Anatomy: A Complete Guide for Artists

by Joseph Sheppard

In this superb guidebook, a skilled practitioner of figure drawing demonstrates how to achieve mastery of anatomy through careful, knowledgeable articulation of the muscles and bones lying beneath the skin. Joseph Sheppard's concise instructions have been carefully integrated with over 250 halftone illustrations and over 180 line drawings to lead artists one step at a time through the techniques required in rendering human anatomy convincingly.
The opening chapter of the book presents the special techniques involved in mastering human proportion.The chapters that follow each deal with a separate part of the the arm, hand, leg, foot, torso, head, and neck (with special coverage of facial features and expressions) and the complete figure.
Each of these chapters follows a basic format that combines drawings of the featured body portion from many different angles, coverage of the specific bones and muscles involved, a table of muscle origins and insertions, and coverage of surface anatomy and depictions of the body part in a variety of positions.

Genres: Art, Drawing, Nonfiction, Reference

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Hikaoru · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got two hours break between classes today and chose to skim through this. Oh how I wish I've had this during first year so I could draw in my logbook easier.

I think my favourite part from this book would be the head and neck where the drawing shows how to draw people looking up or down. The schematic drawing of the bones side by side with a line drawing of a person makes everything looks easy.

Great book but not much poses or hand or leg illustrations to practice with.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

My artwork went from childish to more realistic after studying anatomy with this book. One of the best things you can do is to actually copy drawings from an anatomy book over and over imprinting how body parts REALLY look and not how you think they do.

[Martha Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are interested in studying black and white chalk drawings of anatomy this book is for you. As a beginning drawing student I found some of the diagrams to be helpful. However, I would not buy this book. There are other anatomy books for artists that I found more instructive.

[Castles · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the one hand, it is a book about human anatomy. On the other, it’s so dry and medical that I wonder how much really an artist should know about every bone. Sure he should some, but this book, which doesn’t discuss art at all, is no different from any medical anatomy one.

[Serge Pierro · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book on anatomical structures and musculature. A must have for the serious student of figure drawing - comic book/graphic novel artists in particular.

[Arjun Khode · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first anatomy book. I liked the fact that it did not start with head anatomy. I feel starting with the head sucks all the energy out of you and you really tend to stop after the head part is over; now you can do portraits already so why do figures? Anyway, all the limbs are magnificently covered. One thing I felt this book fell short of was thoroughness in the torso section.

[Daniel Mendes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an awesome book. It presents the information in a simplified way and only what is really relevant about what you’re studying, such as the bones and muscles. However, it still is an anatomy book, instead of a figure drawing one, so it helps a lot to improve your knowledge about the human body if you come from this background. It doesn’t substitute a figure drawing book though, but definitely complements what you learn in them
The schematic drawings are really helpful, since they add muscles to the bones progressively while also presenting only relevant information about what’s being added. Also, each chapter covers different views of the same part of the body and it helps a lot to understand the subjects. Not only that, but at the end of each chapter you get a complete drawing from what you have studied, with all muscles and relevant bones presented in different views, while also having a small recap of what is important about each area.
I tried to study based on Goldfinger's book first, but I found it way too complicated (especially because of the language used) and too focused in human anatomy itself, but not so much on what could be useful as an artist, since I would hardly use most of the information presented there on my paintings. This book, in other hand, solves this problem while also being far easier to grasp the concepts.
If you’re wanting to learn anatomy, but doesn’t want to die inside while learning it, this is the book for you.

Note: this is a perspective from a self-taught digital painter, so you might have a different experience if the field you are in requires a really deep understanding of human anatomy. I don’t think it needs in most cases, but, even if it does, I would still give a try, since you can always go deeper by learning other books.

[mimi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is informative. Such a great tool for understanding human anatomy in an artistic and scientific way. The book gives full details on each part of the body and how it affects the overall surface. The illustration’s beautiful too. However, I think some parts need to be rearranged in order to make it easier and healthier for beginners (e.g they should put bone drawings before the muscles, the hands before the arms). Well that’s not quite a big deal. Overall this book is pretty good.

[Jedkimball]

Much superior to Shepard's other text. Light shadow concepts are strong

[Radoslav Minchev · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book + Fred Fixler's lesson - http://goo.gl/SVMkD = Brilliant Formula!