This is a 176-page paperback and one of three books on figure drawing that I…
Drawing Drapery From Head To Toe, Cliff Young – Book Review
And here’s the other book I bought this week. It was while looking around Amazon that iced that I’d never read a book on drawing clothes. All the folds in clothes in my portraits to date have been based on observation and not on the rules of physics. So I found myself looking at books on “drapery” and, after looking at reviews of a number of different ones, went for this one by Cliff Young, first published in 1947. it’s a 48–page paperback but drapery feels like the sort of subject that doesn’t need a huge volume devoted to it.
There’s no real written text to the book: just commentary against all the drawings and photos within it. And that commentary appears to have been written in hand, albeit in block capitals and easy to read. When the text is in bite sized commentary chunks, though, the loses something. Without having the luft available to him to write big volumes of text, the author doesn’t chance to elucidate ideas clearly and unambiguously. He can just fire out an idea once and if we don’t understand it we’re stuffed. And I was.
I also don’t like the drawings or photos in the book. The photos are often figure drawings in red pencil with clothes drawn over the top in black pencil, maybe with arrows pointing to various paces saying pull or crush. It’s all a bit too busy and unclear. And the photos don’t work: there’s too little contrast between dark and light for creases to show up. I’d rather have been presented with better contrasted photos with overlays pointing out creases and pull and crush points.
I don’t want to devote any more time to this review. This book might have been a classic of its time but it’s really poor compared to today’s books. I’m wondering whether the Morpho book in drapery might be a better option and have added it to my wishlist. I 100% regret buying this one. And that means it scores one palette.
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