For thousands of artists lacking access to figure classes with live models, this portfolio of superbly photographed models provides a life-drawing studio right at home. An extensive compilation of traditional life drawing poses includes female and male figures in standing, seated, reclining, and action poses, each shown gracefully in circular movement, taking in all views: front, three-quarter-front, side, three-quarter back, and back. Each photograph is beautifully composed and lit, providing artists with all the nuances of muscle structure, line, and gesture to inspire fully developed figure drawings and paintings.

More than two hundred full-color photos of women in motion and at rest Standing. Seated. Reclining. Kneeling. Bending. Crouching. Running. World-renowned photographer Mark Edward Smith has captured women of every age and form in every type of movement, then gathered his striking, unusual images into The Nude Female Figure. An indispensable reference for artists who have limited access to live figure models, this remarkable book features striking images of shapely young women as well as elegiac photos of more mature women. The models in these full-color pictures include women of every type—slender women, not-so-slender women, pregnant women, and women of color. A special section shows closeups of the hands and feet. Each pose is beautiful, and the unparalleled attention to composition, lighting, and reproduction make it easy for artists to see the relationships between the parts of the body and to study the classic female figure. • A must-have reference for all artists • Beautiful composition and lighting by a world-renowned photographer and best-selling author—125,000 books sold • All in color for the first time—at same great price as The Nude Figure

Approximately 60 pages with 55 sepia toned images. This work is ENTIRELY pictorial. Contains artistic nudity - For ADULTS ONLY This work is a study of the female nude in a classical form. It is ideal for those wishing to expand their knowledge of an artistic presentation of the female nude. For those who are interested in such things, all the images in this book were created with a Mamiya RB67 camera and 50, 90, and 127MM lenses. All images were shot using Ilford Delta iso 3200 film to enhance the grain and precessed in D-76 developer. The author began photography and photo-journalism in early 1963 when he accepted an offer from his local newspaper to write about and photograph sports events at the Arizona high school where he was a junior. After a stint in the service, he had an opportunity to study photography and printing techniques with Bernard Hoffman, a true gentleman and scholar, and one of the earliest staff photographers for Life Magazine. Since that time he has had thousands of photographs and hundreds of articles published by more than 60 national and international periodicals. He was also a contributing editor for one of them for more than ten years. Topics ran the gamut from professional sports, medicine, archeology, and photography to science. After twenty years away from Arizona he returned in 1985 and it has been the base from which all his photographic excursions are launched. Along with many others he has embraced digital photography but can still be seen, from time to time, peering through the ground glass of a large format camera, hoisting a large medium format 6x7, or indeed still using a 35mm film camera. The photographer currently has fine art photography on exhibit at The Center for Fine Arts in Globe, Arizona, and is currently represented by more than ten stock photo agencies where he has more than 13,000 photographs available for commercial use.

A gloriously illustrated examination of the origins and development of the nude as an artistic subject in Renaissance Europe Reflecting an era when Europe looked to both the classical past and a global future, this volume explores the emergence and acceptance of the nude as an artistic subject. It engages with the numerous and complex connotations of the human body in more than 250 artworks by the greatest masters of the Renaissance. Paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, and book illustrations reveal private, sometimes shocking, preoccupations as well as surprising public beliefs—the Age of Humanism from an entirely new perspective. This book presents works by Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, and Martin Schongauer in the north and Donatello, Raphael, and Giorgione in the south; it also introduces names that deserve to be known better. A publication this rich in scholarship could only be produced by a variety of expert scholars; the sixteen contributors are preeminent in their fields and wide-ranging in their knowledge and curiosity. The structure of the volume—essays alternating with shorter texts on individual artworks—permits studies both broad and granular. From the religious to the magical and the poetic to the erotic, encompassing male and female, infancy, youth, and old age, The Renaissance Nude examines in a profound way what it is to be human.

A landmark study of the nude in art—from the ancient Greeks to Henry Moore—by a towering figure in art history In this classic book, Kenneth Clark, one of the most eminent art historians of the twentieth century, examines the ever-changing fashion in what constitutes the ideal nude as a basis of humanist form, from the art of the ancient Greeks to that of Renoir, Matisse, and Henry Moore. The Nude reveals the sensitivity of aesthetic theory to fashion, what distinguishes the naked from the nude, and just why the nude has played such an important role in art history. As Clark writes, “The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately interesting object, the human body, and puts it out of reach of time and desire; it takes the most purely rational concept of which man is capable, mathematical order, and makes it a delight to the senses; and it takes the vague fears of the unknown and sweetens them by showing that the gods are like men and may be worshipped for their life-giving beauty rather than their death-dealing powers.” Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.

The human form has inspired some of the finest sculpture in art history. It also evokes in the viewer complex reactions. Looking at magnificent nude sculptures by Michelangelo, Rodin, Henry Moore, and other great artists, we are in awe of the beauty and power of the art, as well as of the nude figure. But we may also experience other emotions, perhaps uncomfortably close to those we feel when we see an unclothed human body. This astonishing work provides a visual survey of nude sculpture throughout the ages, enhanced by an illuminating essay by noted critic Vicki Goldberg probing our various responses to this most realistic art form.While photographs distance us from the art works they depict, they also offer close-up details that permit us to see nude sculptures in new and surprising ways. Photographer David Finn, who has expanded the way we look at art in Abrams' How-to-Look-at titles, enables us -- through his remarkable photographs -- to glimpse the sculptor's creative process as well as the qualities of presence, texture, and detail that give the finest sculpture its grace and majesty.

The nude figure was critical to the art of Edgar Degas throughout his life, and yet his expansive body of work on this subject has been overshadowed by his celebrated portraits and dancers. Degas and the Nude is the first book in a generation to explore the artist's treatment of the nude from his early years in the 1850s and 1860s, through his triumphs in the 1880s and 1890s, all the way to his last decades, when the theme dominated his artistic production in all media. With essays by leading critics, the book aims to provide a new interpretation of Degas's evolving conception of the nude and to situate it in the subject's broader context among his peers in 19th-century France. Among the scores of reproductions is one of the most important of Degas's early paintings, Scene of War in the Middle Ages, which exerted a lifelong influence on the artist's treatment of the female nude and includes poses poses repeated throughout his career. Also included are monotypes of the late 1870s, which illustrate Degas's most explicitly sexual depictions of women in Parisian brothels, and pictures portraying the daily life of women wherever they resided. Together these iterations range over more than a half-century of virtuoso achievement and manifest a groundbreaking look at the evolution of this master artist.

In the world of contemporary pin-up art, few artists can capture the sexy essence of a gorgeous woman as well and as wonderfully as Jim Silke. For years Silke's signature luscious paintings and sensuous drawings have delighted the hearts and eyes of everyone who appreciates the beauty and grace of the female form, as portrayed in his other bestselling art books, including Bettie Page, Queen of Hearts and Pin-Up: The Illegitimate Art. This time, the pin-up master strips his subjects of dress and other distractions to better reveal the delicious details that are usually hidden from admiring eyes. And, as fans have come to expect from the gentleman genius behind the brush, Silke adorns his intoxicating imagery with sage insight and cunning wit, as he recounts his long and exceedingly happy career flirting with fine art and foxy women.

An impressive sampling of life drawings by 45 of the art world's greatest masters displays the styles of figure drawing across five centuries, from Dürer and Michelangelo to Modigliani and Derain. Featured artists include Raphael, Rubens, van Dyck, Hogarth, Constable, Ingres, Gauguin, Matisse, Rodin, and others. 45 black-and-white illustrations. Captions.

Drawing the Nude presents an exciting approach to drawing the human body. Divided into three parts, on structure, anatomy and observation, it introduces a set of principles and develops a treasury of ideas for the artist to follow. Whilst recognizing the importance of observation, it focuses more on a conceptual understanding of the construction of the body in anatomical terms. In doing so, it encourages the cultivation of more informed observation and accommodates those who work from memory, imagination and invention. Contents: the drawing of elementary forms that can then be distorted, transformed and combined, leading on to compound forms; explains the use of light and shadows to express form; explains the gesture of the figure through short drawings that analyse the flow of movement through the body; studies the musculo-skeletal form and provides a set of tools for analysing its parts; uses direct and concise drawings, alongside images of digital sculptures of human anatomy; gives practical instruction relevant to both the novice and the experienced figure artist, as well as those working within the visual effects and game industries.Superbly illustrated with 199 images that include digital sculptures of human anatomy and concise drawings.