Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist (Galaxy Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)Copyright 1951? Wow, what a stimulating discovery, and what fun! Besides the skeletal and musculature illustrations, "Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist" is full of Peck's own drawings of basic anatomical features. These are not just the "final" drawings, like the master prints in Hale, but the beginning "rough sketches". I find this delightful because every beginner needs some inspirational guidance in drawing's first steps. A simple rough sketch of a nose, with shading; or bones drawn as a simple hinge joint, an arm or leg.... Peck's general reduction of the human figure to basic shapes is of inestimable help. The reader may just find himself saying, "Hey, I can do THAT!!!" And that is the wonderful thing about PECK's book.
Peck has impeccable credentials and must be compared to Robert Beverly Hale. Peck's is not merely an alternate duplication of the same material Hale covers. There is a 'personal' touch in Peck; but the problem with any/all anatomy books, for beginners, is that they are simply intimidating, in their detail, their precision, their absolute realism. PECK overcomes this anatomical intimidation. I would venture that PECK ought to be included in at least the first several "drawing" books that one acquires. Sometimes it seems that several pages offer more practical instruction to a new student than entire chapters in the books coming out in recent years with gimmicky titles.
"Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist," in combination with any beginning book on figure drawing is a must. With Famous Artist's School, Willy Pogany, Walt Reed, Jack Hamm, Viktor Perard and similar instruction, any ...................
book-buyer / beginning artist will find themselves advancing steadily. I rate this in the top 4 of figure drawing books for the beginner.
The chapter on "Distinctions of Age, Sex, And Race" is highly useful. PECK may be in danger of getting shoved aside with time and the publication of new pablum texts containing nothing new or vital; but PECK has written a timeless text that commands respect. CARPE DIEM [Seize the day!] I rate this book a very deserved 5 stars*

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Stephen Rogers Peck's Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist remains unsurpassed as a manual for students. It includes sections on bones, muscles, surface anatomy, proportion, equilibrium, and locomotion. Other unique features are sections on the types of human physique, anatomy from birth to old age, an orientation on racial anatomy, and an analysis of facial expressions. The wealth of information offered by the Atlas ensures its place as a classic for the study of the human form.

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Visualizing Muscles: A New Ecorché Approach to Surface Anatomy Review

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(More customer reviews)A fair sized book, it's unique in the sense that the male model has the relevant muscles and tendons actually drawn on his body. Nice concept but I don't think it really helps. Because the muscles are tendons and the skin is, well, skin, it stretches as a mass and not as fibers. I think the poses are useful though, good lighting to show muscle definition and tone and decent-sized photographs too.

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As the human body moves, muscles contract and relax, creating subtle changes in body contours and shifting patterns of light and shadow on the skin's surface. Visualizing exactly what happens beneath the skin to cause these changes on the surface is an essential skill for artists, physicians, physical therapists, and body builders-for anyone who needs to understand the body in motion.But how do you teach this skill?Why not paint a live model to look as though his skin had been stripped off and then photograph him in multiple poses? From that idea comes Visualizing Muscles, an innovative aid to drawing, sculpting, and learning surface anatomy.More than one hundred static and active poses are included in Visualizing Muscles. Paired photographs--one painted and labelled, one not--show how the simulated muscles produce the subtle lights and darks, hills and valleys, on the model's unpainted skin. Captions highlight the muscles called into play by a given pose.Dr. Cody, who experimented with techniques for two years, pioneers the use of a model on whose skin muscles, tendons, and fascial sheaths are painted with scientific accuracy. Because of the elasticity of the skin and paint, the painted musculature expands and contracts along with the underlying muscles. Thus Cody's technique enables students of anatomy to visualize the muscles beneath the skin and the changes brought about by movement.This 8-1/2" x 11" book contains 9 full-color and 221 black-and-white photographs.

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Spectacular Bodies: The Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now Review

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(More customer reviews)This is one of the most fascinating art books to cross my path in some time. The subject is the artistic representation of human anatomy.
This is the occasion for a fascinating tour of curiosa. Of course, you have a sequence of Dutch and American anatomy theatre group portraits. More interesting is the sculptures in wax of dissection, surgical, and anatomical models, handmade by what were apparently a group of mostly Italian scupltors. A fellow named Clemente Susini was apparently the Michaelangelo of this field. What makes these interesting is that they are not, as in the -Gray's Anatomy- images, merely displayed. Many are dramatically posed, in the overdone, theatrical poses of baroque painting. The image of them gesticulating as they spill their guts is mildly disconcerting.
There is an extensive discussion of écorché figures, flayed figures that display skinless human musculature. Collections of skeletons and bones, often arranged dramatically rather than clinically, are also featured. There is a large selection of ethnological portraits, and photographs of the insane.
The text is largely sympathetic to these forgotten creators who sought to combine art and science. Identity politics and post-structuralist hoodoo intrudes only slightly on the text, much less than you'd fear given these subjects. A fascinating book for those who are not easily disturbed.

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The Quick and the Dead: Artists and Anatomy Review

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(More customer reviews)Gross Anatomy has always sounded to the lay public as some kind of perjorative about what medical students due, what pornographers do, and what artists perch above the cadaver to represent. Actually nothing could be further from the truth. For centuries artists and scientists have been joined at the hip - witness Vesalius and his immaculate engravings of the musculature and skeltons of the dissected bodies obtained by grave robbers under the umbrella of education. In this superbly written and illustrated volume Deanna Petherbridge and Ludmilla Jordanova have gleaned some of the finest examples of the study and representation of the human body resulting from this still ongoing duplicity between anatomists/physicians and artists. The journey here is well documented from the earliest forms to the latest depictions of how intensive visual and manual dissection of the human body has contributed to some of the finest art in the world. Bravo to the authors for opening a door to the lay public to once and for all subsume the negative implications of the term Gross Anatomy. Superb book!

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The human body has long been central to Western art, and in order to represent the body in all its manifestations many artists have studied anatomy: dissecting the dead to better depict the living. The Quick and the Dead focuses on a range of artists, among them Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Albrecht Drer, William Hogarth, George Stubbs, Thodore Gricault, Kiki Smith, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Cindy Sherman to show the great richness and complexity that can result when art and science intersect. The drawings, prints, photographs, and objects in this book span five centuries and mark numerous cultural shifts, yet their imagery is as powerful today as when it was created.Bodily representation has shadowed Western art since the High Renaissance, particularly in the form of atlases of anatomical prints, detailed drawings, and wax cadavers used for teaching purposes. Studying anatomy was deemed so essential that it was part of the instruction program in the earliest Italian academies. Now contemporary artists interested in cultural constuctions of the body are reinvigorating the subject, with the fragmentation of human form being a prime concern.Since 1858, Gray's Anatomy has served to legitimize notions of "serious" science unchallenged by the frivolity of art. But in recent years a kind of rapprochement between medical history and cultural theory has occurred, and new medical technologies have become a wellspring for artists as well as for doctors. As The Quick and the Dead makes clear, the human bodysymbolic and intimate, material and sacredis a vital cultural resource and a site where various social constituencies find relevant meaning.

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