#48371: John Emerson — 11/11  at  09:54 AM
There's a story by Roald Dahl about a a portrait artists who claimed that he could only do good portraits if he painted the subject nude and then added clothes. He only did portraits of young, attractive women, IIRC, and his motives were suspect.

Goya did two versions of his "Maja", naked and clothed. There was a jealous husband and Goya's motives were also suspect.

When I was young the use of nude models in art clkasses at St Cloud State was highly controversial. I don't know if that has changed.

#48383: decrepitoldfool — 11/11  at  11:13 AM
At the end of the 1965 movie, The Art of Love, Dick Van Dyke is painting his lady in the nude; she is quite happy with the situation until she sees the painting in which she is fully clothed. "Oh, YOU! So why did you paint me this way?!"

#48385: — 11/11  at  11:24 AM
This is pretty cool. Thanks.

#48397: HP — 11/11  at  12:12 PM
I once tried to paint a woman in the nude -- but she threatened to call the cops unless I put some clothes on.

#48413: Ken Cope — 11/11  at  02:14 PM
Here's another fine app.

#48462: Xavier — 11/11  at  10:34 PM
Very cool

#48464: Ben — 11/11  at  11:05 PM
I love the irony of the "How To..." aspect. I could watch that process a billion times and still barely be able to draw a stick figure.

#48469: — 11/12  at  03:48 AM
> (it is briefly NSW, if your work environment is packed with philistines and prudes.)

Or if your employers don't like to see you wasting time.

#48470: — 11/12  at  04:11 AM

he could only do good portraits if he painted the subject nude and then added clothes

He has a point. That really is what people are taught in art - and even what I practise (if badly) myself. The idea is that you are more likely not to do silly things with the limbs etc if you've planned how they are connected and fit under the clothing first. You don't have to draw them in detail of course.

Quite a few famous artists took it a stage further and dissected dead bodies themselves in order to get the skeleton and musculature right too. I've drawn the line at that myself though (it would be relatively hard to arrange to do!) and merely have a couple of books on anatomy for artists (as well as the normal science type).

#48474: — 11/12  at  06:33 AM
That would explain the odd proportions in the Barbie dolls

#48490: — 11/12  at  12:19 PM
I showed this to my nine year old son, who is always drawing detailed stuff in pencil and has adopted my physiology coloring book as his own.

The white board on the easel will never be the same, as he is attempting to draw our cat from the inside out as I write.

Thanks for getting him away from the TV!

#48493: Julie O. — 11/12  at  01:46 PM
In a college art class we had a nude female model one day. I was uncomfortable at first, but then realized I was no longer noticing her "female bits," especially since she was rapidly changing positions for quick sketches. All I saw were the lines, curves, shadows and highlights, negative spaces, and spatial relationships.

It was very cool.

I'll post some on my blog.

#48522: — 11/12  at  09:05 PM
It's rather cute that the artist endowed her with glasses when she was still skeletal.

#48541: John Emerson — 11/13  at  11:58 AM
I have a friend who poses nude. It's darn hard to hold a pose for 20 minutes.

#48543: — 11/13  at  12:20 PM
"That would explain the odd proportions in the Barbie dolls"

Dolls are in general made cuter by skewing proportions towards a baby. If I remember correctly, Barbies have too large heads for example.

#48548: Ken Cope — 11/13  at  01:18 PM
People laugh when Tom Sito starts an animation talk by drawing the skeletal forms of Tom and Jerry and building out. It's one thing to draw what you see, but it's better to draw what you understand.

John, your friend should pose for animators; we really don't want static models. As Canadian animator Norman McClaren has it, "animation isn't drawings that move, it's movements that are drawn." When animators hire models, they're given a workout: 30 second to one minute poses, simple actions that can be repeated, so we can study the transition from one pose to another. When I was drawing She-Ra in the eighties, going to strip clubs with a sketch book was tax deductible. Had I been attending life drawing classes at Santa Cruz around that time, I might have met my eventual spouse sooner, as modeling for artists is a great way to pay the bills while getting a degree.

Skewing proportions towards a baby is the subject of a Gould essay on neoteny. For a few months, my job was reanimating shots of incorrectly proportioned Mickey Mouse, correcting a height of 5 heads to a proper 2 and a half.

The origins of Barbie's proportions have little to do with neoteny.