FREE PREVIEW

Course curriculum

    1. Student Orientation Video

    2. Join your community!

    3. Materials

    4. Vocabulary

    1. Anatomy for Drawing

    2. Drawing Anatomy

    3. Anatomy of the Leg

About this course

  • $79.99
  • 7 lessons
  • 1.5 hours of video content

Great Value

Learn a lifelong skill for the price of a trip to the art supply store

Course overview

In Anatomy & Gesture Drawing Part 1, Melanie Vote introduces the essential anatomical concepts that support strong, expressive figure drawing. The course begins with proportion, gesture, and the seven-and-a-half–head canon, then moves into identifying key subcutaneous landmarks that anchor the figure in space. You’ll learn how bones, muscles, and connective tissues influence surface form, and how curves, overlaps, and pressure points create a sense of volume and movement. Through clear diagrams and demonstrations, Melanie shows how understanding anatomy helps you draw not just what you see, but what you know whether working from life or imagination.

  • Understand gesture and proportion

  • Learn the seven-and-a-half–head canon

  • Identify key subcutaneous landmarks

  • Simplify anatomy for drawing

  • Understand muscle movement and form

  • Draw figures with clarity and structure

Instructor

Melanie Vote

Instructor

Melanie Vote grew up in the rural mid-west but has lived in NYC for over 20 years. Her work straddles these two worlds, investigating the complexities of the human-land relationship, the cyclical nature of all life, and the impossibility of permanence. She received her BFA from Iowa State University and her MFA in Painting from New York Academy of Art. Vote was a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2007 and has been awarded many residencies including The Vermont Studio Center, Jentel in Banner, WY, AHAD in Abu Dhabi, UAE, The Grand Canyon, The Weir Farm program in CT. Her last solo exhibition, The Washhouse, Nothing Ever Happened Here was at Equity Gallery in 2020 and most recently her work was on view in a two-person exhibition Concurrence at DFN Projects in October 2023. Vote teaches at NYAA and has taught at The New School, NJCU, and Pratt Institute. Additionally, Vote has been a visiting artist at numerous schools including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.

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