Art of Drawing People: Discover simple techniques for drawing a variety of figures and portraits

by Ken Goldman, William Powell, Debra Kauffman Yaun (Creator)

Learn to draw faces, features, and figures in graphite, with inspiration from 4 accomplished artistsPacked with practical advice, helpful tips, and fundamental techniques, this comprehensive, 144-page book is an essential resource to which artists of all skill levels will refer again and again. The Art of Drawing People comprises instruction from a group of four experienced artists who demonstrate the processes of drawing the human head and clothed figure from infancy through old age in a variety of poses. The talented authors also share their knowledge about underlying anatomy, ethnic influences, and natural variations in shape, texture, and proportion, as well as basic information about drawing tools and pencil techniques.

Genres: Art, Drawing, Reference, Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2008

About the author

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Reviews

[Doodleface · Rating 4 out of 5]

On my neverending quest to draw better, I bought the book The Art of Drawing People, a compilation of several how-to draw people booklets, by several different artists such as Ken Goldman, Walter T. Foster, William F. Powell, and Debra Kauffman Yaun. It attracted me with the nice art on the cover, and considering my interest in drawing more realistic people, I bought it.

This book covers lots of topics, such as anatomy, drawing realistic facial features, and more. However, since it does teach a lot of topics, some topics (such as facial expressions) are glossed over and barely covered, and some topics are repeated multiple times (such as the adult face proportions)

First off, the art of all of the artists is excellent, which is good for a how-to draw book. You see, a lot of drawing books are made by people less than qualified to make drawing books. Often this is reflected in the quality of the example art in the book. I often use it as an indicator if I should even bother with a drawing book.

Personally, my favorite section is Debra Kauffman Yaun’s section. The way she does the shading in her portraits is amazing, which is probably why it’s her art on the cover. I also feels that she explains how to draw realistic facial features the best with her step by step explanations, and the step by step process of the example portraits.

I also found the anatomy section useful. The only other anatomy book I own really sucks, so this was great. I personally drew a heavily simplified skeleton on tracing paper using the diagrams in this section as a reference. My only problem is there’s no full body picture to reference for anatomy (Though, in other anatomy books I’ve looked at, that’s a problem too).

Honestly, the biggest problem with the book is that information is very disorganized, since it is a compilation. Also, I probably wouldn’t recommend this to complete beginners, since a lot of the tips rely on already having a sense of proportion and 3d space, which a complete beginner doesn’t have. Also, I feel that a lot of tips on drawing facial features require already having knowledge on how to draw it.

Overall, I’d recommend buying this book if you already have some experience drawing and want to learn how to draw realistic people.

[Anna C · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a few interesting nuggets in here, but most of the information is very surface-level. It's definitely aimed at children or beginning artists, but at the same time, there are aspects of the book that aren't very beginner-friendly. For example, it does the annoying thing you sometimes see in drawing books where steps 1-4 of a tutorial are very simple block shapes and guidance lines, and step 5 is a fully-detailed, beautifully shaded complete drawing of a person. An experienced artist could probably fill in those gaps fairly easily, but to a beginner, it would seem like several important steps are missing.

As for the actual drawings in the book, there's undeniably a high level of technical skill on display, but at the same time, many of the drawings also felt lifeless and mechanical to me, in a vaguely depressing way, like they were spit out by a computer. Almost all the sample drawings were done from photographs. I don't see a problem in working *with* a photographic reference, but when the artists here are drawing identical carbon copies of their photographs, it's no surprise things end up looking stiff.

I did a dozen or so sketches out of this book, and it certainly wasn't a waste of time. However, if you really want to learn figure drawing, just skip straight to Loomis, no reason to muck around with this Hobby Lobby stuff.

[Debra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent book on drawing people. The author suggested effective exercises on contour drawing, blind drawing, and gesture drawing. Debra provides a wide variety of reference photos and step by step instructions on how to draw them. She provides a great variety of expressions, nationalities, and ages to practice your drawing skills.

Debra explains how to use a grid to get your proportions correct and the common rules of how to draw a face.

She also provided details instructions on how to develop your composition. Her ideas were back up by illustrations of good compositions and compositions that need improvement.

I highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to improve their drawing skills.

I received this galley from NetGalley.

[Ethan Hulbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good book for helping me draw a little better. I'm still not any good, of course, but it's because of my own lack of practice - the book is great. I'd recommend this for others who are bad at drawing and want to get better, and want to put in a little more effort than me, preferably, too :)