Below I’ll give you my selections for the best Figure Drawing books by a few categories. I will cover these and other great books more in depth later.
- Figure Drawing: Design and Invention (2009)
- Figure It Out! The Beginner’s Guide to Drawing People (Christopher Hart Figure It Out!) (2009)
- The Artist’s Complete Guide to Figure Drawing: A Contemporary Perspective On the Classical Tradition (1999)
- Drawing the Head and Figure (1983)
- Figures from Life: Drawing with Style (2018)
- How to Draw People: Step-by-Step Lessons for Figures and Poses (2018)
- The Human Figure: A Photographic Reference for Artists ()
- Morpho: Anatomy for Artists (2018)
- Freehand Figure Drawing for Illustrators: Mastering the Art of Drawing from Memory (2015)
- Figure It Out! Drawing Essential Poses: The Beginner’s Guide to the Natural-Looking Figure (Christopher Hart Figure It Out!) (2016)
- Dynamic Figure Drawing (1996)
- The Artist’s Complete Guide to Drawing the Head (2004)
Figure Drawing: Design and Invention (2009)
Figure Drawing: Design and Invention is an instructional figure drawing book geared towards the novice and experienced artist alike. This book emphasizes a simplified understanding of surface anatomy, in order to clarify the mechanics of the figure, facilitate invention, and ultimately create a skill-set that can be successfully applied to other media.
Figure It Out! The Beginner’s Guide to Drawing People (Christopher Hart Figure It Out!) (2009)
Chris Hart has a head for figures — human figures, that is. Not only does he draw them with incredible style and flair, he also has a friendly, accessible teaching style that makes his how-to books super-sellers. In this unique figure-drawing course, Chris avoids the usual anatomy lessons that intimidate aspiring artists and gets right down to the basics young illustrators need to get started.
The Artist’s Complete Guide to Figure Drawing: A Contemporary Perspective On the Classical Tradition (1999)
Many of us want to learn “how to draw.” But as artist Anthony Ryder explains, it’s much more important to learn what to draw. In other words, to observe and draw what we actually see, rather than what we think we see. When it comes to drawing the human figure, this means letting go of learned ideas and expectation of what the figure should look like.
Drawing the Head and Figure (1983)
A how-to handbook that makes drawing easy. Offers simplified techniques and scores of brand-new hints and helps. Step by step procedures. Hundreds of illustrations.
Figures from Life: Drawing with Style (2018)
The book is an in-depth exploration of life drawing—covering gesture, short and long poses, foreshortening and contrapposto, and more—and delves into its more challenging aspects: such as measuring with rhythm, drawing with feeling, and developing a style.
How to Draw People: Step-by-Step Lessons for Figures and Poses (2018)
To draw an anatomical figure, you don't need a stack of weighty anatomy books. Just take it step by step! In How to Draw People, author Jeff Mellem teaches beginning artists how to draw the human figure, from stick figure to anatomically accurate person, in clear, easy-to-follow lessons. More than just a reference, this book provides the step-by-step instruction to teach you to draw the human figure and the anatomical knowledge to draw it realistically.
The Human Figure: A Photographic Reference for Artists ()
Now you can draw from your own life model anytime you want without paying expensive models’ fees! This handy volume contains over 600 detailed anatomical photographs for artists to study and draw from. Subjects included are male and female, and the models range in age from two years old to ninety years old. All together, seventeen different models were photographed, in the most useful and instructive poses for the artist.
Morpho: Anatomy for Artists (2018)
In this book, Michel Lauricella presents both his artistic and systematic methods for drawing the human body―with drawing techniques from the écorché (showing the musculature underneath the skin) to sketches of models in action. In more than 1000 illustrations, the human body is shown from a new perspective―from bone structure to musculature, from anatomical detail to the body in motion. Morpho is a rich, fascinating, and helpful book that can go with you everywhere on your sketching journey.
Freehand Figure Drawing for Illustrators: Mastering the Art of Drawing from Memory (2015)
For today’s in-demand comic creators, animators, video game artists, concept designers, and more, being able to quickly draw the human figure in a variety of action-packed poses is a requirement. But what do you do if you don’t have models or photographic reference readily available? In Freehand Figure Drawing for Illustrators, artist and instructor David H.
Figure It Out! Drawing Essential Poses: The Beginner’s Guide to the Natural-Looking Figure (Christopher Hart Figure It Out!) (2016)
Bestselling how-to-draw author Christopher Hart helps artists fine-tune their skills with the fundamentals of drawing natural-looking figures.
Dynamic Figure Drawing (1996)
This powerful book offers a systematic approach to rendering action figures that seem to leap off the page.
The Artist’s Complete Guide to Drawing the Head (2004)
In this innovative guide, master art instructor William Maughan demonstrates how to create a realistic human likeness by using the classic and highly accurate modeling technique of chiaroscuro (Italian for “light and dark”) developed by Leonardo da Vinci during the High Renaissance.Maughan first introduces readers to the basics of this centuries-old technique, showing how to analyze form, light, and shadow; use dark pencil, white pencil, and toned paper to create a full range of valu…
Best Figure Drawing Books Everyone Should Read
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some figure drawing books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Figure-drawing for beginners
Author(s): Dorothy Furniss
ID: 878390, Publisher: Budgeman , Year: [194-], Size: 103 Kb, Format: epub
Drawing Faces And Figures
Author(s): Amir Sohail
ID: 3270109, Publisher: , Year: 2022, Size: 10 Mb, Format: pdf
How To Start Figure Drawing
Author(s): Mitch Leeuwe
ID: 3419056, Publisher: , Year: 2022, Size: 7 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not final. Some books are absolutely best-sellers according to USA Today, others are composed by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant resources you could recommend? Leave a comment if you have any feedback on the list.