Art Book Review: Drawing Dynamic Figures In Motion

Drawing figures that look dynamic and in motion can be quite difficult for the inexperienced artist, but there are some simple tips and steps to achieve good quality dynamic figures when drawing them and this book will show you how to draw from all angles you can think of and the many different ways you can draw muscles flexing whilst a figure is in motion or movement.

.One great thing about this book is that it is overloaded with figure drawing examples right through 6 main chapters that cover each and every aspect of figure drawing.

Chapter 1: Definitive body forms

This chapter is about basic body forms and head shapes and building them up through shapes with ball and wedge type shapes that is not only useful but it gets you used to drawing with shapes instead of trying to draw figures straight off and with numerous examples of drawings throughout you are most certain to draw some very dynamic figures.

Chapter 2: Figure Notation In Deep Space

This chapter puts the order of importance of starting your figure drawing on the actual middle part of your figures with the torso first and the other body parts like the legs and arms which would come next and then the head last, as what is described in this chapter quite well is the form of the figure needs to be worked out before you attach the head on your figure subject and you can see some of the early figure work looks really good because you aren't limiting yourself to always starting with the head, so figure first, head last!

Chapter 3: Interconnection Of Forms

The third chapter goes through the illusion of depth and transitioning your figures to give them that believable edge where your figure forms flow and connect very well giving that appearance of deep space, also called overlapping forms, this is an essential chapter in your figure drawing journey.

Chapter 4: Figure Invention In Foreshortened Forms

An in depth chapter focusing on the details of the previous chapters and working out the ways of creating figures out of your imagination and pointing you in the right direction with the joints, hands and arms.

Chapter 5: More Figure Invention Tips

Advanced knowledge and terminology lost me slightly in this chapter but at least I had the drawings to guide me through and practice off, but the general gist of this chapter is to try and draw your figures by controlling the length of muscle mass in a foreshortened form and also details on the Isosceles Triangle Measuring Device, which I'll have to re-read to understand it, but the figures are there to help you.

Chapter 6: Figure Projection In Deep Space

Er.... the drawings are great guides to follow as most of the words seem irrelevant and in fact most of the book seems overly word heavy, but if needed you could just follow the figure drawings on their own with minimal reading.

In conclusion, this book is good and obviously is written for students, but actual students that are more used to reading complex wording that just seems to be hard to read, maybe it's just me, but I found the descriptions that accompany the drawings a little confusing and generally difficult to follow, but on the plus side, the drawings were excellent and are the best part of the book and these can be studied by just practising them.