Customer Reviews

An Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists (Dover Anatomy for Artists)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I wanted a book that specifically focused on horses. Anyone
whose drawn horses, even for years, knows that getting this
animal down pat is no easy feat. Studying anatomy is a must.
This is THE book.

I have so much respect for the person who drew these plates.
It's astounding work. The anatomy is shown from every angle;
starting with skeletal plates, adding muscles and so forth,
these plates "build" the horse from the inside out. After
studying the legs I cut myself some slack! This is a very
beautiful, complex animal. No wonder this is such a challenging
subject!

There are smaller additional sections on a few animals as a
bonus. I found the cat skull study to be immensely helpful.

I don't recommend this book for anyone who wants a how-to
on every animal in the world, this isn't for you. Nor is it for
beginning artists. It is for serious artists who want to do
in depth study of horses because we can't all just walk outside
and see horses everywhere. There's nothing like the real thing,
but this is a good second choice when the real thing isn't
available for study.

This is one of those books that I actually revere and am very
proud to have in my reference library. A serious resource for
serious art study.

This book has been an enormous help with both drawing and sculpting. My only complaint is the narrow range of species. The book is heavy on horses, dogs, lions and cows. I'd like to see more variety - giraffes, perhaps?

Only five animals spotlighted. No explanation of orientation i.e. dorsal. No explanation of what is depicted, especially maddening with certain cross sections. The art is uniform, clean, and attractive. The attention to each animal is not identical, i.e. ones mouth is highlighted in depth while others are not.

ellenberger, dittrich, baum, with additional plates by cuvier, straus-durckheim and stubbs. The plates are extrodinarily detailed with from many angles. primary sections on horse, dog, lion, cow and bull, stag, roe, and goat.

Here's my review after teaching Animal Anatomy for Artists in universities for eleven years, as well as to concept artists, animators and modelers in game corporations.

These are the most authoritative and beautifully rendered plates available.

But let me list the limitations and irritations:

1) The terms are on separate pages from the plates. It's maddening to go back and forth between pages to find the names!
2) The book will not teach you how to draw. You must learn that from Hultgren and the Cortina Famous Artists' Library and Joe Weatherly & Glenn Vilppu... and if you'll allow the plug: me.
3) The names of bones and muscles are not consistent with modern terms.
4) It's mainly Horse, Lion & Dog, and a few others, some of which are drawn by artists inferior to Ellenberger.

So don't go to this book for variety. Go to it for comprehensive anatomy. It will save you years of dissections.

And - it's the most sensitive pencil rendering I've ever seen. Ellenberger is more subtle in modulating surface changes than Escher or Ingres or anyone. I've looked at these plates for countless hours with critical eyes and I always end up admiring them more.

It belongs in every animal artist's library, along with Eliot Goldfinger's book which balances out the shortcomings of Ellenberger. Both books are for the ambitious artist, who will find them worth a hundred times what they cost.

- Marshall Vandruff [...]

This is nicely illustrated but I found it lacking. I was looking for anatomy of the horse and didn't like this book because as with so many anatomy books the views are always stiff, straight , and or limp. I was hoping for some illustrations of the muscles at work while in action. I prefered Cyclopedia Anatomicae for this very reason, plus it shows more variety of other animals, some human anatomy, and a great feature of comparing the anatomy of various animals along with humans. A great way to better comprehend the whole picture on how anatomy works.

Thorough and precise anatomical drawings of animals commonly portrayed in art (the horse, the dog, etc.). The skeletal and muscular system is rendered in different layers for each animal and from different perspectives (top, side, back, front). Even has detailed drawings of their heads, paws/hooves.

I thought that for the most part this book was very disappointing. It contains a limited number of animals, about 14, most of which I could just walk outside and see live any day I wanted. The book contains tons of detail for a few of the common animals and for lions, but the other half of the animals in this slim book are limited to one or two small half page pictures that aren't even all that helpful. Save your money and find something better.

I've had the fortune of seeing this book, and I can say that is worth every penny. True, it's limited to a certain few animals, but there's only so many pages and only so much interest in certain animals.

The section on horses is invaluable. Any animal artist knows that horses are one of the most difficult species to work with. The detail is impeccable, and the they illustrate nearly every part of the body from every angle you could possibly view it from. It's perfection.

The section on the dog employs what I think is a great dane, or some other large dog. This is quite useful, as you can adapt the anatomical information to drawing other canids such as wolves if you're familiar with the differences between the two.

The same thing goes for the section on the lion. A previous reviewer lamented that there was no section on the tiger, but this is really only half-true: the lion and the tiger are actually nearly identical anatomically. Take the anatomical pictures provided and dress it up in a different skin; you have a tiger. All cats have roughly similar bodily structure, so this is useful anyhow. This is especially true of the detailed images of their paws, which are quite interesting and complex.

I won't go into any depth about the rest of the sections, but even for the information in the first three this book is well worth it.

I got this one hoping it had something more to add to my other anatomy book by Goldfinger. However I found it to be the pricier, but less in-depth option. It covers mostly the horses with other domestic animals and a random lioness thrown in. The lack of other animals is disappointing. I would love to see a bird or a shark in one of these, but so far I'm coming up dry. While the in-depth descriptions of the muscle structures are very well done, there are better, cheaper options out there.