My opinion about Burne Hogarth’s ‘Dynamic figure drawing’
Some sketches and notes.
If you are artist that wants to learn anatomy or beginner artist and you are confused which resources to use to learn human figure you might find post helpful.
This is my take on the book and I want to share some thoughts after reading the book and practicing the topics.
There are good things and thing I didn’t like and wouldn’t recommend.
Just to give you answer to the question if I liked the book. Yes I liked it. But I want to give you honest opinion on good and not so good things so you as a student or always learning artist can decide if you want to use this book to learn.
Let’s start with things I liked. It’s a book that covers unique topic: drawing figure in deep space and drawing without reference.
I also liked that it doesn’t represent academic approach. Author rather helps people who had academic background and still have problems with drawing figure that isn’t standing straight like soldier.
This book can help you fight stiffness in poses and helps generate ideas for dynamic poses. It teaches you how to draw figure in deep space, meaning : helps you create illusion of depth.
Approach to drawing human body is also interesting. Hogarth recommend starting from torso and then adds secondary forms : limbs.
This books helps you understand body curves so you don’t need to know anatomy. Actually this is something I like and at the same time I am not sure about. It’s good to know anatomy first before you get into this book.
I would say that perfect audience for this book is student who has academic background but can only draw people standing straight like soldiers. Hogarth’s books will help you to invent interesting forms and positions.
Although you can’t take his anatomy literally. He has very characteristic style, that isn’t realistic but is believable. “Dynamic figure drawing” many covers male body and there’s very little about female body. It’s because female body just doesn’t look good. It’s like female’s version of male bodies. Doesn’t look very organic and remind me of ancient greek statues. Just to give you example : breasts looks like they are balls attached to the chest. Definitely look for some other source about female body.
Overall you can find some great tips and topics that are not covered in other books. This book is for already experienced artists who wish to learn techniques that will expand their academic knowledge. For anatomy look at Bridgman and Loomis 😃
I tried to keep this review as short as I could. Let me know how do you like these kind of reviews and if you would like to see more post like this one in the future.
