The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Ingbretson

[@celsoteixeira252]

Always bringing chalenges and new perceptions to what is most basic and simple. How great! Drops of Universes!

[@PaulIngbretson]

Like that.

[@jamesmcginnis1114]

As always, a great presentation.You can refute the strong form of Antiguos’ claim by demonstrating a camera, - which always gets the surface right but has no knowledge of anatomy. On the other hand, having knowledge of the thing you are looking at can inform your seeing. You can see this in otherwise good painters who often paint boats that look ludicrous to sailors because they misinterpreted the visual impression. You often talk about painting the “essential elements “. Part of what is essential is that information that explains the subject. Without some knowledge of the subject it’s easy to miss that. I loved your example of Michaelangelo. As brilliant as he was, it would not be hard to believe that he had never actually seen a naked woman.

[@PaulIngbretson]

Particularly like your first 'camera' comment. Used to use it myself. The problem in the 'inform your seeing' part is that it may as likely distort your seeing but is useful for a second to see that you screwed up a location, value or .... but then you will go back to the basic eye discipline....or else!

[@mesaydin]

Thanks a lot. I have been doodling with anatomy for more than 3 years. It made me good copy maker. Fortunately, after watching your videos i started to draw with my eyes :) such a relief and enjoyment ! Finally i got likeness and mood from my portraits. Furthermore i have the pleasure of drawing whatever i see. I still have many deficiency in experience of drawing and painting but now i really feel that i am a dedicated student of the nature and not a slave of mind manufactured anatomy kind of doodling models. With my best regards. Mesut

[@AlexKellyArtUK]

30:00 These aspects can be termed "objective visual aspects." Munsell's analysis of value, hue, and chroma offers precision in describing what's commonly referred to as "color." While such scientific understanding aids in approaching the truth of nature, it alone falls short in revealing its deeper beauty. Achieving this demands training our perception to grasp both objective and subjective visual relationships. However, discerning between the two is often unclear. For instance, the visual aspect of a line initially seems objective, but as previously noted, there are no lines in nature; they are implied by the contrast between adjacent shapes. In this context, Richard Schmid's quote encapsulates the painter's challenge when representing the truth of nature in visual phenomena: “…painting the innocence in a child’s expression is impossible, but painting the pattern of colour shapes which constitute her expression is definitely possible.”

[@PaulIngbretson]

Glad

[@kevinrice6245]

Thanks Paul! I completely agree with what you’re saying here. If the goal is to draw or paint something as it appears to the eye, then knowledge of anatomy, etc. is not at all necessary. I find the real strength in learning anatomy comes in when you want to draw figures from imagination or if you want to stylize or idealize the figure. But if that’s not your goal then I think you really don’t need it.

[@gspurlock1118]

Thanks. I'm really looking forward to your discussions on the art and/or science of seeing and the subjects from your list.

[@AlexKellyArtUK]

12:14 that particular diagram of human anatomy looks very much like one by Andrew Loomis. I recall that he states that 8 heads is an exaggeration for a heroic proportion and to ease construction. This makes sense when you consider that Loomis worked as a commercial illustrator where heroic human proportions was a desirable thing in advertising.

[@PaulIngbretson]

Yes, on that point, too.

[@andrewlipson2364]

I was in 5th grade when I was able to take an anatomy and life drawing class with Robert Beverley Hale in NY ( about half the age of everyone else in the room). I had no idea how lucky I was, but he was an awesome teacher and left a lasting impression. He was using colored chalk on the end of a pole on brown paper when I took the class and after each lesson a grad student would take them and spray them with fixative. Such a great teacher, in your other video you were talking about Hale of the Boston School and it confused me a moment because I thought you were talking about Robert Beverley Hale.

[@PaulIngbretson]

And Gammell was a Hale, of whom he said something like, "they seemed to always be writers" (my bad phrasing undoubtedly. The Boston Hales had offspring that wrote, too.

[@utagagua]

Thank you for making such wonderful art andf great lessons! Always interesting to listen and watch

[@PaulIngbretson]

My pleasure! Glad

[@andrewlipson2364]

I've heard all of what you talk about in the video referred to with the word 'schema', a sort of catch all for knowledge about a subject matter, used particularly in the world children's art development. Schema can be a great aid in drawing as a point of reference to compare and contrast sight to. I like how you mentioned comparing live models to the 8-head sized figure you were taught and they never matched. The point being that you knew to use the head as a measuring reference, but did not then privilege what you learned above what you saw. Without schema a naive artist won't even know what to look for, but an over reliance on schema will leave you in a place like the medieval artists carefully painting a single leaf on a tree at a time.

[@PaulIngbretson]

Thanks for that, Andrew.

[@danielenckell9295]

Thanks, great listening!

[@Ilya-woodenlipstick]

I really enjoyed this one! I find those ideas really helpful as for a long time i've been puzzled trying to figure out the "fundamentals" of drawing. A big thank You, Teacher!

[@PaulIngbretson]

Very Welcome...and why "wooden lipstick" for a handle if I may ask?

[@Ilya-woodenlipstick]

@@PaulIngbretson I have no idea - absurd things like this make me laugh sometimes :) Actually I've got a question - is your DVD on drawing visual order is still available? I've been so into your talks recently - I note everything you say about the drawing and try to apply it to practice . In Russia where I come from we have a lot of good books on "academic" drawing but they are kind of heavy-weight - some concepts are explained in such a wordy manner that it's hard to apply them without a teacher who could transform those oceans of text into practical tips - it always caused me a lot of frustration and the feeling that they aim at people who are already skillful and can flip through those books to refresh their knowledge. On the contrary , your tips go right to the point and are so liberating - I can feel it during the life drawing class I take - so i thought as your ideas suit me so well maybe I could get a fuller picture of your approach from your DVD? (even though I'm russian - I live in France so the shipping should go smooth if eventually it's possible) Thank you and have a good day!

[@PaulIngbretson]

If you didn't find the DVD email me and I will connect you. [e-mail]

[@gnostie]

This video got me thinking, and here is where I got to. If someone wants to hand-draw figures for an anatomy atlas or a botanical publication, then keeping to scientific conventions is the way forward because people looking at this person's work would be people who are used to such conventions. Scientific knowledge isn't more or less of a knowledge than any other kind, it's just more aggressive in proclaiming its supremacy. But let's say someone takes in the whole scene and sets out to capture the mood in the room or in the field. Obviously, some practical capacity for rendering habitual objects faithfully enough than the picture reminds the viewer of the object would be useful. But I honestly can't think of a single painting I'd ever seen than went in the direction of capturing the mood and at the same time had the need and the place for extremely accurate anatomical detail. To my eye, mood and such kind of detail would have a hard time coexisting on the same canvas without crowding each other out.

[@PaulIngbretson]

I consider that the Achilles' heel of Realism, Gnostic. My hope is the hyper-realism, t's crossed,-i's dotted, model will gradually dissipate with the painter's development.

[@williamgraf2566]

Thank you Paul! I've been thoroughly enjoying all your videos! I studied, "many moons" ago at the the Cecil/Graves studio in Florence and remember hearing many Ives Gammell stories and quotes, this being one of them....."Everything according to Hoyle!" As to the anatomy, I agree with your philosophy as pertaining to "painting" the figure and as you stated a more than a cursory knowledge is always beneficial! I'm sure there are hundreds of anatomy books out there, the one I reference and draw on is the Gottfried Bammes Anatomy for Artists and Illustrators.

[@Jesus-mv9yr]

Been binging all of these videos for the past couple months, they are fantastic; any thoughts on Myron Barnstone and his drawing courses

[@PaulIngbretson]

No, not close to what we are doing, though! I could have mentioned the 'science' of the golden mean.

[@larrymarshall9454]

I know that artists don't like to give the camera power, but here it works. You could have made the point clearly by asking "Is a photo of a naked human inaccurate?" If so, what IS accurate in this context.

[@ethioanimation3898]

amazing video

[@PaulIngbretson]

Thanks, E.

[@apophatic-nonsense]

The female morphology text by Richter has been translated, it was published a couple years ago, and can be found on amazon.

[@PaulIngbretson]

Ah! Never seen it. Does it read well? I did like very much his comparatives of Egyptian, and other figures.

[@apophatic-nonsense]

@@PaulIngbretson it reads much like artistic anatomy, but it seems much better laid out having examples adjacent to the text rather than in the back. It focuses on surface anatomy and possible variety of ways the underlying anatomy can shape it. Though for an artist working with the visual impression it seems rather superfluous, its fantastic for figure invention on the other hand. You can find a French copy on archive.org archive.org/details/nouvelleanatomie02rich/page/n8/mode/2up

[@canalcerrado2433]

🙏 thanks sir, enlightening ,this is my email @[e-mail] , will love the notes with Ingres quite a character, I root more for Delacroix :), for his interest in color. I didn’t have the luck to study with Hale and Gammel as you but agree with them , one studies the science to forget it. My personal experience you could call me an impressionist, I worked from life and painted for a long while, won’t presume of talent but I am gifted with a strong eye, so I could and can draw or paint fairly well from observation only. As I am studying anatomy ,and some of the sciences you mention,perspective, color, etc... it does help me to see... the question is and always is do paint what we see or observe or feel...? Yes on a figure we don’t see muscles, but they are there, they exist in nature... as I do study anatomy,and my eye develops from observation,,, I can distinguish changes of value, form and color much better. I agree with you, anatomy only works if you can see with your eyes... when I say surface treatment I mean the handling of edges and form... do you think Ingres couldn’t see? I bet he could as well as any impressionist, but his choice of “rendering “ is mainly based on form, not a visual impression... is just different schools of thought... you can draw and copy everything without any scientific knowledge I agree, but there’s a quote by Michelangelo and he said: a painter paints with his brains... you just can’t judge him based on naturalism, he had a style akin to the Greek idea and certainly he was informed by the Venus when doing his statues, even if he used a woman as a model he was after monumentality, the grand manner based and informed by sculpture, if you look at Manet or even Ingres yeap there is no sense of bones, but balloons...usually one can tell of a draftsman his lack of anatomy because he can’t see it...Impressionists were rebels and probably bad students of the knowledge painters acumulated from centuries of study and observation only to aid the painters, but thanks to them we see color far better than the old guys... know what would happen if Davinci understood Impressionism... and the science of perception of color and visual Phenomena as your school does so suggest? A true painter would just paint as he sees , without any theory would he? Why then study any art or science if we paint or draw what we saw? I highly doubt that Houdon could have been made without a basic understanding of anatomy as you claim , Hale said drawing is a subconscious act, and it is when you master it, when you haven’t you draw consciously... anatomy is the same you do all those boring exercises, and read books... but when you stand in front of the model you just draw.... the knowledge is there and it shows....without even thinking it... the same goes with munsell. A system I am begginning to explore, because before I highly painted intuitively, so I see changes in it. I am pretty sure Sargent understood and drew perspective so when he does it in the sketch it will help him to judge relative sizes.. no need for complex diagrams leave that to Canaletto.... knowledge indeed helps, but I completely agree the eye of the painter is more important if you cant see it first you won’t know it... no matter how much knowledge one has, a painter works with his hands, mind and eyes, and ultimately with his soul/ heart whatever you want to call it, it is what makes a poet not just a visual reporter as this new realistic academies tend to veer towards... very boring...I still stand on my statement, an eye drawn without anatomy is worse than an eye that is drawn knowing it has a lower lid, and upper, an iris, pupil , sclera, you understand it’s planes, and how it works... regardless if you paint it as Sargent , Zorn, Velasquez, or the poor Michelangelo who actually dissected the eye :)

[@PaulIngbretson]

Will try to respond on your points here when I have a minute

[@richardgiedd2062]

A late comment to this post: I came across this comment on anatomy by Ingres In the Amaury-Duval: “ Watch out there, you are slipping in to it. You have indicated here something which I don not see (in nature). Why do you underscore it? Because you know it is there (as distinct from actually seeing it” ). Have you been studying anatomy? There now! That is what that dreadful science leads to, that horrendous science which I cannot think of without loathing. Had I been obliged to study anatomy, gentlemen, I would never have made myself a painter. Just copy nature naively, like a simpleton, and that in itself will amount to something. Interesting...

[@PaulIngbretson]

I had forgotten that one. Best to reread and read again. Lewis says you haven't read it if you haven't read it three times.

[@omnesilere]

7.5 heads? 7 heads? He intentionally measured them for years and then got sidetracked before dropping the number lol