Customer Reviews

Drawing the Human Body: An Anatomical Guide

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was in the book store looking for a figure drawing book, but every book I would pick up either had a very small amount of figures to draw from, or the drawings themself were poorly done. I was lucky enough to come across this book. The figures in this book are amazing with great attention to detail. From the first page to the last it is filled with just about any pose you can think of.

I also liked the way the book went into the specifics of the hand, feet, and face, legs, arms etc. and shows many differnt variations. It is also very well balenced in showing both male a female figures.

The wording in the book can somtimes seem very clinical but it is very informative on human anatomy. I would definatly recommend this to anyone looking for a book to use as a reference for anatomy and is trying to learn how to draw the body in differnt poses.

On flicking through this book I was struck by the detail on the soles of the feet. This was just a random page that opened and it was so real, with numbered lines pointing out what to look for as the foot moved into different positions. In reading the preface there is a quote "everyone sees what they have learned to see" and this was definitely the case for me. I have already spent some time just looking at the sketches, fascinated by the different detail as the body, both male and female, arms, legs, hands, face, etc are moved. There is detailed information as to the differences we should look for between the male and female form when drawing the human form. A great resource book.

I was prompted to write a review after reading the 'one star' review by Artshogun titled 'don't believe the hype'. That review was extremely unbalanced.

Civardi is a gifted artist who has authored some valuable books, primarily on figure drawing. However, this book has one major flaw which is not the fault of the artist. Most of the reproductions are extremely faint, using less than half of the available dynamic range of the printing process. Consequently you must have good vision (which I don't) and plenty of light to get something out of this book. There is no excuse for this and it's the fault of the publisher. If any book requires clarity then it's one that deals with the often-subtle tonal variations required to depict the human form.

Artshogun claims Civardi has 'failed to maintain accurate proportions' on many of the figures. I see no obvious errors of proportion.

Artshogun also states that the 'sausage-smooth approach to rendering his figures...has squashed the life and movement out of them'. It is true that the poor reproduction has had a severe flattening effect on many of the drawings. However, this is not really a book on drawing technique, or portraying the human form expressively. Instead it uses pencil to capture valuable anatomical information in an simple, elegant and unaffected way. To quote from the foreword by the artist. "Instead of expressively interpreting the form, I preferred to document it using a rather neutral, almost linear art style."

While Civardi's 'linear hatching' rendering technique may not be your cup of tea (Civardi has a broad range of drawing styles, which can be seen in many of his other books, which focus more on expression.), it is without question clear, consistent, and informative. Consequently, and most importantly it provides the perfect jumping off point for an artist to interpret the human form using his or her own technique.

Aside from the previously mentioned flaw, this is a valuable reference on drawing the human body.

For somereason Giovanni Civardi reminds me of a re-encarnated Leanardo Michealangalo. He is that good, I tell you! It gives illustrations from different poses of the male and female body, from the trunk, the head, the legs, the feet, the hands, and the chest!This book is, so far, the best anatomy book I've read yet! If you want to learn anatomy, get this book! And the price is worth it too! Must get!

This guide shows you how to shade both male and female bodies in detail from almost every angle. That is, you can find out how to shade in whatever muscle or bones you need to. Don't read the text unless your a med or bio student--who cares what anything is called. I haven't found a single guide like it. If a shoulder I'm painting doesn't look right I can open this book, find an appropriate example, and fix the problem.

I bought this book 'round August '04 due to the fact that I was in love with the book. I was new to art and liked the artist's crisscrossing technique. The book is not useful if you are trying to learn how to draw the human body, other books can cover that. The book in my opinion is a reference book due to his over complicated pictures which are nice to refer to when drawing the body. I drew every picture in this book with no guide except for the boring writing on the side, which I stopped at page 32 or something. What I like most ' bout this book is the pictures depicting the hands because I feel the artist does an excellent job on making the hands look real life even if it is the crisscross technique; it still looks good. If you are looking for a book that teaches anatomy with real life drawing this book will do that since it has a tone of pictures and scientific text which not too many readers will enjoy. If you are looking for a good book that teaches you how to draw the human figure I would suggest "The Figure", by Walt Reed. I just purchased the book yesterday and I can say that in about 3 pages I am really getting better!!!!!!! In all, "Drawing the Human Body: An Anatomical Approach", is a reference book for anatomy and that's the reason why it is staying in my at home library of book which is not a bad reason at all. If you are looking for help when it comes to purchasing art books I follow Bruce R. Bain's reviews on this site due to the fact that he has read a fair amount of art related books.

Very helpful and complimenting to other anatomy guides for artists , I got many new tips and pointers out of this book which also cover subjects some other books skip .

"Drawing the Human Body: An Anatomical Guide" by Giovanni Civardi comprises an indispensible book for any non-human artist looking to produce two-dimensional representations of the species homo sapiens inhabitant upon the third planet in the orbital system circumscribing the Class-H star Sol, Orion arm of the Milky Way spiral-form Galaxy. Unfortunately, the cerebrally advanced(for a human) and sublimely self-evident (for a human)text make this volume valuable only for its images if you happen to be of that self-same species homo sapiens from the afore-mentioned planet Earth.

For Example, on the the subject of heads the author writes:

The head is the uppermost part of the human body, situated above the vertebral column and joined to the body by the somewhat cylindrical, more restricted segment, the neck.

As a Zyborg from Planet Deltizoid, I found this bit of information quite useful. Heads at the top of the body-- how peculiar! The author later describes noses in a similar, authoritative fashion, defining this odd human sensory appendage as "an elongated pyramidal protrusion on the middle axis of the face." Prior to reading Mr. Civardi's text, I had always drawn my humans with spherical noses affixed to the sides of their heads. How wrong I was! Humans, of course, are universally aware of where their noses are.

On the subject of walking, the author is again particularly insightful. "Walking," he notes, "is the particular type of terrestrial locomotion characteristic to humans.... While walking, the body never leaves the ground." Fascinating. I truly had no idea! We Zyborgians wouldn't condescend to touch terra firma, even were our own milligenarian lives dependent upon it.

The author is notably less impressed with the representational potentialities of jumping than with walking. "Jumping is accomplished with diverse executive modality, but it is neither useful nor opportune to point out the characteristic morphological variations because they are corporal gestures rarely represented in art and can be valued completely only by means of photographic examination." I humbly beg to differ... the jump can indeed be represented in art, and should be more often. I myself have drawn it.

On the subject of the drawings contained in this volume, other reviews have spoken well of both their positive and negative aspects. I (honestly) found the artwork quite useful and skillful, though admittedly too pale in the printing. The pages of images regarding human cranio-facial mood-initiated morphologies, called expressions, however, deserve further examination.

Although the author professes that "designing truly expressive gesture becomes easier... [by omitting] such minute and marginal details as, for example, an excessive analysis of small wrinkles", he violates that excellent doctrine in his own images. I personally have made a particular study of human expression, and not one of his sample images can be seen in human nature outside of the movies of a certain 'Jim Carrey'. Nor was I able to, without looking at the image key, correctly identify which image correspended to which expression. I was certain Mr. Civaldi's "Joyful/Laughing" image was actually a politician at a political rally. His images of "Contemptuous/Disgusted" and (on the next page) "Doubt/ Puzzlement" are all but mirror images, indistinguishable. Furthermore, I am uncertain why the author chose to include separate images of "Pain" and "Suffering"-- "Pain" has the mouth open with teeth parted, "Suffering" has the mouth open with teeth clenched; otherwise the expressions are seemingly identical. Is there a difference between pain and suffering? If you want a book that does a good job with facial expression try "Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression" by Gary Faigin.

In short, as you may determine for yourself by the quotations given above, the text of this book, though it may be useful to a Zyborg such as myself, manages simultaneously to be utterly beyond human comprehension, and idiotically self-evident even in the unlikely event it were comprehended. Mr. Civardi has, I believe, missed his target audience badly. The pictures are nice, though not without flaws. Admittedly for the images alone some mere human might wish to purchase this volume, but if you happen to be of that inferior species there are better books on the subject available.

Civardi has created the perfect figure drawing book. It will have a perminant place beside my drawing table.

This book is overpriced and poorly drawn. This illustrator favors the sausage-smooth approach to rendering his figures and has squashed the life and movement out of them. More reprehensibly, he has failed to maintain accurate proportions on many of them, often grossly exaggerating their head size -once just 3 pages from his own chart on human proportions! Why we need another sub-par book on artists anatomy, I do not know. What a shame that many of the purchasers of this book will no doubt be better able to render the human figure than the book's own author!

For all serious students of the human figure, I highly recommend the FAR SUPERIOR illustrations of "Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing From Life" by George B. Bridgman, and the no-nonsense illustrations of "The Human Figure: An Anatomy for Artists" by David K. Rubins. These books are serious reference works for figurative artists. Civardi's book only purports to be.