January Discounts at Lulu.com

The Art Student's Guide to the Proportions of the Human Form in a hardcover edition, and Figure Drawings in Color and other books at Lulu.com are available at special January discounts of up to 20%.

Check them out now.

Another great way to view many of them on any computer or device is at Google eBooks. There's a link to all of them at this post.

Most Interesting Figure Drawing Books of 2010

These are the ten life drawing books that readers of this site were most interested in in 2010. It's interesting that half of them are older books which have been republished or brought up to date in new editions and the others take a very classical approach to figure drawing. All are useful for the art student or artists who are designing figures for motion picture computer graphics or for video games.

The Art Student's Guide To The Proportions Of The Human Form - My own republication of Johann Gottfried Schadow's most complete treatise on the proportions of the human body.

Boris Röhrl in his book History and Bibliography of Artistic Anatomy makes a mention of Dr. Schadow's work:

"One of the first remarkable German publications of the 19th century was initiated by the director of the Dusseldorf academy, Gottfried Schadow, who edited a folio sized atlas with figures from Albinus in 1830. His atlas on proportions, printed four years later, entitled Policlet, was more successful and was re-printed six times. Copies from this work are still used in modern anatomies."

There is more at my post History of Artistic Anatomy. Read more about the book at Figure-Drawings.com

Expressive Figure Drawing by Bill Buchman

A new book about life drawing can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com and goes on sale on December 14th. Expressive Figure Drawing by Bill Buchman shows how drawing the figure is something that is both fun to do and a great way to express yourself. The book is illustrated with his own drawings, notable for their fluid line and expressive qualities.

Acrylic and water soluble crayon

Bill Buchman sent me a review copy of his book, published by Watson-Guptill Publications, which builds on the ideas he developed in his DVD - The Art of Drawing The Figure: Essential Exercises [Interactive DVD].

The book is inspirational for anyone interested in life drawing. He demonstrates through examples the various techniques of figure drawing starting with large geometric shapes, shapes as mass, shadows and highlights and contour lines. He also discusses negative space, and seeing the figure as a series of directional planes and explains and demonstrates all of the techniques in a way that encourages you to get out your drawing materials and get started.

The pose, the significant contours, a quick freehand sketch of the contour lines.

Black pastel chalk

There is an entire chapter on materials from charcoal, chalk, oil pastels and graphite to ink watercolors, gouache and hybrid media which are pencils or pastels that are water soluble.

Drawing structural shapes

With lots of colorful pictures he demonstrates the varieties of figure drawing, gesture drawing, drawing the mass, drawing a contour line, drawing  lind, drawing a continuous contour line, drawing a structural system, drawing shapes, drawing volumes, cylindrical forms, shadows and mass, highlights and shadows, and drawing with color.

The book is a contemporary lesson similar to Kimon Nicolaides' The Natural Way to Draw.


Mr. Buchman is an artist and educator who studied life drawing with Fletcher Martin and Victor D'Amico. In the 1980s he worked in Paris and has exhibited his work since then in Denmark, Sweden, England and the United States. He is represented internationally by Gallerihuset of Copenhagen.

The inspiration of the book is summed up in this quote "Your drawing shows what you are interested in and the egree of your interest. Be moved by forms and lines of the figure. Let them resonate in your feelings. Take in their moods. Lern to sense and capture the emotional implications and meanings contained in them. When you take pleasure in the figure's lines and forms and emotions, this pleasure will come out of your fingertips as you draw."

You can pre-order it at Amazon.com. Expressive Figure Drawing: New Materials, Concepts, and Techniques.

On remembering Victor D'Amico.(ART TEACHERS I HAVE KNOWN)(In memoriam): An article from: Arts and Activities

Creative Teaching in Art


Amazon.com $50 Gift Card (0109)

A Guide to Better Figure Drawing by Cecile Hardy

A Guide to Better Figure Drawing by Cecile Hardy

Line of Action - Drawing from the Model - Creatively
Clothing the Figure Drawing
The Glamour Girl

From the introduction:
This informal book on figure drawing shows you as simply as possible things I have learned about drawing the female figure. The matters that I discuss are those which I consider most important. It is a book of practical suggestions to help you draw attractive, live-looking figures.

I just talked to  the daughter of the author of this book. The author has a story to tell and we hope to be able to tell it in a revised edition of the book.

She had a natural talent for drawing and wrote the book when she was just 20 years old. She continued to make art and produce portraits during her entire career.

Cecile Hardy was her pen name. .

Among books Cecily Hardy
 illustrated was Six Talks on Jung's Psychology by Robert A. Clark.

You can learn more about A Guide to Better Figure Drawing at Figure-Drawings.com. Now that I know the author all the proceeds from the e-book will go to her.

What's in this book...
Changing an awkward pose into a graceful one.
Two kinds of action figures.
Variety: Line of Action
Examples of line action.
Drawing from the model-creatively.
Exaggerate for effect.
Think before you draw.
Reclining figure
simplicity in shading sketches.
The glamour girl-clothes make the pin-up, proportions.
The glamour girl-costumes, props.
The glamour girl - high heels.
Clothing the figure, drawing-lighting.
Make quick clothed sketches.
Walking poses.
Make a picture from a figure sketch.
Materials: transparency. Use snapshots for backdrops in pictures.

Life drawing books readers of this were most interested in in 2009

A Handbook of Anatomy for Art Students
This is a Dover reprint of the 1915 book by Arthur Thomson, a lecturer at the Royal College of Art, South Kensington. The book was an extensive survey of human anatomy using photographs of models and careful drawings of the muscles of the body in the same pose as the photographs. A feature of the book was the use of the photographs to show the body in various poses combined with anatomical drawings naming the muscles and showing the effect of expansion and contraction.

   

Images from the original edition of the book.

Anatomy for Artists: A New Approach to Discovering, Learning and Remembering the Body The author's biography from Amazon.com: Anthony Apesos is an artist and professor at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. He has exhibited throughout the eastern U.S. and in California and China, has done major commissions, and has been reviewed/published in the Boston Herald, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, New Art Examiner (regular reviewer), San Francisco Art Week, Art and Arts Exchange.

 Art Anatomy Simplified
Dover reprint of Charles Carlson's A Simplified Art Anatomy of the Human Figure. Carlson was an amazingly prolific author, 20 how to draw books over his career. Here is a biography.

 

Art Models 4: Life Nude Photos for the Visual Arts (Art Models series)

The art model's series, all of them.

Art Models: Life Nudes for Drawing Painting and Sculpting

Art Models 2: Life Nude Photos for the Visual Arts (Art Models series) (No. 2)

Art Models 3: Life Nude Photos for the Visual Arts (Art Models series) (No. 3)

Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist (Galaxy Books)

"Ingeniously edited, well-organized, and illustrated with almost a thousand excellent factual three-dimensional renderings."--Los Angeles Times

Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life
A classic, he wrote seven books about life drawing, they are combined in this volume.

Cast Drawing Using the Sight-Size Approach
Mr. Rousar currently teaches art and art history at Providence Academy in Plymouth, Minnesota.

Classical Painting Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice
Juliette Aristides, whose beautiful art is featured throughout this book, is the instructor of the Aristides Classical Atelier at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, Washington, where she lives. Her work is exhibited at the John Pence Gallery in San Francisco.

Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: Volume 1: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures

Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: Volume 2: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures

Walt was a kind of Mark Twain for us at Disney. He always taught with humor and skill. You learned to see the world through his eyes. I remember him one day encouraging us to leap into our drawings with boldness and confidence, "Don't be afraid to make a mistake. We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us so the sooner you get them out the better!" Sitting in Walt's class was as much a psychology course as it was a drawing class. One couldn't help walk away with your mind and soul a little more open than when you entered.

Glen Keane, Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Here is an interesting post about one of his classes. "during the production time of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT I met WALT STANCHFIELD for the first time in london. it must have been 1987, don hahn had brought him over from los angeles to conduct drawing classes for the animators, better – ‘gesture drawing classes’." - Hans Bacher

Another one which demonstrates his ability to get to the essentials: "Forget the detail" and other animation-inspired lessons

Fifty Figure Drawings
Edited by George Bridgman this is a reprint of a book of fifty drawings collected by the famous teacher.

  

These images are from the original book.

Henry Yan's Figure Drawing (Techniques and Tips)
Henry Yan still teaches at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco.

The Art Student's Guide To The Proportions Of The Human Form
More about the book here.

The Art Student's Guide to the Bones and Muscles of the Human Body: and Lessons on Foreshortening
More about the book here.