Anatomy - Stepping Out of the Comfort Zone

My Binder for Anatomy Lite, handouts & notes!

There are some artists who do not believe that artists should take classes. I have even heard a few "I already know how to do that" art attitudes. And, in history, there are a few Self Taught  Artists who have become very successful. However I have an opposite view, I  have much to learn about art! Often I find myself asking other artists questions and gleaning their thoughts and ideas on ways to approach or improve paintings. Another artist friend strongly believes in the necessity of life draw ing. Even though she has perfect life drawing skills she has rearranged her schedule in order to take a life drawing class, it is important to her.

Hand Bones: My drawing of the hand bones.

My passion is painting and I have taken several painting classes and workshops. However,  I hear over and over how important it is to have drawing skills. Having taken Portrait Drawing, I felt the strong need to learn figure drawing. I believe that learning life drawing can only help my paintings.

For winter I took a life drawing class and I really enjoyed it and learned quite a bit. I feel the value in the class and in having a passionate and fantastic instructor. This semester, we are studying "Anatomy Lite". I have never taken a class like this and I find it fascinating. We look at a human skeleton and get a lecture overview of structure (i.e. rib cage) and then look to a live model, keeping the underlying structure in mind. There are so many bones in the body and I probably will not commit them all to memory, but I love seeing and learning and reading about the structure of us!