Customer Reviews

Atlas of Foreshortening: The Human Figure in Deep Perspective (Second Edition)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book like It's title clearly indicates is not an illustration reference book.It's extremely useful to students and practitioners of the fine art of figure drawing ,it provides poses which are very diffrent from what we are used to seeing in normal life thus forcing us to see how many familiar shapes change when viewed at an unfamiliar angle,for a figure artist struggling with foreshortening a book like this one and Burne Hogarths Dynamic Figure Drawing used in tandem could work wonders.This is the only book of its kind and is in one word "BRILLIANT" .

There are lots of visual reference books out there. It would be easy to populate a bookshelf with them. After a while, though, they start to look the same.

Not this one. Heavily foreshortened poses are the hardest (for me at least), so this book devotes itself to genuinely distinctive views. It may sound like distortion to describe an arm or leg as being a third length of the other. In fact, it is distortion if they are the same length, when viewed from some angles.

This book gives an uncommon perspective - it has earned its place on my shelves.

[review of first edition]

//wiredweird

The poses in this book are indeed very dynamic and interesting but the one MAJOR draw-back is that they are all with the models laying down on the ground. Definitely not a very practical figure reference book for an illustrator like myself. I mean lets be honest, how many times are you going to be drawing a figure contorted on the ground verses standing and engaged in some sort of action. It may, however, be possible too adapt some of the poses for a standing position and yet gravity affects the body completely differently when it is horizontal instead of vertical. The photographs themselves are very poor in terms of quality in that they are: muddy, bad resolution, slighty out of focus, badly lit etc. etc. etc. Basically this was a very disappointing purchase. The "Fairburn System" series is far better than this book for photographic figure reference material; however, very hard to find.

I have been using Mark Edward Smith's two excellent photographic references as a source for practicing figure drawing over the last year or so. I was a bit hesitant to buy this book - afraid that it might just be duplicating what I already have - but once it arrived in the mail I was really glad that I did. The quality of the photography is *fantastic* and it's printed on a glossy stock which preserves the halftones and detail which unfortunately sometimes get 'washed out' in Smith's books.

The range of poses is great too - from some very classical poses to some really "out-there" angles and poses which border on contortionism. Some of the most beautiful poses in this book are ones which a live model couldn't hold for more than 2-5 minutes, so having it captured on paper is a real bonus. All in all, I wuold say that the combination of poses and camera angles provides a fantastic reference work for studying the muscles of the body in various states of tension and compression.
I think I'm going to be spending lot of time drawing from this book.

This is the book I've been searching for for years! Most art photo reference books will either give you very standard standing, lying, walking poses or very artistic poses(ie unclear) . This book has clear photos of the body in unusual positions. There's a wide variety of poses and sections. Both male and female models.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's a must for those who can't afford to hire a model everyday.

If you are an artist looking for dynamic poses this is the book for you. It is a great guide to help you get some very interesting perspectives of humans. I highly recommend it.

I am a fine artist (NOT an illustrator), and I purchased this book in hopes of adding some reliable reference material to my growing stockpile. I sincerely feel that I wasted my money on this book.

For one thing, as stated by another reviewer, the photos are of fairly low quality. I prefer black-and-white reference because it allows me to see value more clearly and does not prejudice me when I am selecting the color for my subjects, but I would expect a "reference" book to contain sharp, clear images. This book does not; the images are grainy, the focus is too soft to be useful for a broad range of techniques and styles, and the lighting is uneven across all of the images.

Second, as also stated by another reviewer, every single pose in the book is of a reclining model. Especially in the case of women, this presents one major problem-- the effects of gravity on soft/fatty tissue. Women in particular look completely different when reclining, than standing, and this book offers not a single image that offers foreshortened views from above or below of a standing, kneeling, or sitting figure.

On the other hand, if you are an art student who is leery of using soft porn images from the internet to get your life-drawing practice, this book may be worth the investment. If you are serious about experimenting with different perspectives of the human body in fine art (or if you are an illustrator), spend the money on decent anti-virus software, and peruse the aforementioned soft-porn sites. You'll find a lot more usable reference, much better-photographed.

I happen to like the fact these are in black and white, since the simplicity of it makes you familiar with the form. I already have The Nude Figure for my other references for life drawing. As another person said, this is not the best book to get reference for illustrative foreshortening. This book is more to train your eye to capture various parts of the form in foreshortening.

I thought it was interesting how the author noted that it was difficult these days to find models because of people's need to do body alternations like piercings and tattoos.

While I find the models average, I would have liked to seen a few different models like overweight or even more athletic to get variations of the form in perspective. I wouldn't even mind old people, but I'm not sure if the elderly could perform in some of those poses.

Most of the poses are in seated or lying down positions, I remember the author saying also that a lot of poses even in perspective started looking the same.

I got some use out of the book, for the photography was clear enough for me. I also like using it as an exercise to recognize the form, like certain muscle and bone groups would look like in certain perspectives. I think too many people want to copy and not understand the true value of learning and utilizing reference.

It's not an AMAZING book, but it's still useful.

If you're an artist like myself and have trouble imagining parts of the body in odd perspectives then this book will probably help you. It contains literally hundreds of photos of both male and female models in various angles. My only issue with this book is that sometimes a pose will spread between the two pages, loosing some of the model in the binding.

As a student I worked with drawing real models in a studio environment, and find this to be the next best thing to having a real person in front of you. This is a book any serious artist should not be without!

It's a great material!!!! a great research book and reference!!! there really are few chances for people in arts field to gain the knowlege this book provide. Usually the best way is real life observation, but you don't have a model any time you want to draw, do you? so this book is a great material when you don't have that chance and a guide for those who want to improve his work with a real model.
My only complaint is the poor contrast on the pictures. It doesn't have to show deep black shadows but a little bit more of contrast could emphasize better different muscular groups. Any way, most of reference books are the same at end, but not this one!!! Foreshortenig is one of the hardest views to archive for artists (painters, art and human figure students, comic book artist and illustrators, etc)