Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Two Dollar Books and Other Finds




Last night my husband and I were given free babysitting by some very generous friends of ours (our 3 + their 4 = 7 kids, with the oldest being 5!) Being the consummate nerds that we are, we went to two bookstores, a restaurant and a coffee shop. Honestly, we had a fabulous time. We came home with 14 new books! The real buying came when we hit the $2 clearance racks - in case you were curious. I must be honest, the majority of the books were mine. I've stocked myself up rather nicely for some art history reading!


Onto to Hale and his Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters. The next chapter is on artistic anatomy. Hale recommends that you find a medical supply store and buy some bones. Then, you can study them, discover where the bones and muscles meet and then you too can draw like the greats - from your imagination. While I have no trouble believing that he is right, I don't actually envision myself getting around to buying bones!


A few weeks ago though, I found a great alternative...posemaniacs. First, I didn't really find this, I saw this on someone else's blog - I think it was Dan over at emptyeasel, although I couldn't find it on a search this afternoon. If someone else saw it and knows where it is, let me know and I will give proper credit. The site is in Japanese and I think geared towards the manga crowd, but nonetheless it is very useful. For the last few weeks I have been doing 30 second poses to warm myself up for a drawing session. On other days I've just concentrated on the daily pose. They have a computer generated bones and muscle person (i.e. no skin). There is the daily pose, a gallery where you can choose poses for a certain amount of time, recent poses, and some other areas for customization. Each figure can be spun around so you can choose your viewpoint.


I am very excited to have found this resource, above is one of my sketches. If you are in the habit, or want to be, of drawing accurate figures, take a look.

3 comments:

Little_Rib said...

Rose,

That sounds like a great date to me, as long as the coffee was of great quality. There may not be an "Archives" bookstore like in Pasadena, but we have a few bookstores here in NC. I'm glad to hear you and your hubby are having great fun together.

Belinda Lindhardt said...

oooh thats a great site Rose. :)

Rose Welty said...

Little Rib, it was good coffee. We found the $2 books at a Barnes and Noble. Thanks for stopping by.

Belinda, thanks for the "smudge". :-)