Customer Reviews

The Artist's Complete Guide to Figure Drawing: A Contemporary Perspective On the Classical Tradition

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you're looking for anatomy lessons and short cuts (the eyes are one eye apart, the head five eyes wide sort of thing) then this is not the book for you. If you want to learn how to draw from life, to develop the basic techniques in tandem with a loving patience and relaxed attention, then this book will be hard to beat. Ryder demonstrates his method - starting with the "envelope" moving on to the "block in" then finished contour, and ending with the delicate shading that give life and mass to the drawings - with painstaking (but painless) care and wonderfully helpful illustrations from his own work.

I would strongly recommend this book with the warning that there are no shortcuts to drawing as brilliantly as Ryder - one thing that makes this book great is that Ryder doesn't pretend that there are any shortcuts. He admits up front that it takes hours of careful attention and work to get to the finished contour - which is the outline of the figure without the shading. But what he does give you is a very helpful technique. He helps with tips on judging distances, widths, proportions, angles; he helps with shading, seeing light and dark, building up tones.

Ryder is scrapping the scales of our eyes with this book, helping us to see - ultimately the most important aspect of drawing from life - and then showing you the best ways to get what you see on the page. It seems assumed that you will be working from a model or at the very least a superbly lit photograph. I think this book, coupled with Drawing on The Right Side of The Brain, would make an at-home-art-course that would be hard to beat.

I just finished reading this book at one sitting of several hours straight. It is a great book, and without any hesitation, I'd like to give it a FIVE-STAR. The following are my opinions to readers who have not read the book. These opinions are NOT based on beautiful works presented in the book, although they are also a strength of this book.

1) I enjoy a lot the method presented by Mr. Ryder. Incidentally, it is also my approach in life figure drawing. To me, this approach is very NATURAL and INTUITIVE, and largely based on the artist's OBSERVATIONS of the objects. This may be the key to the approach, as the author emphasized not on "how to draw", but more on "WHAT TO DRAW".

2) Figure-drawing beginners, who expect to learn from the book how to use simplified 3D shapes, such as an egg (for the head) or deformed cylinders (for torsos, limbs, etc...), will NOT see those techniques in this book. Instead, they may find it NOT TOO EASY to learn the "block-in", "contour", and "drawing the inside" presented in the book. A learning curve is expected, but in the end, it will pay off when this approach has been mastered. Readers who follow this approach would be able to draw "what they see" in a very natural manner (like a pro artist!)

3) I enjoy most the chapter about shading. In my humble opinion, however, it will be the most challenging task for beginners to distiguish and render different shading shapes and tones.

4) Keen observations seem to come naturally in the so-called "borned artists". For the rest, it takes practice. This is a good guideline for any of us artists (borned or not) who would like to sharpen our observational skills in drawing such complex (yet intriguing) objects as human figures.

As a practicing artist I have to say that this is the finest book of its kind I've come across. If you are serious about taking a traditional approach to figure drawing and want to produce artwork of the finest quality, this is the book to look at. If you just want to learn to do quick sketches then you might look elsewhere, since the approach discussed is time-consuming and painstaking. But it is THE way to go if you are serious about fine art. If I was only allowed to have one book on my shelf this would be it.

Although I wouldn't recommend Ryder's book to be the very first instruction book to use if you're just beginning to learn to draw, it definitely should be the second one. (If you're just starting to learn to draw realistically, I would recommend beginning with a book like Edwards' "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain," which, despite flaws, can give you faster results and motivate you to keep drawing.) Ryder doesn't say much more than the bare essentials about nuts-and-bolts technical matters (like what sort of pencils to use, etc.), but rather concentrates on describing a general approach to drawing- how to look at your model and transfer what you see to the paper. He does this with an economy of style that can get dense at times, but at the same time he avoids talking down to you or trying to make good drawing seem easier than it is. As he repeatedly emphasizes, it can take many hours of persistence and re-working to make a good drawing (or even a mediocre one if you're a beginner), and in fact it is that persistence- rather than some special ability- that makes it possible to draw well. Too many "teach yourself to draw" books aim you toward producing cartoonish or soft-focus drawings like you can buy from that guy with a portrait booth in the mall. The excellence of Ryder's drawings- which, as other reviewers have noted, are worth the price of the book by themselves- show that he probably has more important things to say and higher goals than most authors of art instruction books. Even if you don't understand everything right away, this books rewards re-reading as you progress and get a better hand-on sense the issues and techniques of drawing that Ryder talks about.

This book is the most comprehensive one I've read to date, along with "Keys to Drawing".
It breaks down Ryder's over-the-top work into a simple drawing process which consists of an envelope (4-5 lines) that encapsulates the form, then a rough block-in to act as the basis for a detailed contour, and then scanning across the form as you start to draw out and push in the shapes themselves, utilising your knowledge of anatomy (which I suggest you get other books for, like Loomis, Villpu, Hogarth, Hale and Bridgeman).
You will find alot of valuable info about checking for tilt, relationship of shapes, non-parallelism (i.e. nothing in nature is parallel), behavior of light and shadow, pathways of form, gestural current, etc.
There's not much more to say other than, if you have the cash, you probably won't regret spending it on this great assembly of text, pictures and sound advice.

I purchase books for ideas. In the drawing category I have many books and most of them espouse a rather common idea of drawing which involves making an overall shape, such as an oval, and then working to improve the shape into a face or feature into which the eyes, mouth et al are added. In Ryder's book he starts out stressing that the artist should use a method that allows the overall production of the figure to proceed in distinct steps which stress the total development of the work rather than just one area at a time. He wants the artist to try to use an "envelope" to start out with that embodies the entire figure including the gesture and the energy of the pose.

This is a new idea - at least to me - and it is worth trying. The author doesn't say it is the only way to draw but he does say it will improve your drawing to try this method and work at it consistently. Of course it isn't for everyone. There are many methods of drawing. Contour is only one. Mass is another. This author uses what is basically a contour method and he adds in the mass (light and dark areas) after the contour is perfect. It shows in his art. Some will like it and some will not. But that isn't the point. The point is he has a method of producing lifelike figures that is different.

Thus, I give the book 4 stars, because Mr. Ryder introduces this new idea in a straightforward fashion that allows the artist to try it out to see if it suits them. The illustrations could be a little more complete but they are good enough to introduce the concept and by trial and error the student can see if it is something that works for them.

Tony's book The Artists Complete Guide to Figure Drawing is full of beautiful illustrations and directions on how to draw the human form. It's written in a way that makes it easy to visualize what he's teaching. This book is really a treasure I find myself referring back to it all the time.

The instrucions are specific the steps are methodical. Its easy to understand but it does take practice.

I really love the way Tony illustrates how to draw the human figure and fill in with specific directions to complete a beautifuly renderded form. His examples and metaphores are unique. I can actually pretend that I'm in class and hear his voice.

The drawings are incredible there is something new to discover every time you turn the page.

This book is the best I've read on how to. It's a must in every students library and it's worth every penny.

Thank you Tony for a great book.

This book is loaded with information that goes beyond just drawing the human figure. As a trained Medical Illustrator I have had the unique priveldge of dissecting the human body and studying its contents and movements for over thirty years. I have yet to come across a collection of thoughts and instructions as complete as those contained between the covers of this book. Mr Ryder has a way of breaking down the approach to drawing the human figure that keeps the construction of the whole, or the parts, together at all times.

The book is sectioned into three areas of awareness, the Block-In, the Contour aand Drawing on the Inside. Each section builds on the other. The drawing examples are very well presented. I have found myself reading pages two and three times in order to make sure that I fully comprehend what is being described. Repeated reading has nothing to do with the way the material is presented; I just want to make sure I comprehend every word of what he is presenting. What he has to say is very important and worth taking the time to read.

I then actually put the techniques to work in my sketch book. The results are outstanding. Throughout my career I have wondered off into areas of artistic adventures that have altered my focal point as an artist. I have discovered that there are missing links in my training. Mr Ryders approach has helped restore that focus. I strongly feel that this book should on the shelf of any artist interested in drawing the figure or portraits.

As with any book, the words are only as good as the reader is willing to put them to use. Mr Ryder has done a wonderful job of organizing his thoughts and feelings about drawing the human figure. You will not be disappointed in adding this book to your collection.

I have studied numerous drawing books and by far this book I have owned. I often reread and reference it to inspire me, and i can honestly say my work has improved immensely.

I had been a portait artist for about a year and the face is not a problem to me but the figure was a time-cosuming challenge, that is until I was opened to Anthony Ryder's technique of envelopes, blocking-in and contours. It made drawing the figure so much easier, well proportioned and realistic. Using cylinder and blocks just doesn't do it for me.

The rendering is awesome and it already has an impact on my art.
This is not to say I simply copy his style but rather to combine his with mine to produce even more amazing results.

Lastly this is NOT your beginner basic learn-how-to-draw book. You should have sound drawing ability inorder to tackle this book. So don't complain if it doesn't instruct you step-by-step on drawing the hand or head 5 eye-widths apart(a pretty bad method anyhow). You'll learn to draw the figure as a whole and not as broken down indivual figure elements.

I'll admit that Anthony Ryder's drawings are beautiful. They're a fine example of what years of practice in the art of figure drawing can accomplish. However, as a reference for those looking for practical techniques to improve their own figurative skills, this book is useless. It's more of a catalog of the artist's work than a guide to drawing the figure. Ryder reveals through his text that he has his own, EXTREMELY particular technique, one that demands inhuman amounts of patience and stamina (he said himself that he can spend weeks working on one figure) and eyeball-splitting attention to detail with millions of tiny pencil marks. This is fine for Ryder, but not necessarily for everyone else. Follow his techniques, and you end up producing drawings that look like they were done by Anthony Ryder, not yourself. Think of an art professor who posts one of his or her drawings on the wall, explains to the class exactly how it was produced (whether with stippling, smudge sticks, etc), and tells everyone to draw the exact same thing in the exact same manner. What do you get? Well, duh, you get a couple dozen drawings that are pretty much the same.

Ryder's technique ain't easy to follow, either. His method of boxing in the thin air around the figure and layering inward, somehow coming up with a finished, correct drawing, is difficult, if not impossible to follow. Again, the author himself states that the technique is hard to learn. By the time I got through tearing my hair out trying to copy it, I just set the book aside and went back to the way I was drawing figures before. I followed my own methods, and the only thing I got was better.

And I guess that's the key to learning how to draw the figure. There ARE no set, generic, step-by-step formulas to follow that could be published in some book. The best you can do is pick up a good anatomy book (Simblet's 'Anatomy for the Artist' is a wonderful resource). As an artist, you have to PRACTICE to find the method that's right for you; hence, no figurative work by any two artists is exactly the same. The only way to find that method is to start with the basics and work your way up, finding your own style and comfort zone in the process. Ryder's book is not going to help. Spend in practice what you'll save in money by not buying this book.