Customer Reviews

How to Draw: Heroic Anatomy #1

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This is a collection of tutorials from Wizard Magazine. I already had some of them scanned but I am really happy I bought the complete book. The book is a good quality with hard cover, glossy paper and metal spiral binding so I it looks like it can take lot of abuse. It not only contains lot of anatomy drawings and how to chapters but also few chapters on perspective, poses, head and hand expressions, hair and shading. Overall I am very happy with the book, I am actually going to buy the next in the series right now :) If I should think about one thing I am missing here it is a complete anatomy chart with the names of the muscles. I guess, you don't really need it to draw cool looking comic characters but it would be nice touch. If you are an artist looking for definitive anatomy book I highly recommend to add Anatomy Coloring book by Wynn Kapit to your collection. It is a medical anatomy book which is great as it can explain in detail all the muscles and their attachments to the bones etc. In my opinion the best way to learn anatomy is 1: Copy your favorite drawings and comic and learn from the books like Wizards How to Draw :Heroic Anatomy. 2: Study the muscles you drew with help Anatomy Coloring Book so you can understand how it actually works and learn the names of the muscles :)Anatomy Coloring Book, The (3rd Edition)

Back in Wizard: The Comics Magazine's heyday, they had a monthly feature called "Basic Training." In this article, comic book professionals would give little 2-3 page tutorials on some aspect of comic book art, from the simple (the basics of shading) to the more complex (Mike Mignola showing you how to draw a cemetery or, say, Lenil Francis Yu showing you how to draw Wolverine). Now, unfortunately, that great feature is no more, but Wizard has been republishing them in their "How to Draw" series. How to Draw: Heroic Anatomy #1 is a compilation of a number of great articles helping the eager drawing student get acquainted with drawing the human figure.

Now, first of all, reader beware: there are 28 separate tutorials in this book, and at least 15 of them were previously collected in Wizard: How to Draw several years back. However, that doesn't mean that if you already have that book (as I do) you won't get anything out of this one.

This book is separated into 3 chapters. Chapter 1 is a brief discussion of drawing tools. Chapter 2 covers the "Basics": elementary figure construction, perspective, and shading. Chapter 3 is the Anatomy chapter, with discussions on figure structure, facial structure, drawing men and women, etc.

There are a number of chapters that you will probably find useful. Brian Bolland writes and draws three chapters on how to draw eyes, noses and mouths and these may be very helpful, as will Justiniano's section on "Faces" overall - for those of us who struggle with faces, these chapters are godsends. Matt Haley's chapter on Arms & Legs, Ty Templeton's section on figure construction with "Blocks & Cubes". and Steve McNiven's section on how to draw Hair are also well done. Probably the most disappointing sections are those on drawing females: Though well-drawn, and enlisting marquee names like Adam Hughes, Joseph Michael Linsner, Terry Moore and the late Michael Turner, these sections are probably the least useful in the entire book, focusing mostly on theory rather than practice, which will not do much for the beginning artist. The section on shading is also very short and offers little useful advice.

Buyers should note that, at 2-3 pages apiece, none of the sections really go into detail - they're largely superficial, but there is still a lot of insight and learning to be had in these pages. Beginning artists might also do well to check out Draw the Marvel Comics Super Heroes (Drawing Tools) which is an exceptional work for those just starting out, as well as Christopher Hart's Figure It Out!: The Beginner's Guide to Drawing People, and any of the books by Burne Hogarth. Happy Drawing!