Comments | ratcreature: not quite a rant on drawing books

ratcreature

not quite a rant on drawing books

Dec 11, 2005 06:47

Remember a while ago back when I posted this scan of a kind of terrifying smiling Wolverine that was an example in the Wizard How to Draw: Heroic Anatomy book? Well, back when I first leafed through the book I was also pissed off at the chapters on drawing women (at some chapters more than others), but I couldn't quite figure out what exactly ( Read more... )

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Comments 18

thete1 December 11 2005, 06:40:53 UTC

Oh, man. That's just awful to have to put up with. *oy*

Surely there are some drawing books out there which aren't painful...?

*wonders what sort of thing she'll be buying her eldest nephew, who's starting to *really* get into art*

ratcreature December 11 2005, 15:11:51 UTC

I'm not sure how representational the ones I own are. The thing is, many of the classics on drawing humans have been written quite some time ago, and they are still widely recced for the basics in newer books on specific subjects, because from a drawing standpoint they're quite useful. I mean, for example both the collection of Georg Bridgeman's main books and Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Figure Drawing are suggested as reading in the Wizard book ( ... )

brown_betty December 11 2005, 07:25:32 UTC

That... says so much about the artists, really. I may have to go out and buy Terry Moore purely for doctinal reasons. (I mean, yes, I know he's good, but I was going to get it out of the library.)

brown_betty December 11 2005, 07:37:08 UTC

Man, I just love those two pages of his! [she says, coming back to blither more] It's like nineteen different rants I have, condensed down and presented without bitterness.

ratcreature December 11 2005, 15:19:37 UTC

Yeah, I had seen Terry Moore's chapter on drawing real vs. the superheroine look before, and it's funny and poignant.

miriam_heddy December 11 2005, 15:42:46 UTC

This reminds me of the one really good children's sex ed book I have, called "It's Perfectly Normal" (illustrated by Michael Emberley). It's got pictures of nude people--of all shapes and sizes, standing and sitting in a wheelchair, male and female, different colors, etc. It's amazing, really, because Emberley was really thinking about this, and it shows in the whole book's approach to sex--to normalizing diversity as part of that, and helping to present sexuality as something common to all people, not just a thing associated with looking like a generic, thin, well-endowed male or female model. Emberley's drawings aren't like those you see in some graphic novels where yes, a range of body types are displayed, but where the fat ones are usually drawn as grotesques, with lots of class markers associated with them (re: your fanboy, for instance, or the superhero with litter ( ... )

ratcreature December 11 2005, 16:37:18 UTC

Hmm, the fan art I draw and most of what I look at is of course displaying actual superheroes, so I'm not sure how much realism applies ( ... )

I may be opening myself up for the deathblow, but... anonymous August 25 2009, 22:13:37 UTC

This may be just my opinion, but the reason women are depicted as sexy rather than men is probably because men are NOT sexy. (or rather they are rarely sexy) and if you think otherwise, I'm sorry, you're gay ( ... )

Re: I may be opening myself up for the deathblow, but... anonymous November 3 2009, 03:37:46 UTC

That's very true in most all senses. In nature, the male is most often the one sought after. He is the desirable one. As such he can have as many women as he wants (and thinks he can handle). Males are made to fight and reproduce. Females are made to care for and nurture. This is natures law ( ... )

Re: I may be opening myself up for the deathblow, but... dachaoskitty February 4 2010, 06:56:03 UTC

"This may be just my opinion, but the reason women are depicted as sexy rather than men is probably because men are NOT sexy. (or rather they are rarely sexy) and if you think otherwise, I'm sorry, you're gay, or a straight woman."

Fixed. I'm sorry, I appreciate cheesecake as much as the next person, but I definitely appreciate being thrown a little beef here and there; strictly speaking as a female comic-book reader.

Not all women are sleek, curvaceous, and not hairy. There are men who are sleek and not hairy, as well as curvaceous, just not in the same sense.

I would rather not be put on a pedestal (read: be idolized), it's a narrow, confining space that limits what I can do. Thanks, but no thanks.

Speaking from a female point of view.

Re: I may be opening myself up for the deathblow, but... ext_370662 February 21 2011, 22:36:35 UTC

I know this is an old post but hey, you might still be around ( ... )

celarania January 8 2010, 19:37:29 UTC

I know that this post is very old, but I thought the point of the fat guy this page was not to show him as ungroomed, but rather to show a male and a female with the same sized 'boobs.' Having them be the same size emphasizes that the presence, absence, or size of the breasts doesn't indicate the gender of the individual. The fatness of the man was simply there to provide a realistic situation where a man would have 'boobs.'

ratcreature January 8 2010, 19:48:46 UTC

That interpretation had not occurred to me. I can see it illustrating that, though even with that I don't think it is a neutral depiction of fat bodies, especially considering the other examples.

celarania January 8 2010, 20:32:08 UTC

Oh yes, I'm not saying that all depictions of fat people are neutral (even in this book). However, I really think in this case it was the irony of the man having the same size (or possibly larger) boobs than the woman and saying that the D-cup makes the woman!