Many artists had inktober and I had antomytober instead. It all started three weeks ago when I was working on a 3d model of a human and then it was sent for a review to a 3d forum and pros criticized some anatomy mistakes I made. I have decided to eliminate the gap in knowledge and been watching all lectures on anatomy by Scott Eaton, which I highly recommend to anyone attempting to study anatomy for artists. His lectures are, probably, one of the best; he shows you CT scans of real people, shares tips on generalization of forms when you render your artworks and turning complex topic into something extremely comprehensible. While watching videos, I have been writing down names of muscles and doing sketches trying to memorize them all. I thought it would be quite boring but I was so hooked up and obsessed, I’ve been spending 12 hours a day doing exercises on anatomy every day, sometimes missing phone calls, lol.
In addition, I have accumulated quite a collection of anatomy books and wanted to do a quick review if anyone is interested in the topic.
I think the best book that I have seen so far on the topic is the book by Uldis Zarinis Anatomy for Sculptors and Anatomy of Facial expressions. This book has been crowdfunded and been published in limited quantity, although I have managed to get my pirate paws on this piece of literature. These books are super awesome, because they explain 3-dimentional aspect of general body forms which is essential when you try to digitally sculpt something in any digital sculpting software.
Next awesome book is Dr. Paul Richer’s book “Artistic Anatomy”. It is a classic anatomy book, and most peeps know about it, I had French version of it and the illustrations are awesome. This book is suitable for everyone, but mainly 2d artists.
Last spring I bought a book by 3d Publishing Anatomy for 3d artists, It’s quite a decent book although it is kind of vague in its attempts to explain how to approach such complex subject like anatomy, instead it just gives you workflows of famous artists, which is not necessarily really beneficial to a person who just starting out.
In august I bought a book Force Drawing anatomy by Michael Mattesi but I just can’t get the logic of the author, it’s too complicated and sometimes I find it to be insane, I don’t know how to approach his workflow to be honest, I think traditional way of memorizing everything by parts is easier, maybe not…
Everybody knows Loomis’ Figure Drawing for all it’s worth, its epic and brilliant, everyone should read it in primary school. And one of the sad findings for me this October was Barrington Barber’s Anatomy for artists which is basically plagiarism and a really bad one, it’s just bunch of sloppy reproductions of Paul Richers work, really bad reproduction…
That is it, now when I am confident in my knowledge I will proceed with modelling 3d realistic character…
