Andrew Loomis was a well known American painter, illustrator and author, best known for his series of instructional art books printed through the middle part of the 20th century. These books had long been out of print and were highly collectable with various pdf versions circulating around the web.
Between 2011 and 2013 Titan books progressively reissued the titles in facsimile editions – which to cut a long story short meant I just had to get my hands on physical copies of some of these fantastic books.
I decided to treat myself to the first book Titan chose to reprint and one of Loomis’ most popular in ‘Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth’ (originally published in 1943), packed with information on mastering anatomy and capturing the human form in movement and at rest. I thought while I was at it I could stretch a little further and also grab a copy of the book considered to be Loomis’s magnum opus ‘Creative Illustration’ (originally published in 1947) which looks in depth at Line, Tone, Colour, Telling the Story, Creating Ideas, Fields of Illustration, and Experimenting and Studies.
These hard-cover books are brilliantly well presented, written in easy to understand language and packed chock full of fantastic illustrative diagrams and examples (as you would expect).
These make a very welcome addition to my book collection and are bound (‘scuse the pun…) to get plenty of attention over the coming years.
