In this superb guidebook， a skilled practitioner of figure drawing demonstrates how to achieve mastery of anatomy through careful， knowledgeable articulation of the muscles and bones lying beneath the skin。 Joseph Sheppard's concise instructions have been carefully integrated with over 250 halftone illustrations and over 180 line drawings to lead artists one step at a time through the techniques required in rendering human anatomy convincingly。
The opening chapter of the book presents the special techniques involved in mastering human proportion。The chapters that follow each deal with a separate part of the body: the arm， hand， leg， foot， torso， head， and neck （with special coverage of facial features and expressions） and the complete figure。
Each of these chapters follows a basic format that combines drawings of the featured body portion from many different angles， coverage of the specific bones and muscles involved， a table of muscle origins and insertions， and coverage of surface anatomy and depictions of the body part in a variety of positions。