PRIZES to win! PROMOTIONS
Gottfried Bammes, born in 1920 in Freital, Germany, worked as an art teacher at the College of Fine Arts in Dresden. Bammes was a prolific writer and artist, was considered to be a master of life drawing and anatomy, and produced numerous books on the subject in his lifetime. In 1974 he was awarded the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic for Science and Technology and received the Culture and Art Prize of the City of Freital in 2000. He died in 2007.
A lot of things claim to be the complete guide but, at a whopping 312 pages, this one certainly looks and feels the part. Getting inside it confirmd that this is indeed a substantial work, with every aspect of the human form examined from block shapes through muscle and bone structure to the completed artwork. Each section follows the same progression, so it becomes easy to follow which, given how much there is to absorb, is a definite plus. Because there's so much, though, you need to be aware that this is something to sit down and take time with, rather than dip into. Think of it as a structured course and you won't go far wrong with it. Gottfried covers male and female figures, both static and in motion and in a variety of poses, as you'd probably expect from a book of this kind. He also deals in the same detail with eyes and ears as he does with bodies and legs, so there's literally no stone unturned. If you can't get a private tutor, this is very much the next best thing. It's structured very much like a course and is absolutely thorough in its attention to detail and should satisfy the most demanding student.-Artbookreview.net This one of the most thorough and exhaustive guides to figure drawing I have ever seen and certainly lives up to the claim inherent in its title. Progress is steady and logical, starting with the basic shapes of male and female figures, adults and children, and moving on to how they appear both stationary and in motion, before progressing to the various body parts and, eventually, how everything fits together. All the sections follow the same pattern, moving from basic form and structure to musculature, followed by a series of exercises and examples. As a result, the book becomes easy to follow and it's definitely the intention that the reader should work through it as a formal course. This is a substantial book and its length betokens the thoroughness of the author's approach, which is about the nearest thing you can get, in a book, to face-to-face teaching.(Henry Malt)-The Artist
