How long it takes to learn Anatomy.

It takes less time than you think to learn how to draw good Anatomy!

Here are some of the resources that I mentioned in the video:

Some Japanese Manga Drawing Books:

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My Pinterest & Artstation

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[jaychouhan]

To people who are just startting out. A good way to get a feel for such learning process is ahmed aldoori's 100heads challenge. It might seem trivial at first but you'll see it yourself as you go through 10 heads everyday. Slowly your sketches will improve. You'll invent your own short-hands on the fly. By the 100th head, not only will you have improved tenfold at drawing heads, you'll also know exactly what you need to do to improve at drawing the rest of the body and the time you'll take to reach your goals.
Edit: some of you claim to have seen no progress. This is a bit surprising coz the challenge is about drawing 100 freakin heads in a short time period. Realistically anyone should see some improvement in just the first 20ish heads. Here's some point to keep in mind if you're really chasing improvement.
1. Learn head construction. Not the anime one with just a circle and a triangle. Im talking planes of the head and stuff. Look up loomis' book
2. After each drawing, take a minute to spot one mistake and in it and try to just improve on that. Can be head shape, proportions, eye level, perspective.
3.Most importantly, warmup! Most people don't know this but even the pros cant just wake up and spit out remotely good drawings. Draw random stuff, lines spirals, boxes, cartoons just to hammer back in the pace and rhythm before you jump into heads.
Edit 2: this comment still gets replies. So I wanted to clarify another thing people seem to be getting wrong. I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT MEAN that just drawing heads will improve your anatomy skill for the rest of the body parts. I just meant that you will begin to understand how you can go about realistically improving at them too. Understanding what makes your brain tick when learning and improving was the most important thing I gained from this challenge. That and the ability to just draw a head without having to think too much about it. It's annoying coz my random sketches are always just floating angry heads.

[charlie.tt]

I've only been studying anatomy/learning how to draw people for about two and a half months, but the biggest thing for me was realizing that studying anatomy isn't as scary as I thought it was. You don't have to know every tiny muscle in the human body, especially not at the beginning, focusing on bigger, simple shapes will be more than enough to help you start understand the basic construction of the human body and how to make it move etc. Still trying to figure out how to learn best, but I think the biggest improvement I've made so far is by using other artists' work as reference, but trying to replicate it with the tools I already have, like the bean bag method or simple boxes and cylinders. That way I'm not just copying the work, but more so testing myself on "can I construct something like this with the tools I already have?", and it seems to really help a lot! (And thank you for this video!! Clearly I am super into anatomy right now so it came at just the right time! And hearing you confirm some of my thoughts really helped.)

[hashitoromkatt]

It was taking me around 1 Hour to draw a basic Anatomy figure ( including correction ) to get it accurate, just 3-4 months ago, now i can draw a lot of different poses in about 10-20 minutes pretty accurately, of course i can still improve a lot but i just wanted to say if you get a really good teacher or art program its worth investing in it, because it will teach you so much so quickly and you wont regret it

[stratovolcano]

You've completely skyrocketed in skill and experience since I first watched your videos. Thanks for always giving me something to aspire to!

[thebootycallofcthulhu]

Man… I know this is essentially just a childish vent cause I’m tired of sucking a drawing and I don’t think it particularly well thought out and I’ll probably regret this tomorrow but… I’m really tired of seeing artists downplay their figure drawings and then when they present them to show how “bad” it is or how it’s indicative of relatively almost no practice, it’s infinitely better then all 3 of my pads of paper combined after what I thought was rigorous study of anatomy… man it’s demoralising…

[malcomeldelmedio]

In one year I get really good at anatomy, almost dominated, I really love doing muscles studies, also draw figures, the only things I still have struggle is draw poses without a reference, I'm drawing the same pose from different angles to train my brain.
You can improve really fast with a correct practice :)

[koiyo]

There arent many people who really really try to convey how much effort and practice they put into improving, so its easy to get discouraged but when i watch your videos they're genuinely so motivating. never stop creating man

[suireyha]

I've found that the issue with art compared to other study regions, is that in its subjectivity, there's never a clear guide to tell you where to go next.
Learning computer science is pretty straightforward - first, you learn basic compiling, then data types, then functions, loops, if statements, etc - there is a clear next step based on your position.

The issue with art is that there's nobody who can just say "If you're a beginner, start here, then here is a link to your next 100 steps, practice once a day for the next 5 years have fun"
I would love step by step guides that can start you off at a beginner and assure you progression at a steady rate.

There are plenty of artists with potential that simply don't know HOW to study.

[Angel]

When I was young I drew a lot. I painted jackets and such. I even went to Parson’s School of Design for a year. I hated it. I even had Boris Vallejo for a class. I didn’t understand a damn thing. Eventually I stopped. I’m 58 now and have become disabled and am trying to get back into it. I’m even scared to pick up a pencil. It’s crazy!

[erunooo]

I'm one year on my journey, and still learning and oh boi my improvement was great!good thing with that is I'm still focusing on forms, gesture, proportion and not yet on muscles, bones but still can pull off nice results, (efficient practise is still the key, not just knowing it and not working on it afterwards)

[percyfreeman]

In my opinion it doesn't really matter how long it takes, drawing is about learning something all the time.

[Cinskix]

I think you should also consider the fact that even just drawing portraits has also improved your anatomy skills in many ways. It taught you a lot about form and improved your general drawing skills. My point is, that this video might be a little bit misinforming for begginer artists since they may believe that they could learn anatomy in just 2 years. I think it would be worth to mention that you need to get pretty decent fundamental skills if you want to improve your anatomy drawing that fast. In my opinion this is a "step by step" journey and it takes time for your brain to be able to understand and process all the information it's getting. Like there are people who encourage others to start drawing with forms and not with shapes, but they don't really consider the fact that begginer artists won't really be able to process what they're doing since they have to put too much focus and struggle just to draw simple shapes right. So, what I'm trying to say there's nothing wrong with drawing "aimlessly" and just copying nice shapes from references and stuff like that, but, it's very important to gradually increase the challenge alongside with your skill and perception improvement.
Anyways, it's a great video after all, and I share exactly the same views as yours about drawing from imagination and your improvement over the years is encouraging to see ^^

[HadesPsd]

Anatomy and figure invention really isn’t as hard as I thought it was. Artists that can draw comfortably without ref will always talk about seeing the simple forms and shape in the complex. I always spend my mornings drawing figures, and I’ve improved so much. It’s really useful to look at the figure drawings of professionals and identify what’s important to capture.

[SakuraSeed]

tips for traditinal artists!!



when your drawing be sure to do these two things often:

one. turn your paper upside down to spot if something isnt symertrical.

two. if your drawing on a table be sure to pick up your paper and hold it vertically, because when you sit your perspective is skewwed and your drawing may look fine but a lot of the times the closer to the bottom of the page you go the smaller things get, it makes for some really awkward proportions.

[MKPwrz]

I always have a huge struggle drawing from imagination. It's like an entire new skill set you have to learn before all those hours of figure drawing practice even seeps into figures from imagination. And sometimes it feels worse knowing you can draw figures from ref and then from imagination barely a stick figure

[Interstellar]

I think the most difficult thing for me to overcome is time. It usually takes me several hours to sketch something like a head with basic hair, because I'm slow and I try to be thorough with my drawings. I'm steadily getting into more details. This is challenging, especially after a long day at work. My mind wants to draw, but my body is too exhausted.

I'm studying from real life, at the same time applying concepts from several of my favorite artists. I also have difficulties with head angles, so I purchased multiple animation / sketch design books to get a feel for how these artists did it. Breaking down professional artists' rough sketches into shapes helps me so much.

[blueintent]

Have you talked about how you make your reference boards? Do you plan a lot beforehand or do you combine the stuff afterwards when you start drawing??

[mochumorii]

When you said 2 years I physically gasped

[KM-pmvf]

Thank you Josh, I keep getting in and out of practice, which is not the best thing to do, but I'm grateful that when I go back I find most of my previous improvement is still there in a way, not completely lost and I don't have to start from zero, but it's still a long journey ahead of me and I hope to have less interruptions.
Also you're awesome Josh, thanks for everything.

[poughin]

I just found an old sketch book of mine from over 5 years ago and oh the improvement, sometimes it really helps to look back at your old stuff to really see the leap in improvement