Figure Drawing: Design and Invention

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!

I don't know if they said "good" conditionor what,, but I boughtthis book used I think and it is as brand new as if I had pulled it off the shelf at the book store! It's really in perfect condition! This is the absolute best encyclopedia for gestures, forms and figures in all types of positions and the muscle structure in each one. I'm a nurse so it's hard for me to say if you'll need to know basic anatomy, such as the different muscle groups, but this book appears to go into depth with that as well..although it seems somewhat intermediate when the muscles are grouped and shown. I just got this book a couple of days ago along with several others so I can't give you a detailed low down. But I will say the book is very large with tons of diagrams and photos and drawings. I just flipped through it and could already know I will be referring to this book for every drawing I do that has one person or ten people in it. It is definitely a must have for artists of all types, experience, and calibers. More advanced beginners to professional artists can benefit from this book for their lifetime of drawing figures of all types. You can draw, sculpt, paint figures using this reference and using the muscle structure, positions and proportions morph them into all types of characters that can be well into the supernatural, horror, and whatever style art you are into. Get the book. If you hate it, sell it. But you won't hate it.

The approach covered is primarily concerned with the use of line, development of form, and the simplified design of anatomy. It doesn't go into contour drawing, shading and expression. The many illustrated examples are aimed at helping students develop a feel for the form and volume of figures they draw. To that aspect, I think it does a very good job. The use of simple geometric shapes as drawing guides are simple to understand. Not only that, Michael Hampton also builds onto to those simplified mannequins with lots of clearly illustrated muscles. The muscle groups are visualised very distinctly in the examples. They are colour-coded to bring attention those that affect form when the body is in different positions. I like the part on finding landmarks -- bones that are near the skin. Colour-coded and shown very clearly, with rotating views from front to back. The book does have head drawing but the focus is on the form rather than the details of the features, although the examples do show the details. It still covers enough for for anyone to draw a decent head. One thing that's missing is the mention of figure proportions, like how many heads tall a body, length of an arm, etc. That I think will complete the book. There's nothing on bones and you won't learn how muscle works, but this isn't an anatomy reference book. That said, having an anatomy reference book to go along will be extremely helpful. This is a useful book for artists learning to create and pose their own figures. Highly recommend for beginner and intermediate artists. (More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

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

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

I've collected and read my fair share of figure drawing books, from Loomis, Bridgman, and various others. But i somehow always find myself coming back to this book, I love the way Michael explains the figure from the gesture to the anatomy while also covering form and some value. I've had the physical copy for years so finding a digital version was a wish come true to me as I can now study it more efficiently on my desktop. TDLR: My Favourite Figure Drawing Book, so good that I bought it twice (Physical & Digital)