normal head :/ thanks for feedback i'll try to fix those areas
The shoulders need to be broader. I think. The rest is quite fine, actually.

Edit: added a picture to make it a little more clear: http://i.imgur.com/obNw7.jpg

[Demonfyre]

I see, It's just on the book it says the shoulders should be 2 heads wide, that's what I did and their way to short, it looks almost like 3 heads wide on the example, have I completely misunderstood the book or something?

Edit: At least I got the neck almost spot on xD

[toast]

You may want to remeasure the width of your head with a piece of paper or something, and compare it with the width of the abdominen/hips. I tried and it only seemed to fit one head.

When you're done with your drawing, you need to stop and REALLY compare your drawing with the reference. The best thing to do is always criticize yourself and take note of what problems you have with your drawing. Shift your eyes between the drawing and the reference and you'll be able to notice the differences and flaws.

The skeletal structure is the basic structure of the human body. Compare this with Loomis' proportional guide, and you can see how they fit. What observations can you make in our skeletal structure when comparing it to a drawing of a human? How does each bone shape the arms, shoulders, abdominen, etc? I think an interesting way to study this is to also look at extremely underweight models, since you can see the actual bones as well as the rest of the body parts. I'll put a picture of a model under this skeletal ref.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/art/med/skeleton.gif
http://health.lilithezine.com/images/Pro-Anorexia-03.jpg

Also take note of the fact that Loomis' proportional guide STILL makes sense with even an uber skinny person!

One last thing. Something that helps me is being more carefree with my lines, because then I worry more about accuracy than neatness! You can try that if you want, but you don't have to. Just a tip (:

[Demonfyre]

Ok, i'll do that, and I was using the pdf and it said the hips are 1.5 heads wide I think, let me check.

Yeah and that the waist was one head, i'll go back and check but i'm sure I measure it out correctly. And do you mean like all sketchy like what you were doing on the GB yesterday?

[toast]

Ok, i'll do that, and I was using the pdf and it said the hips are 1.5 heads wide I think, let me check.

Yeah and that the waist was one head, i'll go back and check but i'm sure I measure it out correctly. And do you mean like all sketchy like what you were doing on the GB yesterday?

I guess. What I'm saying is just don't strain yourself when sketching stuff :P

[Demonfyre]

Sorry that there not that good but hopefully they should be proportioned correctly now :) i'm also glad that after each one they started to look better so i'm just gonna keep at it and hopefully they will become decent someday xD

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/Female1.jpg
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/Female2.jpg
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/Female4.jpg
http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/Female3.jpg

Hope there is nothing outstandingly wrong with them, all were referenced from Posemaniacs ofc (let me know if you want to see the references) Also I plan to get good at female first then male as I seem to be better at female at present time. Should I do both at the same time or will it be fine to split them up?

[TheMoub]

Anatomy practice :cat_yahoo:

http://i.imgur.com/hJNNk.jpg?1
cnc?

[toast]

looking good demon. The most reoccuring problems I see are stuff like armpit height and the shape of the neck.

themoub: you did quite a good job with the body! the guys head/neck placement are quite off though, it looks like its all the way to the right.

[WhenRabbitsAttack]

this was a head sketch to try out a hairstyle from ages ago, but yesterday i was bored so i gave him ab body and shaded it.
this was done sans reference.
anything outstandingly wrong?
http://i.imgur.com/y4nkt.jpg

[toast]

I think the biggest problem is that his arm and hand are huge. You should also work a bit more on abs, as the top ab muscles arent that defined. You did a cool job with shading tho, I wish the quality on the image was a bit better lol.

[WhenRabbitsAttack]

yeah my quality is crap due to lack of scanner. the arm and hand aren't nearly as big as the picture makes them look, the camera angle screwed it up :/ i'll try and get a better pic next time.

[Demonfyre]

Yet more female anatomy cuz I need the practice;

Posemaniacs Reference:

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/Female6.jpg

Other Pose Attempt 1:

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/Female7b.jpg

Other Pose Attempt 2:

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q599/Demonfyre1/Female7.jpg

[Rubisko]

You are improving Demon, but might I suggest to you, and anybody else who uses posemaniacs for anatomy practice; don't. I mean, posemaniacs is a great site for reference, but the human body can rotate, stretch, compress and move in ways that a computer model just can't. So if you want to do gestures or practice anatomy I really recommend tools like the drawing script at www.lovecastle.org/draw instead. To paraphrase Loomis, if you can't stand the sight of nudes then drawing is probably not for you.

On another note, I was actually looking at your art thread just now Demon. When I do critiques I usually draw and make notes on the side to check if what I'm thinking about is actually correct. Now this time it soon got out of hand, and I guess I ended up with a mini-tutorial of sorts. Since it's not important or extensive enough to merit a thread of it's own, or to be posted as a tut I figured I post it here because it makes sense and it can be applied to any of the references posted in the OP.

So, to add to the background of this short tutorial or w/e it is. I'm no expert on the subject I'm presenting here, but I view it as something important, and this is something that I have and will continue to study a lot. During the months since I returned to MT I have seen people wondering why their art feels "stiff", and I have also quite recently seen a definition of what a dynamic pose is that I don't quite agree with. In the picture that follows all this text I think that I have managed to show some of the basics of what makes a pose dynamic. But first I would like to state my take on what a dynamic pose really is. A drawing, in its physical form, is really static, it's only some graphite on a piece of paper. To make a dynamic figure on that piece of paper we must draw it in such a way that it looks like a body in full motion, frozen in a single moment. A dynamic pose isn't essentially a figure doing a dynamic action like running, jumping or swimming. In fact, you can make a running figure seem perfectly static, but in the same way a figure can be drawn dynamic while doing a static action like sitting on a chair. It's all about the interdependent movements of the limbs and masses of the body

Spoiler tag because it's a page stretcher
http://i1150.photobucket.com/albums/o608/jenbe753/DynamicPoses.png
I hope that at least someone will find this useful, and if you happen to spot errors or want me to add or clarify something you are welcome to send me a pm or something. Just remember that I'm not an expert on this, or on anything else for that matter. If you find this interesting and want to know more I suggest you get yourself a copy of "Dynamic Anatomy" by Burne Hogarth. Hogarth rules, Rubisko out.

[ClockHand]

To add in what rubisko said (which is basically how to compose the human body in a dynamic way, and there are plenty of other ways), we might going to make a special thread to study all that, so get tunned to MT.