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Constructive Anatomy: With Almost 500 Illustrations

by George B. Bridgman

Anatomy as a guide to drawing the figure

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Awards & Recognition

  • Critical praise

    Named the best book on artist's anatomy by Art Students League News

    Described as the best book on artist's anatomy available anywhere.

AlbakiReads Editorial

Anatomy as a guide to drawing the figure

George B. Bridgman organizes human anatomy around the forms and relationships that shape the figure in motion and at rest. Nearly 500 illustrations cover the body from hands and joints to the trunk, pelvis, and feet, with attention to how bones, muscles, and connecting parts work together. The book’s practical emphasis is on translating bending, twisting, and turning into drawing through clearly defined masses. This makes the volume a visual reference as well as an instructional study of the structures artists need to observe when drawing the human body.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Artists and drawing students studying life drawing and figure construction
  • Sculptors seeking a visual reference to human anatomy
  • Practitioners who prefer illustrated instruction covering body parts and movement

Themes

Figure drawingHuman anatomyBody structure and movementIllustrated art instruction

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

"Excellent. The most valuable, detailed anatomical studies (which are also beautifully drawn) of all parts of the figure." -- American Artist
"The best book on artist's anatomy available anywhere." -- Art Students League News
Countless artists and students since the 1920s have used this and other books by George B. Bridgman (for nearly 50 years a teacher at the Art Students League in New York) for a solid foundation and understanding of human anatomy. They have found, and continue to find, that his unique way of discovering the vitalizing forces in the human form and realizing them in drawing carries the student pleasantly over one of art's most severe hurdles. Bridgman's superb anatomical sketches, of which there are nearly 500 in the book, also bring clearly to fruition his lucid theories of how to draw the human body in its structure and its complex movements.
Constructive Anatomy, an anatomical reference guide for the working artist, sculptor, and student, graphically shows important parts of the human body, both in motion and in repose -- hand, wrist, thumb, fingers, forearm, arm, armpit, shoulder, neck, head, eye, nose, ear, mouth, chin, trunk (front, side, and back), pelvis, hip, thigh, leg, knee, ankle, foot, and toes. Drawings of bone and muscle structure of the working of the joints and the interrelation of the various parts of the body are mainly concerned with movement of all sorts -- movements that are described in detail as well as illustrated. The bending, twisting, and turning, creasing and interlocking of the various parts of the body are represented in drawing as the wedging of masses in specific ways that are clearly defined by Mr. Bridgman.
Every artist will save tedious hours of research with this simple but effective approach, and will be delighted with its directness and fervor.

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