Art Models 2: Life Nude Photos for the Visual Arts (Art Models series)

Bought this book at the suggestion of one of my drawing teachers. This book has come in handy so many times and really helped me throughout then entire quarter of school with assignments and has proved to be helpful even after the class with personal drawing. The book is very well made with interesting, unique positions and all different body types, races and ages. Excellent book all around, got here very fast and the packaging was great. I like this book so much, I’m thinking of buying some of the others in the Art Models series. 🙂

This is a really helpful book beyond the life drawing class. There is an enormous selection of poses to work on outside the class
good positions in terms of complexity and variety and beautifully produced photographs a must to carry on
learning from the figure..

This is an excellent book for art students, photographers and other artists interested in studying the human form. The book is organized by model. Several classic art nude poses are illustrated from different angles. The book also includes a CD with many photos from the book available for closer review. I recommend this book for all artists and photographers. Cheers!

This second volume in the series is even better than the first, better models(with better muscle definition) and the concept of posing them as classical art pieces is a great touch. I got this version, the hardcover with the cd-rom and is and innvaluable tool for the classical trained artist and art student. No machine is better designed and refined than the human body and this book is good evidence of it.

This full color instructional book has a mix of female and male models, sometimes with props such as a sword, a fan, a tea set and a cane, each set is in different angles.

Having worked with live models (both nude and clothed) for over thirty years, the Art Model series 2, 3, and 4 (along with its DVDs), which are the ones I recently own, are the best I have seen of its kind. The authors have bent over backwards to create a reference book on models for artists and I was pleased to find the following:

In Art Models 2, the authors focus on classically inspired poses and cite their reference (i.e., “The Implorer” Rodin, 1900, On Disk: mandy017; and “Torso with a Twist,” A Red Ink study by Michelangelo, circa 1510 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, On Disk: jim013. Etc.).

In Art Models 3 and 4, the authors: include props (invaluable when an artist has to be sensitive to and understand the dynamics of the slightest muscle shift and its effect on the fulcrum; one grid page and one non-grid page with the same pose (an important aid when something about the image just doesn’t look right); 24 angles of the same pose for 360 degree views; and two-model poses which aids in spatial relationships.

The series serves exactly what the authors intended; that is, a reference to work from, independently creating (drawing, painting, sculpting) from the suggested poses in the books/CDs. My first choice will always be to work from a live model because cameras lie and distort by reinterpreting what our eyes see. Photographers reinterpret what the camera sees. And the inks necessary for printed publications, again, reinterpret the image tones. As an example, in terms of inches, our feet are larger than our heads. The camera doesn’t see this and the feet look suspiciously too small; all the figures are imbued with a luscious warm body tone which in reality our shadow areas, at the turning point, shifts into a slightly cool range. To have everything in a warm tone tends to flatten the image. These are camera and printer’s ink issues; but, this knowledge is important when planning to please a client.