A Lesson in Artistic Anatomy

As I was finishing up as a graduate art student, I taught life drawing for a year or so. Teaching life drawing is a bit like watching paint dry. You just need to make sure there is a model present and then run the students through various practice exercises. Basically, my criteria for passing the class was to just show up (and yet there would always be one less-than-moron who couldn’t even muster the energy to do that).

However, mastering rendering the figure requires a bit more work than showing up. A very important part is to familiarize oneself with the basics of human anatomy. I was never really taught this (the University of Illinois art department was, how shall we say, lacking in this area) so I took it upon myself to learn what I could and then impart my knowledge onto my students. I would deliver this information as weekly handouts that took the form of a comic book, This was the most basic of basic anatomy overviews but it hit some of the more important topics.

I eventually went to Kinkos and bound the entire thing up in a cheap cover. I was recently reminded of this work when a random visitor to this site (yes, your favorite site on the Internet) informed me that they were given a copy from drawing professors Fennell & Becker. This visitor informed me that, on occasion, they had used the comic in their own drawing classes. Very cool. In the process of reminiscing I scanned the comic and here I am making available to the Internet for the first time ever. Download the PDF, print and enjoy!