Anatomy Studies - Arms and Legs

For these studies, I used my own arms and legs as my subject and Jeno Bracsay's Anatomy for the Artists for reference.  The first studies were from the same angles as in the book to make it easier to identify the muscles on my own body. First, I do a very quick line drawing of my arm or leg.  Next, I draw in the bones, starting with the landmarks then filling in the rest from the book.  Then, I draw in and label the muscles.  I like this method because identifying the muscles on my own body makes the knowledge very tangible.  I can look at the muscles in three dimensions right in front of me where ever I am.  After identifying the muscles from straight on, I repeated the process from various angles and poses.  This is not my first time studying anatomy, but so far, it is the method that has worked best for me.  I feel like I really have this knowledge down.  Since doing these studies I have had a much easier time identifying muscles when drawing from a live model.

Next I drew more arm and leg anatomy from imagination. here are a few.

Female Anatomy

This time I took a different approach to my anatomy studies. For one I used a female subject. But more importantly, instead of just trying to map out where the muscles were, as I did in the previous studies, I tried to render the bones and muscles more realistically. Also I used finer pointed pencils and two colors. Red for muscles blue for bones. It makes the final drawing much easier to 'read'. I wish I had the idea for the previous anatomy studies.

Muscles

Here is the continuation of the bones exercise. This time I draw out the skeleton on tracing paper over the figure drawing, Then I draw the muscles over the bones. Most muscles are easier to draw because they can are closer to the skin. However the muscular system is extremely complex making it quite tricky, especially the forearms and lower legs.

Dem Bones/ My 100th post

I've been doing an exercise from The Natural Way to Draw that I think is really cool. You take a figure drawing that you have already done and lay tracing paper over it. Then using an anatomy book draw the skeleton inside the figure. Its also a good way to check your proportions of the figure as it points out mistakes you may not have otherwise seen. Next step is to attach the muscles.