I’ve written about learning the rules and breaking them before – Today, I just wanted to share with you how I address human anatomy. Admittedly, I wouldn’t be able to draw or paint a human if I didn’t do it the way I do, and if you think you’re having troubles painting humans, maybe you’re doing just fine and don’t realize it.

Remember – it doesn’t have to look like a person if it looks like a person. With an impressionist’s approach, we are only recreating the “general” sense of any scene. With the expressionist ethos, we are presenting the world from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically if needed. An abstractionist continually breaks away in varying degrees from “traditional” representation of the world and how we think it looks. So, you see, many major approaches to painting form allow you to do as you wish, or need, to convey what it is you want to create as a painter.

I was taught that eyes are the most difficult thing to portray in art, mostly because of their fluid nature. I find them to be the easiest things to paint, only because I’ve reversed their importance in the scheme of things. Much more difficult are joints and articulations. The smaller the joint, the more difficult, unless you also decrease their importance to be displayed accurately. My solution in some cases is exaggeration of said body part. My other solution is complete destruction of same. Consider the hands…

You’ll notice above my approach to the larger, major joints as well. Not subtle curves which can be painstaking to execute to say the least, but if pushed into unreal, even unrecognizable forms, lumps can easily look like body parts simply because they’re located where their distant cousins are located. This is a case of hiding a white elephant in the middle of your living room – leave it and it becomes part of the room, unusual maybe, surprising, yes, but accepted by the person who sees it!

Below you’ll see the same. C’mon now, nobody looks like this, but this does look like a boy…

Certainly, some basic anatomy can help when addressing the form, but its not altogether required. Color, shading and lighting and juxtaposition of line can really move the viewers eye from place to place quickly enough where they (the eyes) won’t obsess over perfected imperfections, and if people don’t obsess over those things, they begin to enjoy them.

I’ll emphasize a point again (with a small adjustment) before closing – If there’s a white elephant in your living room, leave it, use it, call attention to it, profit off it – make it the focal point of your reality. Its part of the package – part of the experience. This is your experience and it’s worthy of being shared!!!