Figure Drawing for All It's Worth
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Figure Drawing for All It's Worth Details
Review "Andrew Loomis’ books were a formative influence on my life and art. My mother is an illustrator herself who worked in the era of Loomis’ heyday, and she passed his art instruction books on to me. Andrew Loomis’ instruction of how to draw the human figure was one of the first teachings that I would study, inspiring me to try and make my own artwork more realistic. My entire approach to drawing and painting superheroes owes its genesis to Loomis’ work." - Alex Ross"Holding this book is like holding a time capsule, beautifully preserved in spirit for the next crop of future artists in the generations to come." - Art Sketch Read more About the Author Andrew Loomis was born in 1892. After studying art he moved to Chicago, eventually opening his own studio, working in editorial and advertising for most of the top clients at the time including Kellogg's, Coca Cola, Lucky Strike and more. He also became renowned as an art teacher and his instructional books on Realist illustration and art are acclaimed classics in the field. He died in 1959. Read more
Reviews
The "secret tool" Andrew Loomis and all other illustrators/fine artists have used since it's creation (but few admit to using)?The photograph.More specifically - the act of tracing photographs.Artists with a trained eye and experience drawing the figure from life can spot the difference between Loomis's freehand drawings and and those he traced from photographs.I'm not saying the use of photographs is cheating - it's not - or that Loomis's art isn't brilliant - he was a brilliant artist.But—by intentionally leaving out a major part of his process in his "how to" books, he wasn't completely honest about how his impressive results were achieved.Beginners shouldn't even consider Loomis's books other than "Fun With A Pencil: How Everybody Can Easily Learn to Draw"A better choice for beginners would be Morpho: Anatomy for Artists by Michel Lauricella"Figure Drawing for All It's Worth" is a big, beautiful art book printed on luxurious paper. It provides some very helpful info written in a rather superfluous way. It looks grand on a shelf, but it's bulky and kinda hard to handle. You'll be worried about messing it up with ink or graphite.btw - I once read Norman Rockwell covered his projector with a tarp when visitors toured his studio, because he didn't want people knowing he traced photographs.Of course, there's nothing wrong with using photographs as reference or even tracing them - especially when the artist took the photographs and owns the copyright to them.Just keep this in mind if you look at Andrew Loomis's work and find yourself thinking "I'll never be able to draw like this".
