Figure Drawing: How to Draw Pretty Girls

Saturday, November 14, 2009

This book is called How to Draw Pretty Girls. In it he shows the step-by-step method of drawing cartoons of girls. The techniques of how to draw girls include drawings of proportions of girls, stick figures to work up poses, how to draw the head, how to draw hair, plus examples of finished drawings.

D. W. Gregg published his own book in 1952. In the 1950s photo offset printing became economical and enabled a number of authors to self-publish how-to-books. This was one of them. It was originally published in two booklets, one had the illustrations and the second had the text.

Gregg's illustrations are typical of the drawings of the period. you can compare them to the work of Al Capp who drew the famous L'il Abner strip, Milton Caniff who drew Steve Canyon and Terry and the Pirates and Dan DeCarlo who drew Archie Comics as well as other titles like Millie the Model, My Friend Irma
and Sherry the Showgirl. See Innocence and Seduction: The Art of Dan DeCarlo at Amazon.com for more on Dan DeCarlo.

Female Proportions.

Al Capp - sheet music.

Al Capp - cartoon.

Milton Canniff- cartoon panel.

How to Draw Pretty Girls - head.

How to Draw Pretty Girl - cover.

How to draw Pretty Girls - seated figure.

How to Draw Pretty Girls - step-by-step.

How to Draw Pretty Girls - stick figures and proportions.

Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Sundays, Vol. 2: 1956-57

Li'l Abner Volume 1

Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon: 1947 (Steve Canyon Series)

The Complete Terry and the Pirates, Vol. 3: 1939-1940

D. W. Gregg female cartoon.

Another post about pretty girls - Drawing the Female Figure by Jefferson Machamer.

Here are some other pretty comic book girls from Ben Samuel's Classic Golden Age Comic Cover Gallery.

Millie the Model #31 by Dan DeCarlo

Millie the Model (Millie the Model, #5, 1947) at Amazon.com.

Millie the Model #17 - as an artist's model

Click here to see Millie the Model Comics for sale on Ebay.

Dan DeCarlo's My Friend Irma at Scott Brother's Blog.

Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo Vol. 2 (v. 2)

Dan DeCarlo was the main Archie Comics artist setting the style for Archie, Veronica and Betty. He did lots of pin-up and cheese-cake art before and while he worked at Archie Comics.

Wikipedia Article.