by Matthew Russell - Posted 4 years ago
Welcome, my CryptoComic Compatriots! I’m back with another edition of Fundamentals of Comic Book Art! Today we are going to tackle the strange world of anatomy. Before we begin, if you haven't had the chance yet, check out some great content from earlier with "Fundamentals of Comic Book Art Part 1: What are they" in order to get an overview of what this series is trying to tackle.
Fundamentals of Comic Book Art Part 2: Construction deals with the little shapes that we can break everything down to in order to get the most out of our drawing. it plays very heavily in todays lesson.
Fundamentals of Comic Book Art Part 3 focuses primarily on perspective. I hope you have been practicing these techniques otherwise when you draw your character interacting with another character, it could throw off your reader if they are misaligned in your perspective view.
When I first started this series, I thought “This should be easy...get back to the roots and take everyone along.”
What the hell was I thinking? When I was in both High School and College, I took a year-long course on Anatomy just for art, and now I think I can condense it into a simple blog post.
There have been so many people writing books on this subject and somehow I have the audacity to think I can add something new and exciting!?! Well, no. I’m going into this assuming that you have a basic understanding of anatomy and we will cover the main differences in comic books.
Here I will also explain how part 2 (Construction) applies and will make your life infinitely easier. So, without further ado, lets begin...
There is 1 series of books that I find most helpful. They are all written by an artist by the name of Burne Hogarth. This legendary artist and teacher was born in 1911 in Chicago. His work was presented in every single drawing class on anatomy that I have ever had. I had no idea that he was also a comic artist; working on Tarzan of the Apes.
If you ever want to take a deep dive into anatomy you have to pick up Burne Hogarth's books on Amazon. They are so well written and offer so much insight.
Let’s jump into the meat and potatoes of anatomy. After all, that’s why you’re here, right?
Let’s start with the head and work our way down. I will show you a quick video and then explain how it works together.
This quick video comes to us from the Anatomy Master Class. It’s a great program, but to be honest, I didn’t really subscribe to it, due to the fact that I can find most of the information on Youtube, instead of paying the $97 of my hard-earned money.
This does a good job of breaking everything down into easy to understand measurements. I’ve been pretty adamant that we should first break everything down to basic shapes. This next video really illustrates that and drives that point home.
So, the torso is pretty strange. You would think that it doesn’t just follow the same rules such as a simple circle, or egg shape of the head, but you would be wrong.
I found this great series of videos from Modern Day James on drawing the torso called Deciphering Bridgeman. You have to check this out.
I felt like I’ve been doing this long enough personally that I didn’t need to go back and hit the books BUT it suns out that I was way wrong. It was such a great refresher to relearn the torso. Looking back at some of the figure drawings that I did last week, there was a huge disconnect from what I knew and reality.
Arms are basically a few cylinders separated by a few circles representing the shoulder, elbow, and wrist. If you can master those shapes then you got it down. Unfortunately, that’s just the start. There is so much more.
I have to say, this guy is extremely annoying and the first half (yes half) of his video is an ad for Skillshare. Start at 3:11 to jump right into the heart of it.
Keep in mind that this is a straight-on shot of the arm. There is no real life to it unless you are drawing a picture of a soldier straight on while they are standing at attention. This does, however, give you a great insight into how the arm is structured.
I’ve used Skillshare for a while. I still would if there weren’t things like bills that I have to pay. One of the classes that I took was on drawing arms. It was actually insightful and fun. Link below
How to Draw Arms Muscles Anatomy Step by Step from Patricia Caldeira
Never skip leg day, especially when it comes to drawing.
Unfortunately, Xabio Arts is back. I can’t stand his videos due to the fact that he is so annoying, but he gives great information. Watch it with the volume low if you have to. He does give some really great nuggets of information on things such as proportions.
If your going to learn to draw comic, might as well learn from a master. Below is a video from David Finch. Unfortunately, he does not go into proportions.
I’ve done some fun tutorials in the past on How to Draw Hands and had a lot of fun with that. As a result, we are not going to spend so much time on that and just say, have some fun with it. Watch your hands in the mirror and start to play with the poses. Grip something, flick something, see how your hands move.
Don’t pull a Liefield and skip the feet. (sidenote: I have no idea where the term “Pulling a Liefield” in reference to not drawing feet came from. ;-)I swear!)
All in good fun. Seriously feet are important. They are the final construction of the body. They anchor you to the ground. They are vital. Yes, they are hard, but it is worth it to learn.
Once again, I have already covered this in a previous blog post titled: How to Draw Feet. As a result, we are just going to give some good advice, extra stuff, if you will.
Look down at your feet. Twist your toes. Look at a Martial Artist at how their foot makes contact with their opponent. This will help dictate how you draw feet in action.
We have all these pieces broken up. If you put it together in different sizes, you might look like an ape. So, here are some fun facts to help put everything in perspective.
Take all of these parts and make a whole. Look at and study the Vitruvian man by Di Vinci. He had to take apart a corpse, piece by piece to create this masterpiece. Figure out how everything comes together.
I also recommend drawing it a few times yourself. This will allow you to get even more familiar with it.
As David Finch said in the video we presented above, You will never have a muscle going into nothing. It will always have a definite start and an end.
Comic book proportions are a little exaggerated. For example; a villain who uses brains over strength would have an ever so slightly head. A hero who uses strength over brains would have an exaggerated chest.
Female and make body types are drawn drastically different. I am not going to get into transgender, sexual identification, or any other social/political topic. I am referring to the body types found in comics.
I truly hope this doesn’t feed into the negative body images that some might have. If you do take offense, please skip this next video.
Just like female body proportions in comics, males also have certain typical alterations. As previously stated, if you have body issues, please skip the following video.
Yes, the depiction of bodies in comics/toons/anime are grossly exaggerated. One only needs to take a quick look at Power-Girl to know what I am talking about. Some feel that this exaggeration leads to poor body image and self steam issues.
I have been seeing a strange trend lately where the opposite is now true. I am seeing exaggerated body proportions but to an unhealthy level. Many creators and artists are making obese characters.
I absolutely can’t stand when people take work and “fix” it to have extremely exaggerated body images or to change their gender/race. I will have to do another blog post about this at a later date.
Work on your own art, your own characters. Don’t do something drastic to someone else’s blood, sweat, and tears. That is their hard work.
While doing some research, I found this great infographic from Jae John’s website. He has some great insight into what to do and what not to do. I highly recommend checking it out if you have some time.
https://jaejohns.com/how-to-practice-drawing-anatomy-top-5-dos-and-donts/
One thing that I’ve noticed with my own students (I teach Programming to high school students) is that I can say something until I’m blue in the face. As soon as a guest says the exact same thing word for word, sudden;t students are like “Wow, this is revolutionary information that changes everything!” That being said, He says the same basic things that I have been shouting from the rooftops such as...
If you can draw pyramids, cones, cubes, spheres, cylinders, and saucers from any angle you can draw the human anatomy.
There will of course be more coming soon. We are only on part 4 of the 9 part series. There is still so much more to come. Next, we will be talking about gestures. Until then, start your own art journal in the Marketplace and show off your work.
