Art Models 2: Life Nude Photos for the Visual Arts

This Book/CD combo is excellent. The interactive web site is also excellent, and greatly extends the book/CD. The poses in this package are from, "classic inspiration." This package is as close to having an actual model in your studio as you could ever hope to achieve. Using the photos on the CD has some advantages over a live model: you won't get slapped for getting too close. The quality of the book is good. It is thin, hardbound, and lays flat. The pages are gloss stock and hold the ink well. The photos in the book are large enough to use from the book, but the primary purpose of the book is to index the photo sets on the CD. Only four angles of each pose are included in the book. The printed photos are somewhat darker than the photos on the CD. All of the photos on the CD are in standard JFIF (JPG) format, 400 - 600 MB each. The CD includes a copy of the book, with lower resolution photos, in Portable Document Format (PDF). The book includes a proportional reference grid for two of the models, for use by digital artists. The photography is very good. The photos are sharp, high resolution, highly detailed, well lighted, from the standard 10 o'clock position. The lighting and detail is consistent throughout all of the camera angles. In one photo set, a strong shadow is cast to the model's right, which is somewhat distracting. The shadow doesn't diminish the detail clarity of the photos, however. The photo sets of each pose on the CD, (24 photos each), are taken at 15 degree intervals, throughout 360 degrees. Kudos to the models for being able to hold some of those difficult poses so consistently! And kudos to the authors for choosing not to airbrush or blur any of these wonderful photographs. The models are attractive, well groomed, relaxed, and comfortable. Only the elder gentleman has slightly imperfect extremities, consistent with his age. A lot of thought and effort went into the creation of this package to make it as useful to an artist as possible, and it very well implemented. I am VERY impressed with this package!

This is an excellent resource for live model anatomy. In the CD you can turn the model around 360 degrees to get virtually any view. You can zoom into the photo and get perfect detail. Lighting is good as well. What a great find!

I made the mistake of purchasing the first effort in this series and was so disappointed that I nearly gave this one a miss. Luckily I did not. The images are exceptionally clear, they are of poses that are relevant to nude sculpture (largely), are not censored or smudged and are of exceptional clarity and high resolution - on the DVD. Printed on an A3 printer, the sharpness and detail of the images are just plain brilliant. I now wait with anticipation for the next in the series. This kind of publication will never replace a live model, but when one is not available, they are certainly next best.

As a figure sculptor, and for any artist(s) looking to render the human form, these products are the next best thing to having a live model in the studio! The books provide a wonderful reference to a wide variety of classical and contemporary poses as well as using the CD Roms for close up images of each model. When creating artwork in a 3 dimensional form it helps to be able to see the model from a variety of angles. Maureen and Douglas Johnson have photographed their models from many angles in order to see detail from many sides and the CD Roms allow the user to enlarge each image to larger than life size. I highly recommend these wonderful tools for figurative artists and suggest getting both books 1 & 2 as they each offer a great selection of male/female models to choose from. Be sure to check out their website where new models and poses are posted regularly!

I like the fact that book was done in hardcover but it's not too heavy so I can carry it with me and use it wherever I find time to sketch. Also, the large photos make it possible to sketch directly from the book with pretty good detail. If I'm in my studio with a computer, the photos on disk are even bigger and there's a few extra that aren't in the book. (they also have a version without the disk, so if you're thinking of buying it double check which one you're looking at) The poses have captions that mention a piece of art with a person in a similar pose. I looked some of them up on the internet to see how other artists actually used similar poses, that made the book more interesting. Because of the large photos and the ability to work right from the book, I think this is the best book of it's kind yet. Other books you might look at include the "Virtual Pose" series and the first [[ASIN:0976457334 Art Models]).