A great reference book on design

Michael Fournier · 08-20-2002, 08:39 PM

In the past week I have posted a few times about drawing from life vs. drawing from photos and about planning a composition.

Well, I was doing a search to possibly add a link to one of my favorite books on this subject, "Creative Illustration by Andrew Loomis" and I found something even better - the entire book online: http://www.fineart.sk/loomis/page_01.htm Yes, some of it is text and is somewhat dated. It was written in the 1940's but the truths and the advice on design and drawing are still valid today.

Besides the works of N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell and Howard Pyle, this book had the greatest influence on steering me toward a career in illustration. And although it is written as a guide to the aspiring illustrator, much of the design and drawing advice can be applied to the design of any pictorial representation of life.

If you have never read any of Mr. Loomis's books I highly recommend this one, as well as his books on figure drawing. Many of the drawings look rather dated, due to the style of his work, which is a reflection of the fashions of the time. But that does not take away from the fact that this man could draw very well and knew how to simplify the process in a way that makes it very easy to capture the movement of the subject with just a few lines.

It is a good read, and along with the fact that it is online for free, the price is right. Also this book is hard to find in its entirety unless you can find an original printing. In reprints they seem to edit out a lot of Loomis's writings as well as some of the drawings. I hope you all find at least some of this useful.

For you fans of Sargent, this site also has a gallery of drawings by J.S. Sargent. http://www.fineart.sk/sargent/page_01.htm Enjoy

Michael Georges · 08-20-2002, 09:30 PM

Yep, it is indeed a terriffic book. I have an original published in the 70's. I am not sure that what they have done by publishing it to the web is legal, but it is nice to see the information available to all.

I also just love Tony Ryder's figure drawing books, http://www.portraitartist.com/bookst...aitdrawing.htm as well as Giovanni Civardi's book.http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ex...strokeofgenius

Karin Wells · 08-20-2002, 09:59 PM

There's gotta be an easier way...

I saw the Loomis book online and really want to read it. I have a slow 56K dial-up modem and I need some technical info on how to download this book more easily.

So far, I have needed to click on each darn page to enlarge it. Then I save the page in a file and open it in Photoshop. At this point, I need to resize it to fit a paper size of 8 1/2" x 11".

Any suggestions?

Michele Rushworth · 08-20-2002, 11:33 PM

Karin, I had to do the same thing and I have a fast cable modem. I think it's because the pages are HTML and not PDF files.

Michael Fournier · 08-21-2002, 12:06 AM

Karin,

It is not easy, since each page is a gif or jpg file and there are over 300 pages at about 200-300K each for the B/W, and about about 1MB for the color jpg pages. You might try saving the site as a web archive with Explorer, and leave it to download all the page files overnight. Then you can read it off-line. I think there is even a setting that Explorer will download all the image files to a separate folder, but I can't remember how on the PC.

If you want to download the pages to view and print, here is what I would do. If you have a fast connection, go ahead right-click on each page thumbnail, select, save link to disk, then download all the files to a folder. This way you only download each page once directly to disk and you can start downloading the next page before the first is complete. But to download all the pages on a dial-up connection will still take a long time.

I can't say what application to use on the PC to arrange then print the pages. For those on a Mac I suggest iMediaPro. It is an image cataloguing application, and with it you can both reduce the pages at print time to letter size, and print odd then even, pages for 2-sided printing. Of course I would not recommend printing this size a book on anything less then a laser printer, and use a color printer just for the color pages. An inkjet would be rather slow and the per page cost much higher. It might be easier to try to find the book used to purchase and just use the reference on the web to check if it is something you would want. Another way, if you own the full version of Adobe Acrobat, would be to use Adobe Acrobat's web capture feature to convert the links to single PDF document. You can convert complete web sites with it. It is pretty cool. But again on a dial-up it would be slow.

Also some of the other Loomis books at the site are also available in PDF as well as HTML but Creative Illustration is only online as gif and jpg files.

08-30-2002, 07:55 AM

Here are two links for Loomis books in pdf format. They are big files so you may not want to download them unless you have broadband. But then you would be able to read them with out the annoying down load for each individual page.

Figure Drawing for All it's Worth (23.7 MB)
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/%7Ec...IGURE_draw.pdf

Fun With a Pencil (11 MB)
http://www.saveloomis.org/fun/fun_72dpi.zip

Gary Hoff · 09-03-2002, 11:19 AM

I, too, have an original of Loomis's "Creative Illustration" and find it a treasure trove of information. One caveat: the book is still under copyright, I believe, so unless the web sites that have it posted have done so by permission, it's likely they're in violation of copyright.

As a writer and painter, I believe (for obvious reasons) that copyright should not be evaded, even for the greater good, and even when the material is out of print.

My 2 cents.

Regards,