Learning Anatomy for Art? Study this FIRST.

I’m going to highly recommend my students watch this video before approaching anatomy week - this is a gem

From someone who has done this journey during Covid: Nothing beats pencil mileage and nothing beats training your eyes . I've done nearly 1000 figure drawings and the improvement was vast. You're going to suck for a while. Most people give up in frustration. Making tons of mistakes is part of the process. Just expect it and muscle through it. Nothing about special talent or other such nonsense. It's practice, practice, and practice. I still don't think I'm good, but I feel competent. The great thing about figure drawing is that all of your drawing skills will improve. There is nothing harder than (foreshortened) figure drawing and you will gain an intuitive sense of proportions and foreshortening, while training your eyes. I'd love to post some of my figure drawings (on IMGUR) but YT always takes my post down.

As someone trying to get into medical school to be a doctor, approaching the body from an art perspective is so helpful!

I always felt like my figure drawing felt stiff even when the pose was dynamic. This video was very helpful in letting me know why that is. I never really took into consideration how much the joints come into play. In my classes they don't even talk about that. They really do have a huge affect on the anatomy inside of a particular pose.

Newbie tips from newbie : After learning major parts of the body like in the video, you can start learning by remember the muscle part that you obsess or want to focus in your arts one by one like shoulder muscle or hamstring. It not only help you draw that part better but it will help your lighting skill in coloring parts too. The passion in your certain parts of the body will keep you up in learning.

Bro you saved me - literally just searched YT for a general anatomy crash course to give me something to work on, but I'm so glad I found this instead. It explains perfectly why learning general anatomy at this point (from non-artists at that) is a terrible idea. I've done figure drawing, sure, but I've got a long way to go before anything more complex than those big, basic shapes is useful or applicable to me. Now I can get off YT and back to the best place to learn, a canvas :)

I’m like a newborn baby when it comes to anatomy and all I can say is that tracing out the shapes onto people with a lot of expression with there pose helps a lot with understanding how-limbs bend and stuff!

"We are not doctors, we have bigger goals..."

That tip on the character taking a selfie is so great, because even if it wasn't in the "photo" they were taking, people do that stuff all the time. Moving and twisting like people really can see all of their body

Damn ergo you're amazing because,you are really invested in teaching us to be good in anatomy please keep on doing this.

A couple of days ago I started to learn anatomy with Proko's videos (struggling with pelvis :( ), your video really helped me as now I know what areas of anatomy worth more of my attention cuz before I watched this video I had thought that it would take about 10 years for me to learn all of these muscles and draw not an ugly-looking human

I wanna watch this but the crispiness in your Ss and Ts and Ks and Gs is making me shiver 😭

This was really helpful :) The art at the end had my jaw to the floor, i was so impressed, my goal is to slowly get better until i can look back at how I started and inspire others to do the same

Really great video Josh! This what I tell people who are starting out. Anatomy for artists really isn't as hard as appears, just need to learn those major muscle groups and then start designing them with good shapes. I wish someone told me that when I started.

More like this please! This feels like the kind of gap in my knowledge that I dont understand fully, and its the basic stuff no one talks about.

I would definitely take an in depth course of anatomy and figure drawing by ergojosh if he ever makes one

Oh yeah mate, there are many teens like me doing art in my grade, and I've got a long way to go, but I dislike it when someone discredits themselves just because they have been hitting a learning block. These things are practiced deliberately, by looking into more art resources and trying to do what you lack, be it understanding of gesture, anatomy, expression, perspective, or whatever else. And, nothing is better than seeing your peers' drawings and noting what else you can improve upon, plus, you can make some nice friends that way.

I’ve been drawing my entire life. I’ve mastered the technique of drawing shapes, but I’ve always had trouble drawing people and their form. I was always daunted by the idea of learning anatomy, but all this time I knew how to do it, I knew it for a while, I just needed something to give a little push.

I'm so grateful to you for providing so much value fro free

Definitely a helpful tip. I've been struggling to improve my drawings from independent practice for awhile, and I kept feeling overwhelmed because near as I can tell, most anatomy lessons for artists involve diagrams of underlying muscles and bones and a "Have at it!" Heck, the book I got on it was literally that; just images of poses accompanied by detailed drawings of the underlying skeleton and muscle, and trying to teach you the name and shape of each one. Good if you're trying to improve to that level of complexity, but a bit of an overwhelming starting point. I now plan on tracing pictures of people with simple shoulders-hips-arms-legs-heads breakdowns until I feel comfortable doing that by sight without tracing, and then adding more complexity after that.