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Sketching People: Life Drawing Basics
Life Lessons: Learn How to Capture a World Constantly in MotionFluid, fast and expressive life drawing starts here. Step by step, you'll learn to render fleeting gestures from memory, capture expressions simply and more quickly, give your drawing a life of its own with body language, and more. Along the way, you'll develop a more spontaneous approach for successfully working from life.
Inside you'll find: A comprehensive course on drawing from life, based on classic principlesEssential techniques for drawing gesture, figures, clothing, expression, body language and moreLots of exercises that bring lessons to life The skills you'll learn from this book are so fundamental that every artist will find something in these useful lessons for making the most of all the inspiration that life has to offer.
Inside you'll find: A comprehensive course on drawing from life, based on classic principlesEssential techniques for drawing gesture, figures, clothing, expression, body language and moreLots of exercises that bring lessons to life The skills you'll learn from this book are so fundamental that every artist will find something in these useful lessons for making the most of all the inspiration that life has to offer.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 30, 2012
If you don't know anatomy well, don't bother yourself to buy this book.
It's used for quick sketches and good drapery source, otherwise...
It's used for quick sketches and good drapery source, otherwise...
November 7, 2022
First of all, this is not a book which will cover anatomy, so don't even bother to read it if that's what you're looking for. Try a book like Michael Hampton's Figure Drawing or an actual anatomy book for artists (like Eliot Goldfinger).
With that in mind, I still think it is a great book for artists. Mellem takes an approach more focused on adding dynamism to drawings, which is something very important to bring more life to them. As the title suggests, a lot there is dedicated to capturing motion and people in real life, including materials to use and techniques to deal with the frequent changes in subject while you draw. Even if it’s not your focus or if you’re a more experienced artist, it’s still worth looking at it.
However, what makes it really awesome it’s the additional stuff covered by Mellem. In this book, you encounter detailed chapters dedicated to drapery, body language and scene composition, all of them designed with more organic drawings in mind, rather than concentrate on pre-determined rules (like other books do by presenting things like rule of thirds). I didn’t encounter these subjects discussed in other books in the same way it’s done here, so I recommend checking it out.
I would like to mention that the book is not long and the topics are treated in a clearly way. Therefore, it’s worth checking into it, considering the wide number of topics covered and the focus on making drawings livelier, which is something most of us need to do in order to grow as artists.
With that in mind, I still think it is a great book for artists. Mellem takes an approach more focused on adding dynamism to drawings, which is something very important to bring more life to them. As the title suggests, a lot there is dedicated to capturing motion and people in real life, including materials to use and techniques to deal with the frequent changes in subject while you draw. Even if it’s not your focus or if you’re a more experienced artist, it’s still worth looking at it.
However, what makes it really awesome it’s the additional stuff covered by Mellem. In this book, you encounter detailed chapters dedicated to drapery, body language and scene composition, all of them designed with more organic drawings in mind, rather than concentrate on pre-determined rules (like other books do by presenting things like rule of thirds). I didn’t encounter these subjects discussed in other books in the same way it’s done here, so I recommend checking it out.
I would like to mention that the book is not long and the topics are treated in a clearly way. Therefore, it’s worth checking into it, considering the wide number of topics covered and the focus on making drawings livelier, which is something most of us need to do in order to grow as artists.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews