Figure Drawing (Learning To See book 3) by Peter Jenny (book review).
I’m beginning to think some of the publicists know my tastes better than me sometimes. The inclusion of this tiny book, ‘Figure Drawing (Learning To See book 3)’ by Peter Jenny was because of my interest in promoting creativity. An important asset in our genre that we need to encourage in the next generation or they’ll be forever glued to their media software.
This book has 20 lessons in doodling which if you follow should end up giving you the basics of being able to put together a human figure without having to learn proportions and other stuff first. You might even learn how to get action poses as well with a touch of paper sculpture.
Don’t expect to do any of these figure drawing creations with too much detail. Most of them centre on getting the form right and I suspect if you get that right then you’ll realise drawing can be a lot of fun and get past any thought that you cannot draw. Don’t under-estimate that. How many times when you were young did your art teacher at school get you through the basics but instead showed what you could do if you followed his example. As Peter Jenny points out in his introduction, he started off by being allowed to doddle in the margins of his pages at school.
I should point out that you’ll need to buy a couple pencils, cellotape, a pad of tracing paper, normal paper and maybe one with thicker cartridge paper but these don’t need to be especially expensive from some of the cheaper supermarkets and throwaway if you need a lot of practice. No sense starting this book and realising you haven’t got the necessary. If you do this with your sprogs, you both can have a lot of fun as well.
There are three other books in this series which I hope I shall be allowed to investigate.
With the nights now darker and you might want to do something beyond your computer usage, then this is a good way to start and with a book that you can carry in a small pocket, you can refer to it and use any old scrap of paper for practice as well.
GF Willmetts
October 2017
(pub: Princeton Architectural Press/Abrams Books, 2012. 187 page illustrated A6 small paperback. Price: £ 7.99 (UK), $12.95 (US). ISBN: 978-1-61689-049-0)
check out websites: www.papress.com and www.abramsandchronicles.co.uk
