Figure Drawing: The Sculptor and Art Student's Guide to the Proportions of the Human Form

This ebook The Sculptor and Art Student's Guide to the Proportions of the Human Form is now available as a printed book at Lulu.com, and also at Amazon.com.

It includes 30 plates plus a 25 page introduction and treatise, and photographs of the original's huge 24.5 inch by 19.75 inch double wide pages, plus full page scans from a reduced version of the original German edition that this is a translation of.

Plate from The Sculptor and Art Student's Guide to the Proportions of the Human Form.

Johann Gottfried Schadow was a classically trained sculptor in Germany in the 1800s. He published this book of plates after his study of the classical Greek work of sculpture especially those of Polykleitos.

Polykleitos, or Polycletus was among the creators of the Greek Classical style. His particular contribution was a new naturalness which evolved from his study of the way people really stood, and how their weight was distributed.

The study of Polycletus' canon was a popular one for 19th Century Sculptors looking for a system of representation.

Anyone interested in sculpture, figure drawing or action figures will be interested in this classical study.

Plate from The Proportions of the Human Figure: According to a New Canon.

Another work of the time was The Proportions of the Human Figure: According to a New Canon, for Practical Use by William Wetmore Story. This book, while giving proportions of the figure according to classical studies does not provide the elaborate plates of figures that Schadow's book does.

Plate from The Proportions of the Human Body

A similar book published in 1892 is The Proportions of the Human Body By Bertram Coghill Alan Windle. This book also attempts to codify the knowledge of human proportions but does not have the elegant drawings of Schadow's book.