Naked People

Today I picked up 3 books, from Borders, in my quest to better understand the human form. I've always painted from references and haven't really had the urge to study the human form until recently. Deep down inside I've alway want to kick some villain ass and my only real solution is to draw some comics. I think comics look great when they're done correctly and that's why I'm studying the human form.

As suggested by many comic book artists, I started by getting an anatomy book. Lucky for me it was also an anatomy book for artist. The book "Classic Human Anatomy" an artist's guide to form, function, and movement by Valerie L. Winslow is one expensive book. Just skimming through it, you can see this a very well illustrated book broken down into sections for each body region. One thing this book doesn't really explain is dynamic human motion, so I picked another book on that topic. Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth, which was on Scott Daniel's must have list for comic book artist. Being that Scott is a successful DC comic artist, I figured it was a must. This book looks very impressive, but the illustrations aren't as clear as I would expect, but they're definitely dynamic. Finally, I saw a book called "Drawing The Head & Figure" by Jack Hamm, which turned out to be packed with amazing examples of facial expressions, clothings, shoes, eyes and much more, all done in a comic book style. I have a feeling this book will be my best buy and it was also the cheapest. With 5 paintings to finish in the next two months I'm not sure I'll get all 3 read, but I'll try.