Drawing and painting people has been my passion and my profession for a couple of decades now. Fine art, comic books, animation, illustration – as long as I'm drawing people, I'm happy. I love the challenge of trying to capture (or create) a living, breathing, thinking person on paper. And I love talking about art books with other artists. Which ones are great, which ones miss the mark, which ones have tiny hidden gems in them. This list is a mix of books I love, and books I heartily recommend.
You gotta know your sacrum from your humerus, and you've gotta know what your sterno-cleido-mastoid attaches to. Even if you forget the names, you've got to learn the shapes and the jobs. This book is pretty awesome for that. And it's pretty, too. I love the mix of photos and drawings. The transparency overlays of muscle over bone are crazy fun and might be that experience that triggers your flash of insight. This book isn't an art-school classic like, say Fritz Schider's Atlas of Anatomy for Artists, but it's good solid material. Drawing from a live model, with this book on your knee for reference? That's a good time.
Unlock your inner artist and learn how to draw the human body in this beautifully illustrated art book by celebrated artist and teacher Sarah Simblet.
This visually striking guide takes a fresh approach to drawing the human body. A combination of innovative photography and drawings, practical life-drawing lessons, and in-depth explorations of the body's surface and underlying structure are used to reveal and celebrate the human form.
Combining specially-commissioned photographs of models with historical and contemporary works of art and her own dynamic life drawing, Sarah leads us inside the human body to map its skeleton, muscle groups, and body…
I didn’t always know that I wanted to be a doctor, perhaps because there were no doctors in my family, and I did not even realize that I wanted to (or could) go to medical school until I was almost done with college. Once I did realize this, however, it became immediately obvious to me that being a physician (a surgeon) was what I wanted to dedicate my life’s work to, and I have been passionate about it ever since. Probably the topics I am most passionate about after surgery are education, books, reading, poetry, etc., so this book lets both these passions dovetail beautifully!
The
thing that I really like about this book is that it is literally built around a
3-D model of the body embedded in the center of the book, so that as you turn
the pages, you uncover different layers of the body, since the model is built
in layers, each attached to the board-book-style pages. So, opening the cover (the skin, as it
were) of the book reveals a page on the dermal system, and the skeletal system,
and as you turn the next page, the ribs come with the page to reveal some of
the internal organs, and so on.
I teach medieval and early modern European history at Dublin City University, with a particular interest in 16th-18th century Italian history. My own research focuses on the religious, legal, and popular culture of northern Italy, particularly Venice and the Veneto region. I became fascinated with Renaissance Italian history as an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary, and then went on to do a masters and a PhD at Northwestern University. I have taught at Northwestern, the College of William and Mary, the University of Warwick/Warwick in Venice, and the State University of New York at Cortland.
In spite of the impressive intellectual and scientific achievements of the Renaissance era, doctors and anatomists still had a very limited understanding of “women’s secrets,” that is, how the female body functioned. This era saw an increasing number of human dissections for medical study, but the vast majority of medical specimens were male, leading to an imbalance of knowledge.
In this captivating book, Park focuses on dissections of female bodies and the development of knowledge about the titular “secrets of women.” By expanding her study beyond university dissections to include those done in religious and domestic settings, she finds not only dissections of women’s bodies, but also dissections performed by women. The argument and analysis are sharp and incisive, it expands our understanding of early modern medicine, and the case studies of individual dissections are fascinating.
Toward the end of the Middle Ages, medical writers and philosophers began to devote increasing attention to what they called “women’s secrets,” by which they meant female sexuality and generation. At the same time, Italian physicians and surgeons began to open human bodies in order to study their functions and the illnesses that afflicted them, culminating in the great illustrated anatomical treatise of Andreas Vesalius, in 1543.
Katharine Park traces these two closely related developments through a series of case studies of women whose bodies were dissected after their deaths: an abbess, a lactating virgin, several patrician wives and mothers,…
I am a teacher, a mom, a bubbe, and a writer. I taught elementary school and college courses, directed a daycare, and owned a children’s bookstore, but my favorite job is scribbling words on paper. I have two grown children and four wonderful granddaughters who love to listen as I read to them. Many of my ideas come from my experiences with my granddaughters and from their questions. Our family and friends are a mix of religions and cultures, and most of my books reflect the importance of diversity, acceptance, and knowledge.
I am recommending this book because I love books that feature different cultures and different abilities.
This book has minimal text, so the illustrations carry the message. I love reading this book to my grandkids and talking about how people are different and the same, from noses to feelings to the clothes they wear.
I also love the Sesame Street characters in the illustrations.
Who better than Elmo and his Sesame Street friends to teach us that though we may all look different on the outside-deep down, we are all very much alike?
Elmo and his Sesame Street friends help teach toddlers and the adults in their lives that everyone is the same on the inside, and it's our differences that make this wonderful world, which is home to us all, an interesting-and special-place. This enduring, colorful, and charmingly illustrated book offers an easy, enjoyable way to learn about differences-and what truly matters. We're Different, We're the Same is an engaging read for toddlers…
I've been drawing for over 68 years and carrying a sketchbook for over 60 of those years. I've seen success as an author, I'm an award-winning illustrator of books and magazines and animated many classic Disney features. Am I an expert on sketching humans and animals? ...No. I'm constantly learning in my effort to capture humans and animals in action by following the basic principles of drawing as they apply to quick sketching. My learning is aided by these books as I prepare lesson plans or the encouragement and inspiration found within their pages. I'm married to LaVonne, my high school sweetheart of 50 years, and have three grown children and six grandchildren.
Gorgeous illustrations abound in this through presentation of the anatomy of human and animal bodies. Practical application, diagrams, charts, text, definitions, and more have made this coffee table size book a go-to reference for me over the years.
Comparative anatomy of humans and animals has been a primary interest and subject of study of mine. I teach this topic and it is constantly brought into use in my quick sketching, illustration, and animation. I consider this a must-have for anyone interested in human and animal anatomy.
Designed for both professional and amateur artists, Cyclopedia Anatomicae is an essential guide to mastering the fundamentals of anatomical drawing. In addition to the human figure, it covers horses, dogs, cats, pigs, apes and more. Detailed, fully annotated illustrations of the skeletal, joint, and muscular systems clarify the proportions of each body type and lay the foundation for reproducing movements with true-to-life accuracy. With more than 1,500 illustrations, tips on drawing techniques, and informative explanations of the basics on human and animal anatomy, Cyclopedia Anatomicae provides the helpful guidance any artist can use.
I’ve read many of Bill Bryson’s books and always come away feeling I’ve learned something about the trials, humor, and joys behind travel. This book was different, as it took me on a journey through the entire human body and all of its systems and wonders. It was fascinating to dive deep into the interworkings of our organs, glands, appendages, and the brain that controls all of them.
A great example of the insight is: “Your lungs, smoothed out, would cover a tennis court, and the airways within them would stretch nearly from coast to coast.” This is just one of the many mind-blowing facts in this book. I thought the narrative was a wonderful way to appreciate how delicate one’s good health is and the incredible ability the body has to heal itself.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Bill Bryson, bestselling author of A Short History of Nearly Everything, takes us on a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body—with a new afterword for this edition.
Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable companion as he guides us through the human body—how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and (unfortunately) the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Brysonesque anecdotes, The Body will lead you to a deeper understanding…
I am a professor of American literary history. Still, as an undergraduate, I studied with a charismatic, postmodern French-American fiction writer, Raymond Federman, who, in a theatrical accent, called me by my last name, “Pel-tone.” Atop the Kurt Vonnegut I’d read in high school that gave me my taste for crazy, socially-conscious novels that I have tried myself also to write, I imbibed the books Federman sent my way: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett. In years since, I’ve championed innovative novels through my own small press, Starcherone Books. I am an artist whose greatest passion is discovering writing that makes me see in new ways.
What a breathtaking scope Tokarczuk gives us! This Polish novelist was new to me when I first picked this book up, but even though she won a Nobel Prize, I think she will be new to most U.S. readers.
This book begins as a meditation on travel and human movement, moving episodically through different fictional and historical plots, investigating sexualities, artificial humans, geographies, and the human compulsion not to sit still. But this just scratches the surface, as she has a kind of Garcia Márquez touch for identifying stories where bodies (both real and fake) exert their magic, even as the stories she tells are purportedly historical.
Did an 18th-century noblewoman during wartime smuggle a jar that contained Chopin’s heart in her undergarments? Tokarczuk answers: Is this so unbelievable?
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx)
"A magnificent writer." — Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time
"A beautifully fragmented look at man's longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." — Washington Post
From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in…
I didn’t always know that I wanted to be a doctor, perhaps because there were no doctors in my family, and I did not even realize that I wanted to (or could) go to medical school until I was almost done with college. Once I did realize this, however, it became immediately obvious to me that being a physician (a surgeon) was what I wanted to dedicate my life’s work to, and I have been passionate about it ever since. Probably the topics I am most passionate about after surgery are education, books, reading, poetry, etc., so this book lets both these passions dovetail beautifully!
This entire Magic School Bus series has also been a favorite of ours with our kids. I love the way that the bus goes inside of the human body and gets up close and personal with the cells of the human body. I remember thinking about how it made the difficult-to-see and -imagine immune system easy to picture in the mind of the reader.
THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS PRESENTS THE HUMAN BODY is a photographic nonfiction companion book to the original bestselling title, THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS INSIDE THE HUMAN BODY.
INSIDE THE HUMAN BODY taught thousands of kids about the incredible systems that work together to make the human body function. what makes us who we are. MAGIC SCHOOL BUS PRESENTS THE HUMAN BODY will expand upon the original title with fresh, updated Common Core-aligned content about our amazing bodies. With vivid full-color photographs on each page and illustrations of the beloved Ms. Frizzle and her students, the Magic School Bus Presents series…
I didn’t know anything at all about meteorites (or, really, space in general) until I took a cosmochemistry class during my first semester of a PhD program in geology. As soon as I learned that meteorites captured information about the start of the Solar System – the material we started with, hints about how planets evolve, and how meteorites changed the course of Earth – I was hooked. At the end of that class in 2007, I switched the main topic of my PhD research to studying meteorites and what they can tell us about the past, and I have been doing it ever since.
Like many folks, I am fascinated with the “where we came from” question. And for me, this is the quintessential book to dive into this topic from an evolutionary biology perspective.
Correct or not, I fancy myself someone that knows a decent amount about evolution and the human body, but I was captivated by the parts of the human body that have endured, for good or for bad, the long journey of us crawling out of the ocean and eventually into the office cubicle.
This book isn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as some others I generally like, but it really is a great book, and I had a hard time putting it down.
The paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered Tiktaalik, the “fish with hands,” tells a “compelling scientific adventure story that will change forever how you understand what it means to be human” (Oliver Sacks).
By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genomes look and function like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest—enlightening, accessible and told with irresistible…
Most people think of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece as horror, but the truth is – and I love this fact! – Frankenstein is widely considered to be the first science fiction novel. I’ve always been fascinated with the origin story of the novel: Lord Byron’s ghost-story writing competition proposed among friends at Geneva’s Villa Diodati in 1816. I’ve watched every movie version of that iconic gathering. (Most are bad. Oh well.) As a college professor, I taught Frankenstein in a writing class. (I was also a preschool teacher. Honest! Those kids read other books.)
This is such a fascinatingly researched book about the science during the time Mary Shelley created Frankenstein. I was surprised and enthralled to learn how many real-life Victor Frankensteins there were in Victorian England, all trying to be the first to reanimate a dead corpse. The accounts of grave robbery and, yes, even murder (The fresher the corpse, the better the experiment!) had me hooked throughout.
Also intriguing was how this macabre practice was deemed by many to be the cutting edge of science. I feel the theme is especially resonant today as we face our own life-creating hubris with Artificial Intelligence.
The Lady and Her Monsters by Roseanne Motillo brings to life the fascinating times, startling science, and real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein.
Montillo recounts how—at the intersection of the Romantic Age and the Industrial Revolution—Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein was inspired by actual scientists of the period: curious and daring iconoclasts who were obsessed with the inner workings of the human body and how it might be reanimated after death.
With true-life tales of grave robbers, ghoulish experiments, and the ultimate in macabre research—human reanimation—The Lady and Her Monsters is a brilliant exploration of the creation of Frankenstein, Mary…
