Best human figure art according to redditors
We found 27 Reddit comments discussing the best human figure art. We ranked the 18 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 27 Reddit comments discussing the best human figure art. We ranked the 18 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
I'd give any of these to someone interested in poetry and wanting to get a good start.
Jill Alexander Essbaum: Harlot
Brian McGackin: Broetry
T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land and Other Poems (start with "Prufrock")
Sylvia Plath: Ariel (note: this is the "restored" edition--yes it is superior)
Anne Sexton: Transformations
Dante: The Divine Comedy (Durling & Martinez translation)
Anon: Beowulf (Heaney or Sullivan/Murphy translation)
Homer: Odyssey (Fagles translation)
Kim Addonizio: Tell Me
David Mason: Ludlow
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Collected Sonnets
Shakespeare: Collected Sonnets
Moira Egan and Clarinda Harriss (ed.): Hot Sonnets
Sounds Good, 101 Poems to be Heard
I'll go ahead and add the publisher's page for my book (which I absolutely would include as a good "beginning" book) but it won't be out until late January.
ENJOY!
*edit: I absolutely WOULD include my book as a beginner book--sorry for any confusion!
I have some experience with webcomics. I write and draw Miamaska, which has been going on for 2+years, and I'm about to start my second comic next month.
General advice for web comickers!
(or: How I learned things the hard way and eventually stumbled into a good system)
Regarding dialogue and pacing... what I tend to do is thumbnail an entire scene (3-15 pages for me) first and read through it a few times. I'll leave mini-cliffhangers at the end of each page (like a question, or a realization, or a character entering the scene). During this little review process, I'll also make sure the view for the reader doesn't violate the 180 rule too much, that it's obvious which bubble should be read next, and where the reader is going to look first.
I don't have any experience in the print form of comics yet. So no advice there. Just make sure your comics are in print resolution as well (300+ DPI), or you'll be sorry later.
Resource time
I didn't have many resources starting out, but I'm gonna recommend these for you and anyone else interested:
PaperWings Podcast -- podcast and blog on web comic-making (ongoing, good community, regular but sparse updates, good backlog). Has even more resources on its website.
Art and Story -- podcast on print +web comic-making and the comic industry (ended, but a great backlog).
Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics by cartoonist Scott McCloud, worth a read for any comicker. A little more geared towards print, but breaks down comic theory really nicely.
Comics and Sequential Art, Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative, by Will Eisner.
Those books are pretty popular, so you can probably pick them up from the library or find them on the web somewhere.
First let me say, DO NOT GET DISCOURAGED! We were all beginners and this kind of thing takes a lot of time to master. The best thing you can do (which you already are doing) is post for constructive criticism.
That being said, there are far too many anatomy errors to list them all but fixing the main ones will help the others fall into place. The head shape is off. It looks more alien than anything. The sides of the head should be flat not rounded, and the facial skeletal structure isn't well defined. (The jaw is lacking, the cheekbones as well). The ears look too thick and the lips are too wide for the nose and too thick. The chin also looks more like a male chin which is wider.
The neck doesn't look like anything on a human either and the whole body proportion is off. The hands aren't well defined either and there are no definitive wrist bones. The pose is also awkward.
You will want to improve your human anatomy sculpting and this will take a lot of time. Here is a book that will help you tremendously:
http://www.amazon.com/ZBrush-Digital-Sculpting-Human-Anatomy/dp/0470450266
Can you tell us a bit about your workflow so that we can make some more suggestions? Did you use a base mesh? Spheres? Dynamesh? The more detail you can give about your workflow the better since we can either help you with your current workflow or suggest a new one.
Just please don't get discouraged. I know you put a lot of hard work in to this, and letting us help will only make your next one that much better :)
First thing you will want to do is use Z-remesher under the geometry tab ( this will re-mesh your face with some helpful edge flow.
after that it is basically your preference ,
some people like working on on very low polygon models and then subdividing and refining what they roughed out.
if you have used a program like mudbox prior to zbrush this would probably be the way to go because mudbox has a Lovely Lovely layering system that helps prevent destroying volumes you have already established with the smooth brush.
as far as brushes go I think everyone has their favorite, way of approaching things.
clay tubes is a really nice one, as is the clay brush, each can give you a specific look as you sculpt. Personally I am fond of the clay tubes brush with a square alpha. but the standard and clay brush are just as good.
in addition to the build up brushes I also tend to use the dam standard brush to score or dig in and then smooth out the transition. the Face has a Ton of plane transitions So I tend to use it to keep things as crisp as possible when I start smoothing. ( note: having control over your brush strength is important, just because the tools are torqued up to 11 does not mean you have to use them that way.)
also one thing to make note of, you may not see the Dam_standard brush as an option when you press B there are more brushes that you can add to the pop up menue though the lightbox. ( click on the lightbox button top left and then from the drop down browser there should be a brushes tab in the standard folder)
once you have the topology at a density that you like and found a brush you can work with, masking and Poly grouping specific parts of the mesh can help separate things that would normally be almost too close to work on separately. I use this mainly on the Mouth. I follow the method in Scott Spencer's book ZBrush Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy
he basically has you dig in a hole where the mouth is to be and drag a mask selection on everything from the middle of the hole down . then he has you polygroup that mask so you just have to CTRL +SHIFT Click on it and it will auto isolate select the polygroup. its quite handy for adjusting and moving the upper/bottom lip independently of each other.
Hopefully this helped, have fun messing with all the brushes.
I'm gonna disagree with a lot of people and tell you to not buy Understanding Comics. I mean, you can, I don't disagree with most of what he teaches, but I disagree with his results. Perhaps it's one of those 'good in theory, terrible in practice' things. The Sculptor, his latest (?) book uses his UC technique 100% and while it makes for an easy read, it's visually boring and the story is just one unbelievable trope after another, complete garbage.
I'm also not going to tell you to copy other comic artists, that's a very common mistake in comics. When you copy other comic artists you learn their mistakes, or shortcuts, or cheats. I still find after I've drawn a page I'll go back and see where I unintentionally swiped a pose or technique from John Buscema (How to make Comics the Marvel Way had a big influence on me as a teenager, which is who it was made for).
For figure drawing you want George Bridgeman. His figure drawing techniques are the foundation for pretty much every other great illustrator in the last 100 years.
Another good source is Burne Hogarth (Dynamic Anatomy, Dynamic Figure Drawing) his stuff is more action and hero based, but his lessons are sound. He founded what became the School of Visual Arts. These were my first art books when I was a teenager, and they still hold up.
For storytelling, I go for Will Eisner's Graphic Storytelling and the Visual Narrative, Sequential Art Principles and throw in Expressive Anatomy, because, why not?
David Chelsea's Perspective for Comic Artists is great, because it teaches you exactly how to do correct perspective, then in the last chapter he tells you how to cheat at all of it.
For classes, take a look at the horribly designed website for http://comicsworkbook.com/ it's run by a guy, Frank Santoro, who's actually not one of my favorite artists, but he knows his shit, for sure, and he's a helluva nice guy who loves comics 100%. I think his full online class is $500 and he runs it twice a year, I think. Also look in your area for a college or art store that might have figure drawing classes, they are invaluable.
Thanks! I used this book as a reference: https://www.amazon.com/Bourgery-Atlas-Anatomy-Surgery-Multilingual/dp/3836568985/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1549378549&sr=1-2&keywords=atlas+of+anatomy+and+surgery
Try these:
Electricity Grid Infrastructure,
Oil and Natural Gas Infrastructure.
Maybe this site can help with some basic information. Valclav Smil is an excellent source for many areas you're investigating: Energy Transitions, Energy Myths and Realities, Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing, Oil, Prime Movers of Globalization, and Energy at the Crossroads
If you're interested these are the books on my wish list:
Art of Pixar: The complete colour scripts
The art of How to Train Your Dragon
Beginner's guide to digital painting in Photoshop: Characters
Drawing on the right side of the brain
The Shiflett Brothers dvd
http://shiflettbrothers.com/?page=store-dvds
Simon Lee tutorial
https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/artists/special-effects-character-creator-simon-lee
Katherine Dewey's book
http://www.amazon.ca/Creating-Lifelike-Figures-Polymer-Clay/dp/0823015033
Those are all essentials for me. Simon uses a different clay, but you might like that. Be warned tho, he is a wizard.
The Shiflett Brothers are the kindest artists I have ever had contact with, and have helped and inspired me for years. Modern day Rodins. Sculpting's Frazettas.
Katherine is a genius and her book is a bible. She has recently taken up digital sculpting, and following her on facebook is fascinating.
https://www.amazon.com/ZBrush-Characters-Creatures-Kurt-Papstein/dp/1909414131
not bad, but it does assume a certain level of knowledge with zbrush that i don't always have so i have to do a fair bit of my own research. It can be a little dated on some of the steps too. With sculptris pro finally being integrated things got a lot easier and with a different workflow.
Also this one, it's new but I heard only good things about it:
https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Guide-Sculpting-Characters-Clay/dp/1909414409/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=EYRZF6C9M76X6ZHG8101
This has been mine.
Put the camera away. To become a better photographer, you need to become a more interesting person. This means acquiring knowledge.
Go study portraiture in art. Pickup this book if you can from the library. Also this book. Make an effort to visit a museum and study portraiture. Look how the masters used light to show and hide features on the face and create context (i.e. "mood"). Log on to Pinterest and search for your favorite portraiture photographers (start with Dan Winters and let Pinterest recommend others). Create a folder where you stash your favorite pictures onto a Pinterest mood board.
Hopefully, by now a month or more would have gone by. Now go through your Pinterest mood boards and select your favorite portraits. Simplify the image to fit the lights that you have. Put yourself in front of the camera and use a self-timer to take your own portraits.
I've been doing this for the better part of 20 years (well, the Pinterest thing is relatively new) and that's how I honed my art.
> 2nd pic: the thin white book above Adventurer's Vault
>
> 3rd pic: thin dark book above Cyberpunk
>
> [4th pic: top book with the Japanese text](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_(role-playing_game)
>
> [5th pic: the series of blue books](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_SG-1_(roleplaying_game)
>
> 7th pic: the red book above Sharn and the three black books below that
Notes:
2nd pic, looks like a book of tattoo art work at first glance.
3rd pic, there's another thing book above Generation Gap.
4th pic, That's Anima, Beyond Fantasy, it's really a number crunch heavy game but it's got a nice style to it, there's literally a style skill to denote how dope you look doing things.
5th pic, That's the Stargate SG-1 RPG by AIG, never did get to play it.
7th pic, this is the only one I either don't know or can't make out.
If you google sculpting the human figure in clay you will get quite a few hits.
My personal favorite is anything by Bruno Lucchesi. You can find a few of his videos on YouTube. His book "Modeling the Figure in Clay", while a bit sparse on details, served me very well in college.
For anatomy, a copy of "Grays Anatomy" would not be remiss, however, I prefer Stephen Rogers Peck's "Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist"
here are some of my favorite art books,
Malvina Hofman races of man kind she is an amazing sculptress and this book highlights her creation of 91 sculptures for the Chicago field museum exhibit in 1930.
The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh the way he speaks about painting and color is amazing
any book with the drawings of the old masters, Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo, growing up with them as abase for drawing will only make her a better artist.
Jean-Antoine Houdon an aming sculptor, his busts are outstanding!
Félix González-Torres 2nd Edition one of my favoriate artist but it might be over her head as his work deals alot with the 90's, AIDs, and homosexuality during that time in america and many other issues, but he is an incredible example of modern art that is layered and deeply moving.
Caravaggio: A Life i think this is the bib on Caravaggio i read almost 10 years ago it was good,
Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece great read about art theft.
hope this helps,
I had this book https://www.amazon.fr/Morpho-Anatomie-artistique-Michel-Lauricella/dp/2212139144 as a reference but I don't have it anymore and yeah, it was a great help, I should rebuy it when I can.
Thanks for the advice, anyway!
And thanks for the cake day!
Maybe check out The Art of the Barbarian.
I'd say there is probably a book out there for anything you're striving for. Fantasy watercolor art, figurative watercolor, urban watercolor, so you should go for one that is covering the subject you like most! I'm a fantasy lover myself and I'm a big fan of the books by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, I have 3 of them and they all begin with basic tools, and techniques before getting into painting full works. Good Luck!
some good books you can use for figurative sculpting:
https://www.amazon.com/Portrait-Sculpting-Anatomy-Expressions-Clay/dp/0975506501/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540671406&sr=8-1&keywords=phillipe+faraut
https://www.amazon.com/Clay-Bronze-Studio-Figurative-Sculpture/dp/0823006387/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540671453&sr=8-1&keywords=tuck+langland
https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Guide-Sculpting-Characters-Clay/dp/1909414409/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1540671519&sr=1-4&keywords=figure+sculpting
I am so excited for the gifts I ordered for her! I can hardly wait for 2 week for them to arrive. I never felt this excited about gifting anything to anyone.These are not to win her love or receive gratitude, I just felt like if I were her I'd be happy to get this from someone. I wish I have known more about her til now so that I could get more things. Obviously she won't be very pleased that I spent money for her, but it's not about the money, it's about her happiness. I just hope likes these.
The first thing I got for her is a Beats X. She loves music and deserves something far better than the cheap skullcandy earphone she uses. I got the blue color as it's her second most favorite color after purple. I would've even bought the Bose I use but she tried it she felt the treble was too much for her. I digress but I felt so happy she wanted to try them on, I mean come on a girl interested in gadgets!
Next I got her a Sketch pencil set as she draws on paper too. I am very excited about this.
Then couple of days ago she asked for portrait tutorials and I thought I should give her a book. This seemed the perfect book to me, may be she knows a lot of it already but may be she can learn some new techniques and pro tips.
All these I got from amazon Canada, next I want to buy some things from here as well. I must get a sketchbook to go along with the pencils. Plus I will visit Miniso and grab random things that she might like and be useful to her.
Finally I have this idea to put sticky notes on each of the items writing a thing or two may be even pack them in gift wrap.
I am not sure if I should leave her a secret hand written letter among the presents.
Think about it ... how can you sculpt a human if you don't know what to sculpt? The surface contours of a human or animal are defined by the underlying structures, the bone and muscles. Hence you need to study those structures so you know how to actually sculpt or model a human or animal. The following are books on Amazon on anatomy for artists:
Anatomy for Sculptors: Understanding the Human Figure
Anatomy for 3D Artists: The Essential Guide for CG Professionals
Basic Human Anatomy: An Essential Visual Guide for Artists
Classic Human Anatomy: The Artist's Guide to Form, Function, and Movement
An Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists
Or you can use Makehuman.
Sup LazyJ507. It looks like nobody's really given you any tips yet, so I'll try, and see if this helps at all.
Work on drawing.
By that I mean draw from life. Often. Get a sketchbook and go out and draw a whole lot. Draw your family, your friends, your classmates, etc. Studying anatomy helps a lot! The real meat for drawing figures is in learning what things are SUPPOSED to look like. Try to find some life drawing classes.
Read a lot.
And by this I mean reading lots of comics. Read lots of comics and read lots of books about comics. See what you like and try to emulate--NOT COPY-- things that you think are awesome. I recommend checking out Scott McCloud's Making Comics and Understanding Comics. Also, check out Will Eisner's books: Comics And Sequential Art, Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative and Expressive Anatomy have helped me tons. It's awesome seeing professionals in the comics world give you tips and visuals that help you learn. Also, read novels, watch cartoons, watch movies, play video games. Find the aspects that you like about each and see how you can connect that to making comics. Comics are a pretty limitless medium.
As for this comic specifically, work on size, spacing, lettering, panel layouts, and black-and-white balance. And maybe comedic timing, but that's more in the writing area.
I can't really think of any more tips, but if you're wondering about anything else, go ahead and ask.
(i'm a sequential arts student a bluh bluh bluh)