Artistic Anatomy Course

Enrol by notifying us that you would like to attend, via our online message form or call us.  Then come along to one of our scheduled classes (at present the Artistic Anatomy Course is available with Scott Breton on Tuesday morning and afternoon, Wednesday evening and during the blocks of Saturdays when Scott is teaching (please contact us to find out when)

Students working on their models and tracings.

Axial skeleton added to the armature Surface musculature being added   This ten-session course includes several main projects to help you comprehend and retain the challenging content of artistic anatomy - and to make the whole process an enjoyable investigation.  We have tried to balance the need to keep things as simplified and relevant to the artist as possible,  while including sufficient detail for authentic treatment of the figure.  

1. Ecorche/flayed model of the figure: the central project of the course is building a 40cm ecorche (aka flayed) figure.  You will be guided through the process of building the axial skeleton (skull, ribcage, pelvis and vertebral column) onto your armature.  After this, you will lay the main muscles onto the figure one at a time, so that you can see how these key forms wrap around the figure, and over and under each other, and how the characteristic appearance of the human body results.  The beauty of learning the anatomy through sculpture is that the tactile experience of placing the masses helps to clarify your understanding.

2. Tracings:  mixed in with the ecorche will be tracing anatomical photographs of each of the main regions of the body, giving you the chance to work through the anatomy in a variety of arrangements, without the complicating factor of accurate drawing.  These tracings will be coloured and labelled, and the colour coding will be applied to the ecorche sculpture so that there is continuity through your learning process.

At the end of the course, you will go away with the model and series of colour-coded diagrams of each region that you have made, and set of course notes containing the best diagrams illustrating artistic anatomy that we could find or draw ourselves.  But most importantly, you will go away with the ability to look at the figure and know what the lumps and bumps mean - what is bone and what is flesh and how these two are characteristically arranged in the figure.

Course cost: $500

This includes: 

10 sessions of tuition

Course notes

The materials for the course:

Custom made armature on an armature stand

All the plasticine that you will need

Tracing paper and coloured pencils (for colour coding the diagrams)

As with our other courses, this course can be undertaken in the weeks that suit you and tuition is tailored to the individual student and their level of experience.  At this time this course is being offered during sessions that Scott Breton is tutoring - Tuesday 9:30am-12:30pm, 1 - 4pm, Wednesday 6:30 -9:30pm.  Tuition with Scott can also be arranged on Saturdays.  If you would like to begin this course, we require notice of your intention to ensure that materials and and course notes are prepared for the beginning of your course.  The course cost of $500 is payable at or prior to the first session.

To draw or sculpt the human form well, an understanding of construction (or broad anatomical structure) as well as surface anatomy is essential.  This can be a challenging subject to get on top of, and this course makes this study easier and more enjoyable by using a variety of activities to lead the student through the acquisition of this knowledge.  

These activities include:

• tracing surface anatomy photographs to identify key bony landmarks and muscles, and as an efficient and enjoyable way of testing your knowledge to find out the weak points (we all have them!)
• Sculpting a 40cm flayed/ecorche figure, building up from the skeleton through the deep layer muscles to the surface muscles and tissues.  

We will deal with origins, insertions and functions where this is useful to our purposes as artists, but in many cases muscle groups rather than individual muscles will be emphasised in order to keep the broad relationships in the forefront of your mind, rather than slavishly learning unnecessary detail.

The student is encouraged to either

1) undertake this course on Wednesday evening when the life model is present for the life class, providing an added reference

OR 2) Alternatively, the student could study this course during another session, and attend the life class to study life drawing as a complementary course.   

If you would like to begin to execute or improve your own figurative sculpture, this course will be very useful to you.   Or, if  your main interest is in figure drawing, these activities will efficiently improve your understanding of the figure in-the-round. 

There is also the Basic Sculpture course available that is helpful for refining your accuracy and understanding of modeling, as well as understanding facial features in detail.