The Best-Selling Portrait Drawing Books of All Time

Portraiture is a demanding art requiring the artist to capture a likeness and render it revealing some hint of the personality behind the image. A two-pronged task, it requires great technical skill and an intuitive eye. In both these respects, John Singer Sargent stands out as a portrait artist of major stature. Born in 1856 in Florence of American parents, Sargent showed artistic aptitude at an early age and was enrolled at the Academia delle Belle Arti in that city. Later he studied with Parisian artist Carolus Duran, acquiring the loose, painterly style for which he is renowned.

International acclaim as a portrait artist came early in his life and followed him throughout his career. Sargent's portraits done in oil are well known; they appear in major museums throughout the world. A lesser-known but no less respected aspect of his oeuvre, his portrait drawings are the focus of this collection. Included here are early works in pencil and pastels, and later renderings in charcoal, a medium Sargent favored after 1910. They have been selected from both public and private collections by art historian Trevor J. Fairbrother and attest to Sargent's technical skill, versatility, and dexterity in three different mediums. In addition, these works reveal Sargent's ability to treat a diverse group of subjects; he handles the languorous beauties of the Edwardian age, members of the aristocracy, and the great literary and artistic figures of his day with equal virtuosity, capturing their characteristic mood and style. This collection includes portraits of Lord and Lady Spencer, Henry James, William Butler Yeats, Vaslav Nijimsky, Tamara Karsavina, Dame Ethel Smyth, and Jascha Heifetz. Artists, students, historians, and lovers of portraiture will appreciate this selection of drawings by Sargent. Anyone interested in trying his hand at portraiture will find this volume both instructional and inspirational.

A classic how-to-draw book featuring helpful images as well as in-depth art theory from a legendary illustrator and major influence for comic book and graphic novel artists. Famous for his mastery of figure drawing and clean, Realist style, illustrator Andrew Loomis (1892-1959) is revered amongst classic artists like the great American painter Norman Rockwell and comics and graphic novel artists like Marvel and DC superstar Alex Ross. This in-depth manual for drawing the human head and hands features helpful reference information, theory, and illustrations, with steps for:.

• Identifying differences and similarities in creating heads between genders and age ranges. • Children’s heads from infancy to the teenaged years. • The basic block forms and proportions for bones and muscle, head tilts, perspective, and indicating character and expression. • Mechanics of the mouth, eyes, and lips, and how to construct noses and ears. • Hands of all ages and genders including foreshortening, the hand in action, knuckles, and fingers. With everything you need to know to draw like a pro, this 2nd installment in the facsimile editions series returns Loomis’ highly influential series of art instruction books to print for the first time in decades.

Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543) ranks among history’s most gifted and perceptive portrait painters. His objectivity, realism, and superb draftsmanship have influenced artists and commanded the admiration of the world for over four centuries. This handsome volume presents 44 of Holbein’s finest portrait drawings, created while he worked as court painter to Henry VIII. This artist’s record of one of the world’s most brilliant and tempestuous courts, in drawings and finished portraits executed with inimitable sensitivity and impeccable draftsmanship, is unique in the annals of history and art.

Here are revealing, detailed depictions of a gallery of powerful personalities: Sir Thomas More; Jane Seymour; Edward, Prince of Wales; Anne Boleyn; William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury; Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey; Sir Thomas Wyatt; Nicholas Bourbon the Elder; and many others. Informative captions provide identification of the sitters, dates, dimensions of the drawings, and notes on the media. Today the original drawings can be seen only in the collection of the Royal Library at Windsor. This inexpensive Dover edition makes them widely available to all art lovers. Moreover, every effort has been made to retain the quality of the originals — subtleties of tone and shading, fine detail, and telling nuances of expression. The drawings comprise a priceless archive of important personalities in Henrician England, a record of great value to historians, scholars, costume and cultural historians — anyone interested in that turbulent era and the astounding painter who helped preserve it.