Anatomy for the Artist

 

Anatomy for the Artist
Anatomy for the Artist
by Authors: Sarah Simblet , John Davis , Sarab Simblet
Released: 01 October, 2001
ISBN: 078948045X
Hardcover

Sales Rank: 7,057
List price: $40.00
Our price: $27.20 (You save: $12.8)
Book > Anatomy for the Artist > Customer Reviews:
  Average Customer Rating:

Anatomy for the Artist > Customer Review #1:
Simply fantastic!

Im an art student taking a life drawing class, and I have looked at a number of books on anatomy and own several, most of which I find unequal to my needs. Some are geared to people in health-related fields, and some are geared to artists.

Of all the books I have seen on artistic anatomy, this is one of the absolute best. The translucent paper overlays of anatomical structures are very helpful to an artist trying to figure out how bones, muscles, and skin all fit together. Additionally, the photography is amazing, modern, and not at all cheesey. There are many different motion shots and poses depicted, and the drawing lessons and "master classes" are truly useful to any developing artist and should help people refine their skills and gain confidence in this difficult area of drawing. My only quibble: I could have done with fewer explicit shots of genitalia, but they were necessary to a book that covers its topic as completely as this one.

The bottom line is that this book is worth its weight in conté crayons.



Anatomy for the Artist > Customer Review #2:
A worthwhile anatomy book

This book doesnt try to contain all the knowledge there is related to anatomy and drawing the human figure. That would take several volumes or more. It just does a few important things well. I think the main strength of this book is that it gives you an intuitive feeling for the human bodys structure. It does a lot more than just list parts. It tells you how the body works, how the parts work together, and the nature of those parts. She gives you more scientific and historical information than other books generally do. The second strength is the large number of well-lit photographs of fit, lean, muscular models in many informative, useful poses. The models are pretty good for seeing the contours of muscles, bones, and connective tissues. I think the inclusuion of a few body builders mightve been good too. The latter chapters of the book deal with poses and the body in motion. They include many photographs of models. I appreciated this, and its something not a lot of anatomy books have.
As for the overlays, I didnt think they were all that important. As for the drawings of the muscles and bones, they were useful and good, but they couldve been better. I wouldve prefered some sort of smoothly shaded renderings instead of scratchy pen and ink drawings. It would also have been nice to have the muscles in different colors so theyd be easier to differentiate. Although vellum is nice, it tends to warp from humidity and its not transparent enough. Therefore it wouldve been better to make the overlays out of plastic.
While this isnt the be-all, end-all of anatomy books, I think it is one of the better books to include in your anatomy library. I have several other great anatomy books besides this one.

Anatomy for the Artist > Customer Review #3:
Excellent photography. Average content.

This is an interesting book in that the photography is excellent. Do you like nude bodies that are in very good shape? This one has it in excess. As one who has studied artistic anatomy for over twenty years I own just about every book written on the subject. One of the things I appreciate are sources showing surface anatomy; with models that have muscle definition. The odd thing about this book is how much could have been done with it. There are about 7 or 8 transparencys that over lay the photos. All but one of these show the skeletal detail over a photo. When I am looking at the surface anatomy of a figure and trying to determine which muscles are which, I would rather have an overlay of the muscles than of the skeleton. This must have been the decision of an editor. The drawings depicting the muscles are good, no better than what has been done. Goldfingers Human Anatomy for Artists or Richers Artistic Anatomy are very hard to beat. The other odd note about this book is the bibliography. Its as though the items chosen were selected for their quirky nature and not their value as a source of information. Five stars for the photography, negative two stars for the anatomical content.

 
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