Refining one's drawing skills

[gatti]

If someone is interested in taking their figure drawing skills to the next level, you gotta check out http://www.drawingforce.com/

This guy was one of the most influencial illustration teachers that I had during my college days. I took his classes at my art college School of Visual Arts in NYC and at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ. His focus is capturing the force (push/pull/energy) that works its way through a figure and using it as the catalyst to accentuate the drawing making it more dynamic. He has a book that was just released titled "Force : The Key to Capturing Life Through Drawing." (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0595317588/ref=pe_ar_A1ZY0MOC0B82X2d10595317588/002-4829014-7660049?n=283155) Also, he has Quicktime movies of his lessons on his site.

[Fenris]

Amazing. I'm signing up as soon as I get my salary. That would be an awesome way of spending the spring.

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

Hm. Kinda stylized for my tastes. Might be better off with some Burne Hogarth books.

[AnotherJake]

That's pretty interesting. Curved to the straight... I've never really noticed that in characters, but it makes perfect sense. I was just noticing some architecture on a highway overpass a few hours ago where it was obvious that they used a curved shape in the center to balance out the straight lines of the structure. Not that I didn't know that before, but it got me thinking about some of those little art techniques I've learned here and there over the years. I'm not a trained artist, but I've been paid for some of my graphical work from time to time. All those little tips and tricks come in handy when you least expect it. Great post gatti!

[loki74]

while that is pretty cool, I agree that it is a bit too stylized for my tastes. Perhaps the method is well suited for highly dynamic action poses, but for general figure drawing I think that Andrew Loomis's "Figure Drawing For All it's Worth" is one of the best resources in existence today...

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

Ditto on that. The Loomis book is amazing.

Another one I like, although the style is not that exciting, is Drawing the Head and Figure by Jack Hamm (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399507914/104-3371752-0295963?v=glance&n=283155). Its extremely inexpensive and covers a lot of ground. Very helpful for those of us drawing without a model.