Art resources #1: Posing references

[mekare]

Oh damn, I just had the entire post typed up and then it disappeared. Argh. Okay. So I wanted to do a post pooling our resources for figure drawing since I am kneedeep in hunting for references for my Bigbang artpieces. What are your go-to sites? Do you just google the pose and rely on that? (For me that often takes too long and I don't usually find exactly what I'm looking for). Do you go to stockimage sites? Can you recommend any artbooks? I don't own any artbooks on the topic (but I know there's a site that reviewed pretty much all the classics, will hunt for that link on my Pinboard).

ETA: A sum-up

Books
You can find the amazon links in the comment below but I know some people boycott amazon for ethical reasons so I removed them. Descriptions and comments by syntheid

Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist - Stephen Rogers Peck

Vilppu's Drawing Manual - Glenn Vilppu

Master Class in Figure Drawing - Robert Beverly Hale

Anatomy: A Complete Guide for Artists - Joseph Sheppard

Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists - Mark Simon
Nice in that they take a model and shoot them in a ton of different facial expressions, so you get the same sort of facial expressions for a variety of features.

Atlas of Foreshortening - John Cody, Ron Tribell
This is an excellent reference book for weird foreshortened poses that I've found difficult to find online.

The Artist's Guide to Drawing the Clothed Figure - Michael Massen
Great for learning to draw fabric, especially the way it hangs on people, but also just in general.

ETA: The Male Nude - David Leddick
mekare: I actually own this one (had forgotten about it when I first posted) and it's an anthology of male nude portraits from the beginnings of photography to the present day. Lots of really useful poses, porny art, tasteful art, sports poses, campy art and everything in between. Each chapter has a short introduction which talks about the aesthetics and attitudes towards the male body and how they changed - very interesting!


Online articles

Perfect Posing 1:Listen to the character… and to physics by Ferdinand Engländer
Talks about physics, how to find an interesting and easily recognizable pose, how to convey emotion in a pose, power centers, lines of action....with good example images!

Perfect Posing 2 – Appealing and Readable by Ferdinand Engländer
Subtitle: "Making eyecandy", talks about silhouettes, tilts, flow

Are you using references correctly? by J.K. Riki
Despite the presumptive title, I found this very helpful. Talks about the difference between copying and using a reference and what to look for in reference images.


Online photo references and stock images

ETA:Figure Drawing Art Models - https://www.posespace.com/ (you get some free samples and can browse the pose library, filter by skintone, gender, clothes, props etc.) but then can buy individual poses (with photos taken from 360° angles))

Stock images, can be filtered by gender etc.: https://www.deviantart.com/resources/stockart/model/popular-all-time/

Stock images - https://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com

Stock images - SenshiStock

Anatomy - https://sharezone.deviantart.com/favourites/48554410/Anatomy-and-References

Warriors - photo refs - https://syccas-stock.deviantart.com/gallery/27036416/Warriors

Male nudes - https://www.deviantart.com/resources/stockart/model/men/malenude/fullbody/popular-all-time/

Photos of difference costumes - historical and fantasy - https://nastiaosipovastock.deviantart.com/gallery/

Drawing hoods - http://styliferous.tumblr.com/post/40689510912/hoods-are-hard-to-draw

Dancing poses

Olivier on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/15667280@N00/


Online examples of figure drawing

Evankart's figure drawing posts evankart is a professional comic book artist I really admire for their figure drawing. She does fanart on her Tumblr. Now that I think about it, she also does landscape backgrounds really really well.


Online tutorials, videos

Proko's tutorials on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV/featured

Line of Action drawing exercises: Practice Tool

ETA: Sketchdaily, similar to line of action exercises, sorted by animals, body parts and full body, gender etc. Sketchdaily.net

Comments

[syntheid]

Primarily... I just do figure studies outside of specific projects. Line of Action's practice tools is great for that. Has a variety of body types and poses and specific options like only-hands/feet/expressions or clothed or unclothed, and you can set it to run like a typical figure drawing class with 30 sec warmups leading into the last long study, or you can just have endless short timed poses or something. Since I don't have access to live models at the moment, this has been a great tool for me to try to keep up practice.

When I need specific pose references for something I just cannot figure out, I'll either google for what I'm looking for which often lands me in places like SenshiStock, or try to take a ref myself if I can't find it, but I don't really have specific go-tos online.

Book-wise:

Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist, Vilppu's Drawing Manual (kind of seems like an art school staple, I hear it recced a lot and used it in class myself, though I either don't own it anymore or have misplaced it somewhere hah), Master Class in Figure Drawing, Anatomy: A Complete Guide for Artists - These are all my favorites for breaking down the human figure and learning to draw it either via simple shapes or getting into detail on muscles and how they work and how to draw them.

Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists - Nice in that they take a model and shoot them in a ton of different facial expressions, so you get the same sort of facial expressions for a variety of features.

Atlas of Foreshortening - This is an excellent reference book for weird foreshortened poses that I've found difficult to find online.

The Artist's Guide to Drawing the Clothed Figure - Great for learning to draw fabric, especially the way it hangs on people, but also just in general.

[mekare]

Line of Action - that looks pretty great! Thank you for adding so much!

[syntheid]

Adding this in here: https://reference.pictures/ -- A husband/wife duo started up a reference picture site, some are free, some require payment, but they have some specific stuff like refs for fantasy weapons and costumes and some environments.

[mekare]

Cool, thanks for adding it!