Anatomia Artistica Michel Lauricella May 2026

Do not just copy the drawings. Follow this workflow to get the most out of the guide:

In the crowded field of artistic anatomy books—ranging from the exhaustive tomes of George Bridgman to the medical precision of Eliot Goldfinger—one volume has quietly become a dog-eared staple in studios, ateliers, and animation desks worldwide: Michel Lauricella’s Anatomia Artistica (known in its original French as Morpho: Anatomie Artistique).

At first glance, it looks deceptively simple. It lacks the glossy, full-color cadaver photos of a medical text and the dramatic, finished figure drawings of a Loomis manual. Instead, Lauricella offers something arguably more valuable for the modern artist: a synthetic, structural, and highly practical visual dictionary of the human form. anatomia artistica michel lauricella

In his Morpho: Fat and Skin Folds, Lauricella maps the face not by features, but by planes.

To draw a realistic face, squint. You should only see these 7 planes of light and shadow. Do not just copy the drawings

Before dissecting the book, it is crucial to understand the author. Michel Lauricella is not a medical doctor; he is an artist and a professor. Trained at the prestigious École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Lauricella has spent decades teaching morphological anatomy at the Gobelins school (famous for its animation and visual storytelling).

Unlike academic anatomists who focus on nomenclature (naming every tiny ligament), Lauricella approaches anatomy from the perspective of a draftsman. His background in comparative anatomy (studying animals alongside humans) and evolutionary morphology allows him to explain why a muscle bulges in a certain way based on function. This functional approach is what makes Anatomia Artistica unique. To draw a realistic face, squint

The book is designed to look like a worn-out sketchbook. The drawings are not polished; they are raw, energetic lines. This is intentional. Lauricella is showing you his process, not just the final result. You see the construction lines, the erased corrections, and the trial-and-error. It gives the student permission to be messy.