Art Reference Directory

This is a supplemental post for my video on popular and unusual places to find great reference for your illustration.

GENERAL REFERENCE

It would be remiss of me not to mention the obvious reference behemoth, which is of course Pinterest. Here is a link to my Pinterest Profile where I’ve been nicely categorising a ton of Art Reference which I’ve been using as reference for my illustrations for years.

ANATOMY REFERENCE BOOKS

Some of my favourites that I actually use…

• Jeonghyeon Seok’s Stonehouse’s Anatomy
  I use this book fairly frequently, though I have an English version, and this link seems to be for the Korean version, not that you really need to ‘read’ anything. He waffles on irrelevantly about evolution, for example. The pictures are worth it – the anatomy angles are useful with a lot of examples for both genders.
• Eliot Goldfinger’s Human Anatomy for Artists
  Not as much female reference as Stonehouse Anatomy, but very thorough for each section of the body. Also includes useful section on facial expressions.
• Eliot Goldfinger’s Animal Anatomy for Artists
  Less variety of animals than you would hope for, and too many bone diagrams for my liking, but still the most thorough of its kind that I’ve seen. Very useful for creature concept artists.
• Christopher Hart’s Drawing Cutting Edge Anatomy
  Not one I frequently use myself as its aimed at comic book artists – so the men are all uber buff and women, super curvy, which is great, but not useful for every situation. It also has some cool heroic poses.
• Anatomy for Sculptors
  One of the easiest to follow anatomy books I’ve seen. It breaks the body up…not just into muscles, but planes, which is a very practical way to learn.

PHYSICAL POSE DOLLS

• Haniforever Jointed Mannequins
  Male and female posable artist’s mannequin’s that are more anatomically useful than the old, classic wooden articulated mannequin’s. Not as well made as the wooden ones obviously though.
• Body Kun & Body Chan Mannequins
  More articulated posable artist mannequins but these are more of an anime style with some props.
• ANTSIR Male Action Figure
  This is the most anatomically detailed artist mannequin I’ve seen, but only seems to come in male physique.

DIGITAL POSING TOOLS

• Magic Poser (iPad and Android)
  Posing tool with fairly decent anatomy. Not perfect, but probably the best I’ve seen from these posing apps. Male figure is free. The paid version contains a female figure and some other stuff.
• Handy Art Reference Tool (Windows, Mac, iPad, and Android)
  This is a paid tool, but cheap and well worth it. It’s an excellent hand poser which has preset poses that you can edit, as well as lighting. It also has some Asaro type heads, and male feet. Female feet costs extra for some reason.
• JustSketch.Me (Windows, Mac, iPad, and Android)
  Free Online Posing Software. Basic Model is free. The paid version has more models and a large pre-set pose library

POSING PACKS & SITES

• Figurosity
  Site with a lot of 3D modelled action-poses that you can swivel around. Paid version gets you nude and écorché versions.
• Team Bradley’s Reference Picture Packs
  Pose Reference packs with beautiful lighting, and also very good travel reference packs for landscapes. Quite a few free packs as well.
• Grafit Studio Reference Packs
  Really cool action pose packs, ideal for splash art.
• Mels Mneyan
  Some of the most dynamic poses I’ve seen in reference packs. Beautiful lighting too.
• Pose Maniacs
  A collection of poses in ecorché style

2D & 3D STOCK SITES

• Shutterstock
  Pinterest is still king of reference with 240 billion images, but as it gets overrun with AI and questionable anatomy, you might find yourself turning to stock art. Currently Shutterstock is the biggest stock art site with 250 million+ high quality images, so worth doing a search for the pose you want, for example “action pose with gun” or whatever.
• SketchFab
  Browse 3D models for potential reference, with ability to swivel the models around to get the angle you want.
• Shapeways 3D Printing Marketplace
  Another alternative for rotatable 3d models. Nice big database.
• Create3dmodel.com
  A catalogue of 3D Models for CNC Machine Tools. A really nice big selection. The models have accurate anatomy with some awesome poses too.

OTHER FREE ONLINE 3D TURNAROUNDS

• Marc Brunet’s Male Écorché
  A rotatable full body écorché of a man standing still.
• Anatomy4sculptors Muscle Man Écorché
  A rotatable full body écorché of a man in an action pose.
• Anatomy4sculptors Skull Block Out
  A rotatable Asaro-style skull.
• Anatomy4sculptors.com Ear Block Out
  A rotatable Asaro-style ear
• William Nguyen’s Male Head Block Out
  A rotatable Asaro-style male head. You can also change the lighting.
• William Nguyen’s Female Head Block Out
  A rotatable Asaro-style female head. You can also change the lighting.
• X6udpngx’s Skulls
  Rotatable Human and Animal Skulls
• Zygote Body
  Rotatable human body where you can toggle to see different levels of internal anatomy, for example, only the nervous system.
  

MOVIE STILLS

• Film.ai
  The world’s largest video stills iconographic database. Also filterable by colour.
• ScreenMusings
  Another db of movie stills. This one might be a smaller database, and their search field seems useless, but generally has nicer quality stills. Also filterable by colour.

DRONE FOOTAGE & VIDEO STOCK

• BitWonky’s Drone Footage
  BitWonky films the skies around his neighbourhood and has captured some gorgeous sunrises, sunsets, and even storms. The footage is super high quality. The sky from my video featured at the top of the post is from a dawn he captured.
• Travel With Drone
  A site where people share their holiday drone footage. Amazing ref for landscapes and backgrounds.
• Mazwai
  Free cinematic style video stock footage, handpicked as the best from Videvo
• Pexels
  Another video stock site. this one seems to have a much bigger database than most of the others, so higher chance of finding what you want if you’re looking for something specific.

SATELITE IMAGERY

• Google Earth
  Ethan Becker’s has a tutorial where he shows how you can use Google Earth for pro looking city scenes in perspective
• NASA Database
  A database of video imagery and audio released from NASA. You can freely download these. Might be useful for those scifi scenes.
• Hubble Images
  More NASA stuff. This is a gallery of images from the Hubble telescope. Amazing reference for space opera scenes.

GAMES

• Conan Exiles
  Great game for scenery (lots of different biomes), clothing and anatomy reference
• Townscaper
  You can design cute little towns and even export them as 3D files

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Disclaimer: The Amazon links are affiliate links, but you know me by now – I will never endorse something just for the sake of a commission. The commission is just a bonus for me. I would have recommended the product anyway.