A Quick Guide to Anatomy: Real & Cartoony Anatomy

One of the most important aspects to drawing people is anatomy. This is the aspect of making a human, animal or even a mythical creature as proportionate as possible.

This study (especially human anatomy) has been in practiced and refined since the Ancient Greeks and is still used by the studio artist and played with and exaggerated by cartoonist.

These are some examples of both real and cartoon anatomy:

Academic Human Study

Basic Cartoon Figures

The 8 Heads Rule

A Caricature (exaggerating the face)

Some methods require the study the skeleton to and the of the face for realistic anatomy. This is where I want to show you a video from the Draw with Jazza YouTube Channel where he goes over his method of drawing realistic anatomy.

If you want to practice anatomy and if you want me to see anything you have done [Share Your Stuff] here.

Capturing the world: Gesture and Contour Drawing

There are a few ways to draw from life in my last post on still life we talked about one way of doing so. Now I want to talk about 2 quicker methods of capturing from real-life.

The first method of drawing is called Gesture Drawing. In this style of drawing from life. we take many sketched lines to capture shapes that make up an object. Gesture drawing is primarily used to capture the movement of an object like a person taking a walk.

The second method is called Contour Drawing. This is a style where you take a single line to capture the shape of an object. Contour drawing is more used for the intricacies within a static object such as a person at rest or statue.

Now when you do Gesture and Contour drawings on a human or other living creature it’s called a figure drawing. This is where we try to capture the anatomical form and implied motion of the figure.

Try it yourself

Now for this part I would like to try see if you can capture from real-life and either find an image online, take a photo of someone or find someone to pose for you and draw them. (you can also do a drawing of a part of the body)

 

I am going to show you mine as an example.

Original

Now you will see a bit more detail in my gesture drawing than my contour drawing.

This is dependent on the time you put into each piece and how you want it look.

When you are done [Share Your Stuff]