Figure Drawing: Design and Invention

Compared to the money I have paid for my art school, this is pretty cheap and yet way more valuable. It starts with gestures and everything you need to pay attention to when drawing these. Which is amazing because gestures are a fundamental skill, yet for the most part no one gives complete explanation how to approach them. So it can get frustrating and intimidating and it can lead to developing bad habits that will later translate into mediocre art. On about 25 pages Michael Hampton explains HOW to approach them and WHY to approach them that way. Instantly improved my gestures.Rest of the book is anatomy and it's pretty detailed too. Filled with illustrations showing different muscles, bones and landmarks of human body. Explaining how they interact and how simple volumes translate into body parts.There's a lot of anatomy books out there. The ones I have held in my hands were all pretty boring and underwhelming, until this one. It's well structured, detailed and offers not only direction but also reasoning for it, so you actually understand what you're doing instead of just doing what you're told. Which I believe is a more constructive way of learning.

Turns out this book is just what was needed to help one of my kids get to grips with the drawing real life figures. It's laid out pretty good for a 12yr old to follow and understand. If real time drawing is your thing and struggling with depth, perception and values of correct space etc, this should help. I was a bit apprehensive regarding the price, but once it arrived, its worth it's value.

This book may seem expensive in the ordinary run of how-to-do-it figure-drawing books, but it's not - because it's far from ordinary - and worth every penny. Apart from the fact that he teaches life drawing and anatomy, the author modestly tells us nothing about himself anywhere in the book, nor on Amazon's author page, or even on his own excellent website, [...] (a vast resource to supplement the book).Nevertheless, masterly is how I would categorise it, even more so, perhaps, because it's self-published by the author. Some self-published works are very run-of-the-mill and cheaply produced; not this. I should have thought that any publisher would die to have this in his list, and if any refused it prior to the author's venture, they are probably kicking themselves. It's also worth noting that it's printed on top-quality heavyweight semi-gloss paper and sturdily bound. In fact everything about it is top marque, including layout and design, which the author appears to have contracted out to another very capable artist. I find to my surprise that it was originally published 7 years ago (how did I miss it ?) - but far less surprised to find that it is now in its sixth edition.Anatomy is often regarded as a difficult subject for artists, who may consider it less essential if they are always going to have a model sitting in front of them - but if you want to "design people" - for whatever of the many purposes of this practice (almost an industry) nowadays - essential it certainly is. This book will teach you how to competently design totally convincing people of every kind, engaged in every kind of activity, as well as making your life-drawing class an absolute breeze. The book goes much further however, for as the author rightly declares, learning to draw the figure teaches wide-ranging artistic principles applicable in virtually all fine art.If you were hesitating about buying this book because of its cost, hesitate no more; but be prepared for some hard work to extract its full benefit; but then, anything truly worthwhile rarely comes easily...

I'm currently studying how to draw the human anatomy, this book has helped enormously breaking down the human form for artists.

Applying everything in this book is taking me to another level in my art. Very good!

Excellent informative book for artists wanting to do figure/gesture painting drawing

I've spent hundreds on anatomy books. If I found this one earlier I would of saved a lot of money.Most anatomy books are too complicated, hard to understand and hard to know where to start.This book really walks you through step by step and tell's you what you should master first before moving onto the next stage. The methods and techniques in this book are just phenomenal and by far the easiest ways to accurately draw anatomy from your imagination that I have found so far. It also comes across as very natural and fluid. Which it should be! I get so sick of anatomy books that teach you such stiff methods that look horrid in the end.If you want to learn how to draw anatomy. This is the book! Others I would recommend alongside this are bridgeman, vilppu and the drawn to life books to give you that natural fluidity :)

I’m sure the book is great I’m just bad so it was too advanced for me