Human Anatomy Made Amazingly Easy: A Book Review

It's an art anatomy book for beginners and newcomers in the artistic field. If you're starting out as an artist the most essential thing to learn is human anatomy. This book makes it easier to learn how to draw figures. The examples in the book are very basic and simple. The drawings look more like caricature then realistic illustrations of people but it helps with just learning the fundamentals without being distracted or intimidated by an experienced artist.

The author Christopher Hart, has published many drawing books, focusing on his own cartoonish style, specializing in comics and manga. But this is by far the best anatomy book to show basic and important parts of the human body to draw. The book divides it into sections. It discusses how to draw the various aspects associated within separated sections.

As Shown in the Contents:

Introduction

The Human Head

The Features of the Face

The Skeletal Structure

The Features of the Body

The Dynamics of the Body

Practice Poses

Index

"The Human Head" section introduces the basic head structure of the male and female. The examples shown are very clear and sharp in terms of print quality. It teaches you how to draw the basic proportions of a general human head, the eyes are half way into the head, the nose are usually the same length as the ears, etc... It also shows a bit of the understructure of the face like the bones and muscles. It breaks down shadowing which is an important thing to learn to make your drawing look more 3-dimentional. There is also a bit on perspective so that one can focus on how the head is drawn with movement.

"The Features of the Face" section deals with drawing the head and making it look convincing. It divides the parts of the head like the lips, eyes, bones structure, ears, etc. and takes each part into consideration of drawing with the male and female. It breaks it down very easy and doesn't go into unnecessary detail or long boring passages about names of parts that you would have to know if you're a doctor. It cuts straight to the point. If you've advanced enough, you would want to look for a book that goes into those types of details, but I can tell you now it's not in this book.

Next you move onto the "The Skeletal Structure". Like the first "Head" section, it breaks down the basics and deals mostly with the generalized proportions of the body with both male and female. It can feel a little daunting for a beginner to trying to learn all the more detailed parts of the human body but it makes your drawing look all the more convincing.

We move onto "The Features of the Body" section, which I find exciting to draw. If you ever want to draw comic books, this is a good book to reference to. Something that I also like about this section is that it also covers the shadowing with the planes of the body very easily. It's more understandable then other anatomy books that I've read. Other thing talked about is the muscles and where they are shown with both genders. It covers how the muscle bends when the body moves and sections of the body like arms, hands, and feet individually.

"The Dynamics of the Body" advances a bit more after you get all the basics down. It deals with perspective drawing, volume of the body, and movement. It teaches the basic fundamentals without going into too much detail about a particular subject such as Perspective. Save that for another book to learn. It's as far as you can get in this particular book.

The last section "Practice Poses" lets you practice all that you've learned and gives you some practice figures to try your skills. It's good if you don't have access to human anatomy classes with real models. But I would recommend practicing with live models after you get the hang of the steps to drawing all the basic shapes.

This is a very user friendly book that can be read by anyone. The anatomy drawings are not so "revealing". Some of the figures (though partially) are not entirely nude. It's not concerned with details on a professional level. It really focuses on one's basic drawing skills even if you have never drawn before. If you're a beginner, I really recommend this book!

Author: Christopher Hart
Pages: 144
Watson-Guptill Publication, 2000
Price: $14.00-$20.00 (check amazon.com for the best deals)