Jennifer Crouch - Anatomy for the Artist: A Complete Guide to Drawing the Human Body

Jennifer Crouch is an artist and teacher with a background in physics and medical illustration. She worked as an anatomical artist from 2011 to 2013, and teaches on the short courses in Anatomical Drawing at Central Saint Martins. She is a current PhD candidate at the University of Portsmouth where her practice-based research explores physical phenomena, corporeality, and the ways in which bodies and machines interface with each other (both actually and notionally). Her research makes use of MRI, sculpture and weaving, and her collaborators include MRI scientists at The Francis Crick Institute and the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging at UCL. She is co-founder of art-science collective Jiggling Atoms, has authored books on popular science, and enjoys gardening.

We all move, breathe, grow, get sick and change and we are all different. These aspects of anatomy and of being (or becoming) a person with a body are the ideas that are at the heart of this book. As the CERNs Particles for Justice website states:

The humanity of any person, regardless of ascribed identities such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, religion, disability, gender presentation, or sexual identity is not up for debate.

Source: particlesforjustice.org

People are diverse, and art can be used to celebrate that. Many anatomical drawing books seem to focus purely on a Western anatomical ideal, with Leonardo da Vincis Vitruvian Man and realistic drawing at their core. Some books frame anatomy as something where ideal proportions exist as truths about the nature of reality, restricting any notion of proportion, sex, gender, age and body type to tiny, simplistic categories where there is only one kind of woman, man and child, and nothing else. But we are more than this!

The drawing of the Vitruvian Man (and the symbolism attributed to it) was Leonardos attempt to capture the different proportions of the body. By using circles and squares, he illustrated how the stretched-out arms length relates to height and other body proportions, and this image came to represent art, knowledge and science in a very specific way. For Leonardo, this drawing was a scientific study of body mechanics and proportions; the use of squares and circles to interpret and draw peoples proportions is a very useful technique in anatomical drawing. However, its important to acknowledge that this figure does not represent all bodies, and much of the expansive range of human morphology and anatomy is excluded from it. While there are some measurable patterns and commonalities in how humans grow and change, anatomical ideals and archetypes dont even begin to capture the complexity, diversity, unexpectedness and wonders of anatomy (let alone biology). There is so much more to anatomical drawing (and the science of anatomy) than form, function and ideal proportions.

In this book, I have tried to showcase anatomy in some of its expansive wonderfulness and to provide descriptions of techniques that might support artists who want to draw the human form. Just as there is no right or wrong kind of anatomy, there is no right or wrong way to draw or paint it. Realism most certainly is not the best way to draw anything either: an abstract scribble, minimal collection of dashes or expressive child-like sketches can capture the gesture and nuances of personality just as well. The kind of guidance detailed in this book will support the development of what some call technical drawing and others might refer to as realistic or even academic drawing.

As children, we are experimental with our drawing and representation. But somehow, as we learn more about ourselves and the world, many tend to become more self-critical and claim that they cant draw because the works they create do not look realistic. We are conditioned and even encouraged to believe that realism is somehow superior to other styles, but its not; its simply a style, and we use different styles to say different things about the world in different ways. Whatever style you happen to prefer, be it ancient or contemporary, abstract, symbolic, minimalist, maximalist, comic or realistic, bear in mind that observational drawing neednt be the ultimate measure of your skills as an artist. Capturing things exactly as they are is not the measure of you as an artistic human. If you happen to wish to improve or practise the specific skills used in observational (or realistic) drawing, then just try practising, because like most things, that is all that is required.

One thing to remember about practice is that it is not a case of practice makes perfect, but rather practice makes progress, and doing art is always a journey you can decide where you want to go with it. Dont be too hard on yourself, and dont be ashamed of the things you love to do creatively, as each drawing you create is all part of the process of exploration. We are all artists and creative in our own way, and we all have a style that we prefer to use, which we eventually personalise and evolve as we move through life and develop our own creative practice.

I personally dont usually draw things realistically; I actually tend to be more into abstract forms, bright colours, otherworldly landscapes, absurdities, fantasy and lumpy weird textures, but in this book I use a realistic style (or observational drawing) as a way to celebrate how wide-ranging, expansive and diverse anatomy can be. I use observational drawing to attend to the small details that make people special and make me love them. In my role as a teacher and researcher, I like to think of careful observational drawing as an activity that is about love, being present, relaxed and watching the world, rather than about ability, impressing people or being adept at drawing. Try to use it as a tool for understanding and reflection.

I encourage you not to be too critical, nor judge your own drawings or those of artists around you as simply good or bad. Explore what kind of drawings you enjoy most, then practise the skills that will help you to say what you want to say in the way that you want to say it.