Welcome to students of Swedish Academy of Realist Art!
The Form, Gesture, Anatomy Course is an integrated, sequential online book covering:
the fundamentals of form drawing
life drawing from the model
human anatomy stripped back to observed essentials
Learn to see the figure in spatial, anatomical and gestural essentials.
Your school has provided you with permanent access to this online book, including future additions to the content.
It is recommended to follow the course lesson by lesson, since it is designed to connect the three core areas gradually.
How to complete the Simplified Anatomy component:
Due to the circumstances of Covid19, it has not been possible to provide the 3D printed skeleton model that you will see mentioned as a supplement to this course.
The alternative to this is using the embedded 3D models that show the sequence of building up the simplified écorché to create a layered drawing using physical media (drawing in graphite and coloured pencils with the aid of tracing paper or using a device such as an iPad.)
Alternative to drawing from the model from life:
While at this time your school is not able to provide access to the life model, you can find third party providers of life drawing reference in the Resources section as well as reference photos provided within the course (such as the examples shown here).
It is better to work with a model from life for a variety of reasons, but the activities described here can be highly beneficial when working from high quality photo reference. This is because they are designed to have you recording highly specific information - think of them as drills to develop habits for modes of looking at the figure.
In fact, certain spatial information is harder to detect because of the flattening effect of removing binocular vision and other factors, so this can make these drills harder and therefore in certain ways more beneficial when limited to photo reference. (of course ideally you will go back to primarily working from life as soon and as much as possible)
To get the most out of the course…
… you must physically do the activities! It is not enough to look at the diagrams and mentally understand. Drawing is a physical skill whereby we come to a deeper understanding of the world not just through our eyes but also our hands.
If you have technical or other problems you can contact me at the Member Contact page