Figure Drawing: Design and Invention

Excellent reference book for the art student. Plenty of diagrams and helpful information.

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.

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...

1. Good size, not big but not too small 2. Fantastic printing of both text and images 3. Good layout - Clear which text referes to what illustration, where and *why* 4. Great information for ALL SKILL LEVELS - This was a major suprise, I expected i was buying something quite high end to aspire to and look for information, but no - he covers what areas you can move onto later. Definetly a book for anyone who *wants* to get better at art involving humanoids - but also doesn't *need* to, this book won't assume you know anything already.

Good book, a good combination of practical and pure anatomy. This and Loomis are probably my favourites. The only downside was that the book was a week or so late (ie not the delivery time given when I purchased it) and, worse than this, the vendor used a delivery company called Assendia (like Evri, but worse) who took to inventing 'facts'; apparently they attempted delivery yesterday and I said to reschedule, whereas I did nothing. Today they delivered the book, no problem.

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.

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

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

Great book, fast cargo. Thank you

Besoin pour mon fils de ce livre pour etude en art. Tres bon livre pour acquerir de bonne base. Colis livré rapidement et vendeur repond aux differentes demandes et tres sympa. Je recommande. Tres content, d autant que le prix restait raisonnable par rapport a d autres vendeurs...

Absolutely love this book! So much content and is perfect for both beginner and intermediate artists. Even just from the first 30 pages my anatomy and gesture drawing had reached a whole new level. Better yet my order arrived extremely early! Could not recommend enough

I can't recommend this book enough. IMO it has to be among the top 10 art books in any artists' library. The book is very thorough, accurate, concise, and a pleasure to study from and learn. Michael Hampton is an amazing teacher. He breaks down difficult aspects in figure drawing and human anatomy in an easy way for beginners to understand. Combined with his super clear color-coded diagrams, you know you are getting everything that you need to have a solid understanding of the topic. He uses references to refer to shapes of muscles (such as a goldfish or a dagger), so that students can remember easily how to approach drawing the muscles in perspective. He has enough anatomy information to aide the leaner in understanding the most important aspects that make sense to an artist. This is not a dedicated anatomy book, but it has enough information to get you started and it is such a valuable resource to get started on human anatomy for artists. Michael Hampton does the hard part of simplifying a very complex topic and he really eases it in. The information is blended nicely with how to draw the figure with amazing diagrams that will encourage you to copy and practice. During my figure drawing classes at school, our professor uses this book quite often. It is one book that is always present in class next to the overhead projector, to reach out to and use as a reference. Typically a class will be combining beginner, intermediate, and advanced (special projects) students studying the figure. This book is one of the favorite references for that range of skills. I personally have used this book extensively when I started studying and drawing the human figure and I still refer to it regularly now that I'm not a beginner. The book is filled with useful diagrams, tons of them. The text is just to the point, very focused on getting the ideas across. I have only two issues with this book: first, it doesn't contain an index. Second, it still doesn't have a volume 2! I would love to see an advanced version focusing on challenging and more advanced topics in figure drawing. Having a great teacher of Michael Hampton's caliper naturally leads to such request. If you are serious about learning figure drawing, grab this book!

This was recommended to me by other artists and it is a fantastic book to learn figure drawing. I recommend.