Month: October 2019

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In my last article Anatomy Books for Drawing Comics Part 1, I discussed books by Burne Hogarth and George Bridgman. Now I am going to jump over to a former student of Bridgman’s, Andrew Loomis. I honestly never heard the name Andrew Loomis until the early 2000’s. I was on a website called conceptart.org, which I don’t belive is around anymore. It’s a shame, as a lot industry professionals posted helpful content there. Anyway, I was reading a post about everyones favorite figure drawing/anatomy books and quite a few people mentioned a book called Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth by Andrew Loomis.

I had never heard of this book before nor did I know anything about Andrew Loomis. A quick background, Andrew Loomis (1892-1959) was an illustrator, author and art instructor whose work was featured in many magazines and advertisements. He is also known for publishing a series of art instruction books between the years 1939 to 1961. To complicate matters all of his books were long out of print. If you were able to find one in a mom and pop book store you were going to pay a pretty penny for it as the book was published in 1943. You could find scanned pdf versions on the internet, but they were not of the best quality. Luckily, around 2010 I believe, the demand for the books brought them back into print and they are now easily available.

Now, I had said in the first part of my anatomy book article that there was not just one book that was going to teach you everything, well this book comes pretty darn close! In Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth, Loomis put together a tome which covers so many concepts for drawing the figure. Things like proportion, drawing the mannequin, weight distribution, values, lighting, bones, muscles, drawing using landmarks, perspective, flat diagrams, movement and about 100 other things too long to list. It is a 208 page book full of beautiful illustrations and diagrams reminiscent of the type of illustrations found in magazine ads from the 30’s and 40’s. You could spend a few years studying everything in this book, but the information is so worth the investment in time.

Loomis put out several other books. They are all fantastic, but if you want to draw comics I would suggest Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth, Fun With A Pencil and Creative illustration.

Since I’ve covered the big three of Hogarth, Bridgman and Loomis, I thought I would move on to some of the more recent books that are making the rounds and have found favor with some of todays top artists.

Michael Hampton’s Figure Drawing Design and Invention is one of the newer books that a lot of artist from newbies to pro’s seem to really like.
I would have to agree with them as it is a really great book on the subject matter.

Hampton’s book is like a mix of Hogarth and Loomis. There are a lot of gestural line drawings mixed with traditional figure drawings. Then there are more diagrammatic drawings that isolate certain body parts and illustrate the structure and the mechanics of how the body part works. Most of these illustrations are color coded which makes for easy understanding of the material.

In general the books goal is to provide a simple understanding of anatomy in order to clarify the mechanics of the figure, help facilitate the invention of figures from imagination, and ultimately develop the artists skills to be successful across different media. Definitely a worthwile book to have in your reference library.

The next book I’m going to talk about is not your traditional figure drawing book, nor does it have to do with comic book illustration. Anatomy for Sculptors Understanding the Human Figure by Uldis Zarins with Sandis Kondrats is a book targeted at sculptors, particularly those sculpting digitally in ZBrush or Mudbox or any of the various modeling programs.

So why put this book in an article about figure drawing for comic book illustration? Because…..this book is awesome! The authors put a lot of thought into the material in this book in order to help sculptors learn how to portray convincing anatomy. The figure is presented as a whole but then broken down into parts in color coded illustrations that run the gamut from diagrammatic images to fully rendered figures.

For the aspiring comic book artist, this book is an easy reference guide on how to construct figures, what the masses of the body look like, how they are formed and how they work with one another. The illustrations are a combination of 3d sculpts, wireframe meshes and actual photographs. Sometimes all layered on top of one another to help illustrate how the layers of the body work. So while this book was created with 3D sculptors in mind, there is plenty of reference material to learn from for 2D artists.

The last book for this article is Force: Drawing Human Anatomy by Mike Mattesi

This is a book is more about the motion of the human body and how to draw it convincingly as opposed to just learning straight up anatomy. Mattesi stresses the function of each body part and how gravity effects the appearance of the muscle forms relative to the pose the body is in. This is super helpful information for comic book artists, as comics are all about movement and action. If you want to work in comics, you are going to need to know how to draw the body in action convincingly. To that end, this book allows you to concentrate on mastering one body part at a time using the color coded illustrations as a reference guide.

If you like Force: Drawing Human Anatomy, Mattesi has another book called Force: Dynamic Life Drawing which demonstrates the Force line and how to apply the technique to draw dynamic figures. The 10th Anniversary addition has a companion app that launches over 30 videos of Mike as he demonstrates the concepts in his book. So if video is you thing the 10th Anniversary addition is the way to go, if not you can get the standard addition. Either way you won’t be disappointed.

So that is going to wrap up part 2 of my anatomy books article. I really hope these books help you in your artistic journey. I only wish someone would have compiled a list of books like this back when I was a younger man looking for this information. My goal now is to make things easier for the next generation of artist looking to find their way. Good luck to you all!

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You’re a comic artist, sketch artist or illustrator and you have to travel. Maybe you’re doing a convention or an artist appearance and you don’t want to haul a ton of supplies with you. You just need something that you can lay down some pencils and ink over without having to bring brushes and bottles of ink with you. It’s got to be portable and not take up a lot of room in a suitcase or backpack. If this sounds like you check out the Copic Biwal Black Ink Pro Wallet Set.

This set contains one Copic marker, one Sketch marker, one Wide marker, one Various Ink refill, four Multiliner in .1mm, .3mm, .5mm, and brush tip, and two SP refill cartridges. The set comes in a black, book-style case with an extra slot where you can put a pencil or pen. I like to throw in a lead holder such as the Prismacolor Turquoise Lead Holder .

You’re going to need a small sharpener to keep a point on your lead. One that fits perfectly into the case is the Kum 303.58.21 Plastic Lead Pointer Pencil Sharpener. These are maybe an inch long so they can fit right into the Copic wallet and not take up much space at all.

Last but not least, you’ll need an eraser. Throw in a June Gold Kneaded Rubber Eraser and your all set.

Now that you have all your drawing implements fit into one handy dandy wallet, all you need is some paper to draw on. If you’re going to lay out some sequential pages bring a Canson Comic Book Art Boards Pad with you. The pad comes pre-lined in non-repro blue so you’ll know exactly where your bleed and trim lines are. It is 150 pound heavyweight paper so it can withstand lots of erasing and scraping.

At this point your pretty set, but if you require a portable drawing surface you may need an Artist Tote Board. The 18 x 18 US Art Supply Artist Sketch Tote Board would fit the bill. Just fasten your comic board into the two metal clasps and you can literally draw anywhere. This board is 18 x 18 but you can get them in other sizes. Just keep in mind you standard comic page is 11 x 17 so you want the tote board to accommodate your paper size.

If you decide that you need to bring all of these supplies with you, you’re going to need to carry them in something. If you’re just bringing the Copic Wallet then you can throw that into a standard suitcase or backpack. However, if you’re bringing the comic art boards and the tote board, you are going to need something to carry them in. I would suggest either of these artist tote bags. The Artist Portfolio Backpack and Tote can be pulled with a handle, worn as a backpack or carried at your side using the side strap. It’s sturdy and roomy enough to fit your supplies and art boards.

The Welldeal Heavy Duty Art Portfolio Carry Case Bag Backpack is a sturdy yet roomy backpack that can accommodate a sizes up to 26″ x 19″. It has a sewn in wire frame so the bag maintains it shape. It’s also water resistant to help protect your art when the weather doesn’t cooperate.

So there you have it. You can travel really light with just the Copic wallet with an added pencil, sharpener and eraser, or you can travel a bit more robustly by adding comic boards a tote and a large backpack to fit it all in.

I hope this article was helpful in getting you set to create on-the-go.
Now go forth and make something great!

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If there was one question I would say is the most prevalent amongst anyone wanting to learn to draw comics, it’s what figure drawing/anatomy book should I but to learn from. That is not an easy question to answer because there is no one all encompassing resource that you can buy that will teach you everything. There are some books that have loads of information in them and require in depth study in order to be able to utilize the material. Others have general overviews of the basics to get you up and running. The truth is if you want to draw comics, you will pull information from a variety of sources. Books are a great resource that you can constantly refer to when you need reference for anatomy or a particular pose. Studying from real life through figure drawing classes and just daily observation of people should also make up part of your study program. Since the title of this article is about anatomy books I am going to focus on those books that I feel are the most helpful. Keep in mind this is not the be all end all list of books as new ones come out all the time, and you as an artist should investigate new books to see if you can learn anything from them.

So what books should I start with? Good question! I asked myself that same question back when I wanted to start acquiring reference books. Unfortunately it was the early 90’s and the internet did not exist so I couldn’t just look it up on Google or Amazon. What we did have back then was a magazine called Wizard which was a comic industry fanzine. They would always have interviews with the hot artist of the month where they would ask standard questions like how did you break in, did you go to art school etc. On occasion some of the artist would mention the books they use to study from. One of the books mentioned constantly was called Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth.

Of course I ran to the local book store to hunt down this tome of anatomical wisdom. When I got it home I remember looking through it fascinated by the drawings contained within. Beautiful rendered drawings of both male and female figures in all sorts of contorted poses. Hogarth was an illustrator and teacher and worked on the Tarzan comic strip. I learned that these drawings were gathered from the various figure drawing lectures Burne Hogarth would give at the schools he taught at, in particular the School of Visual Arts in NYC which he co-founded with Silas Rhodes. The school was established in 1947 as The Cartoonists and Illustrators School and eventually was renamed The School of Visual Arts in 1956.

Many artist from Marvel, DC and Image recommended this book as well as some of the other Hogarth books that were available such as Dynamic Anatomy which actually came out in 1958 and preceeded Dynamic Figure Drawing which came later in the 70’s.

In addition to Dynamic Anatomy and Dynamic Figure Drawing, other books in the Hogarth series are Drawing Dynamic Hands, Drawing the Human Head, Dynamic Light and Shade, Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery and The Arcane Eye of Hogarth which is a sketchbook of Hogarth’s pencil drawings and not particularly focused on anatomy. These books are a great starting point to build you library of anatomy reference.

The first time I heard of the name George Bridgman it was in a video called Stan Lee Presents The Comic Book Greats Volume #10 with Jim Lee. It was a video series that focused on a particular “hot” artist in the early 90’s and would discuss how the artist goes about drawing comics. You can view the video on youtube here. Jim Lee was demonstrating a gesture drawing and mentioned he wasn’t someone who memorized all of the muscles, but was more into the gesture and studied George Bridgman. Jim Lee, at the time was a monster of comic art. Image Comics was newly formed and in the comic book world, Jim was basically a rock star. When I saw this video my first thought was, hell if Jim Lee uses this book, then I need to get it asap! So back to the book store I went to hunt down George Bridgman’s Life Drawing.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the drawings in this book are very crude. What I mean by that is in comparison to the Hogarth books, the drawings contained here are very simplistic line drawings. However, that is the beauty and power of his books. Bridgman used the least amount of lines as possible to illustrate the gesture of the human figure. He used basic shapes and showed how they wedged and interlocked into each other to form the masses of the body and how they work with and relate to one another. Bridgman showed how these forms create 3 dimensional shapes that construct the body. Bridgman was truly a master of gesture and anatomy. Other famous artists that he had taught in his classes are names you may know, such as Will Eisner artist of The Spirit comic, author of Comics and Sequential Art and the man who The Eisner Award is named after. Andrew Loomis, illustrator, author and art instructor whose books I will cover in part 2 of this article was also a student of Bridgman, as was Gifford Beal, Paul Manship, Edmund Ward, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, and Norman Rockwell. This book along with some of Bridgmans’s other books such as Constructive Anatomy , Heads Features and Faces, and The Book of 100 Hands should all occupy a spot on your reference book shelf.

That is it for part 1 of this article. In part 2 I’ll go over a few older books and some more recent ones that I feel can be very beneficial to the aspiring artist.