if you've been studying anatomy and you've been getting frustrated overwhelmed discouraged it's probably because you go about it the wrong way but worry not dear students that's about to change I'm Mark I've been a professional artist for many dozens of months and now I teach art for a living in this week's YouTube Art School episode I'll show you the easiest and most fun way to learn Anatomy oh oh quick class is starting [Music] all right classes in session pay attention I love Anatomy I love learning about it it's fascinating to me but it wasn't always like that so I want to share with you what I believe is the best way to approach it to keep things light and enjoyable because let's face it I'm sure a lot of you Associates learning Anatomy with a deep sense of stress and pain just like I used to so here's what I tell my students and uh hoping that'll help you to after you've paid the class fee of one like or one sub mhm you know experts agree it's great value for the money the easiest way to learn Anatomy is to approach it like problem solving not in a bubble here's what I mean by that do you remember much of what you learned in elementary school you know traditional schools tend to teach you things in a bubble without much real life context to help justify it they'll teach us how to calculate the surface of a triangle for example but without any context for it it's basically useless information why would you need to rain that kind of information long term when the heck are you going to use that in real life practically never your brain will likely discard that stuff as soon as the test is over and that's learning something in a bubble without context similarly just studying Anatomy for the sake of learning Anatomy is likely to produce similar results you always need context to retain information better the first thing that you want to start doing is approaching studying Anatomy like you're solving a problem and to do that it's super easy just start drawing inevitably you'll run into some issues you'll have some questions that pop in your mind as you're drawing your characters right things you're not sure how to draw well now you have problems to solve that's what I mean with the context of your drawing with a real life problem in front of you studying Anatomy to help you solve that particular problem makes a lot more sense subconsciously your brain knows this and it's much much more likely to pay closer attention when you do look into how to draw that specific part of your character when you study in a bubble there's no immediate need for the information so it's discarded very quickly from your memory when the information actually helps you solve a problem like allows you to continue your drawing well in that case you retain far more I'd also argue it's aot more fun to study in that case since you can see the results of your study immediately now with that said how do you actually go about studying in a more practical level let's look at that next now this is just a quick YouTube video but I'm going to give you a good summary of how I approach anatomy in my art school program since I don't believe there's a better way to go about it based on all my years of experience that's only a small part of the program though it's a complete art education from the comfort of your home and the big holiday sale is back this year again check out all the Deets with the link in the video description it's the biggest sale of the year and it's going to last all month so make sure you take advantage of the crazy discounts if you've had your eyes on it actually everything in my qbrush store will be on sale so link down below all right plug over back to Anatomy the first thing that you'd want to do once you've hit a roadblock in your drawing once you're in a problem solving mode is to whip out a few Anatomy references for the body part in question we're going to be very surgical about this focusing only on that one part that you're having issues with not the whole body ever so with the references in hand the next step is to simplify the muscles into groups of visible muscles unless you know a lot about an anomy already it's best to just learn the main groups it's enough information to draw and it's much easier to remember versus learning all the individual muscles for example now obviously that part is a little easier if someone is showing you like I do in my art program but I did it without that kind of help myself so it's definitely doable for the like as an example I'll really only consider the surface muscles or the more important bones and only the big ones so the quadriceps the kneecap the sorus the hamstrings and the lower leg muscles all combined into one big group that I simplify as a simple ellipse if I had problems with a different body part well focus on the related muscles only now from here it's always best to draw those simple groups of muscles a few times to really cement the information into our memory maybe from a few simple angles we're not learning everything at once so it should feel a lot easier to memorize even more so if your character is not in a super Dynamic pose something more neutral like a simple standing pose or something along those lines it's always easier to learn Anatomy when the character pose is simple easier to find references for it too so keep that in mind so once you've practiced drawing the simplified Anatomy that you just learned a couple of times another great example to test yourself without having to you know invest too much time is to try spotting those new muscles that you've learned on other photo references start by using really lean references like really lean models where the muscles are better defined and just draw them on identifying each muscles or muscle groups as you go to increase difficulty you can slow slowly transition to models that are less lean you know like fatter where the muscles might be harder to spot you'll just have to look a little harder and refer back to a muscle anatomy chart if you're not sure so once you've practiced drawing the simplified muscles and then practice spotting them on real photo references you should have the necessary knowledge to solve the problem that you were having and keep going with your drawing until you hit the next road block and start this process all over again for different body parts our find it's an awesome way to learn Anatomy since it's no longer just a study it's more of a detour that you have to take to complete your drawing if you go into your character drawings expecting this to happen it makes the learning process a lot more fun since the new information the new knowledge directly benefits you it's not knowledge in a bubble now of course we start with simple muscle groups but as you do this more and more I'm sure some of you will get curious you know and start looking into the individual muscles that make up the simple groups that we talked about and that's good that's the process learning Anatomy is just like creating a drawing you start with the sketch and then you move on to the details similarly with Anatomy we start with the simple groups of muscles first and then later we add more details to our knowledge building on our foundation and learning individual muscles and bones when there's a need to and this is my ADD proof way of studying a heavy topic such as Anatomy I have ADD myself and this has worked wonders for me I hope it'll help you too and that's going to wrap it up for this week's class if you're practicing art digitally maybe you'd like to try the awesome lineup brush that I've used for these drawings today I'm actually giving my precious brushes away for free one of my two custom brush sets that you can download with a link in the video description if you haven't already these are brushes that I use daily they're a selection of some of my favorite ones you better use them responsibly now make sure you have notifications enabled to be on time for next week's class you won't want to miss it [Music]