Artbookreview.net

This series has gone a bit quiet lately, which is no bad thing. I don't mean there's anything wrong with it, just that it's something that should only be added to when the right subject and author come along. And this new volume ticks all the boxes.

Lucy Swinburne's sensitive pencil drawings capture personality perfectly and her modelling is also right up to standard. Perspective, especially in complex poses, is very easy to get wrong, but Lucy never misses a beat on this one. She's also excellent on form, expression, character and the difficult subject of suggesting movement in what will always be a still-frame drawing.

The book is nicely progressive and features a good variety of subjects from young to old, male and female and different ethnicities. The instructional approach is to explain what you're looking for under a particular heading and then to give examples with deconstructed captions that explain what was done. Demonstrations are not completely absent, but neither do they dominate in a book that's aimed at the more experienced practitioner. This is important as both the subject and the readers are taken seriously if you're looking for an introduction to figure drawing, you shouldn't be surprised to find that this isn't it. Neither, though, is it so rarefied that it becomes inaccessible to anyone except those who don't need it.

This is an excellent series whose standard has been kept up by judicious additions and this one enhances it considerably.