I generally write about practical stuff these days, but I’m breaking with tradition a little here to write a short (well, about as short as they ever get for me) post about a new book on figure drawing by Ted Seth Jacobs.
I don’t have a copy of this book myself, and know only as much about it as can be read on the site devoted to it here. For that reason, this post isn’t a personal review or a recommendation, it’s more of a heads up.
That said, I wouldn’t be writing this post if I didn’t think that the book looks very interesting. The web site devoted to the book is excellent and does have a lot of information, certainly enough to be able to get a good general overview of the approach it takes, and also enough example pages to be able to see how it covers particular aspects in detail.
What appears to me to set this book apart from the more usual figure drawing fare is way it conceptualises structure as it applies to organic forms, specifically the human body. The book looks at the forms of the human body and the way they fit together from a variety of conceptual perspectives. It is certainly not your usual ‘Anatomy for Artists’ book, and I have a feeling that it will be of much more practical use than the more usual approach.
About Ted Seth Jacobs
First, a bit about Ted Seth Jacobs. Just in case you spend the majority of your days under a wet and clammy rock, or so focused at the easel that you never come up for air, Ted Seth Jacobs is one of the foremost teachers of representational drawing and painting of our times. He studied and taught at the Art Student’s League in New York and counts such artists as Jacob Collins and Anthony Ryder as his past students. My good painter friend the wonderful Sadie Valerie, lately of Women Painting Women fame, also studied with him for a short time, and has good things to say about it.
Many of his students have become influential educators in their own right and he is thus a lynchpin of the current revival of representational painting. I see him as one of the few (usually American) artists who kept representational painting alive through the fifties, sixties and onwards when abstract art became the norm, figurative art particularly died a death and most artists turned in upon their own troubled psyches and forgot the world of appearances.
The Importance of Structural Knowledge in Drawing
Emphasis on structure and form in itself isn’t anything new of course. For myself, I first started to get an inkling of its importance when I was working through Drawing the Head and Hands by Andrew Loomis.
Although I do think Drawing the Head and Hands is an excellent and very useful book, my dissatisfaction with the explanation of the planes of the head prompted me to delve a little deeper into the structure of heads, eventually sculpting a few in order to try to get a better understanding of the three dimensional form.
Something happened to my head drawings then. It’s difficult to put into words clearly, but my impression was that sculpting the forms, physically feeling them under my fingers, in some way changed the way I conceptualised form. The best description I could find for it was ‘feeling the form.’
That experience led me to the belief that, along with a sound understanding of value and an ability to accurately judge and reproduce shape in line, a physical sense of form, a mental model of it if you like, was one of the basic requirements of the kind of representational drawing and painting I wanted to do – the kind Ted Seth Jacobs does and teaches.
The Book
So I’m already convinced that a concept of structure and form is important to drawing. What I like about the approach of this book is that it seeks to understand the form of the human body through understanding the parts that connect together to make the whole. Not just their names and where they go, but how they work, how they connect together, the pathways through the body that they form, and the gestures that they create.
The web site dedicated to the book gives a few examples of pages in scanned jpeg format so you can get a fair idea of the content. The ‘Selection‘ section of the site has some interesting excerpts from the book on the head and hands, but more about the general approach that the book takes can be gleaned from reading the ‘Introduction‘ section, which has more scanned pages and more text.
When I first came across the site I had a few questions about the book, specifically about what makes it different from other artist’s anatomy books. The quotes below from the introduction section of the web site answered most of them for me, so I’ve reproduced them here:
What is the Purpose of This Book?
“This dictionary has two principal functions. The first is to present a clear conception of how the body is formed and organised. Its other use is as a visual reference, a true dictionary of form, to provide an understanding of every exterior part of the body, and designed to be used in conjunction with work from the live model.”
OK, that sounds pretty good. Kind of like having someone knowledgeable about anatomy close by that you ask questions of whilst you’re drawing.
“With the advent of non- figurative, so called ‘Modern’ styles, with their preponderant popularity with young students, and in galleries and museums, particularly from the nineteen fifties on, teachers knowledgeable about structure died off and were seldom replaced. A chain of transmitted knowledge was virtually severed. My purpose is to weld the chain back together, and hopefully, add my own new link.”
“This Dictionary is a much more comprehensive structural analysis than has ever appeared before. It will eventually change figurative art.”
Strong stuff! It doesn’t look like hyperbole though from what I can see.
What is Different About the Way This Book Approaches Structure?
“Structure is the way in which living organic forms are organised.”
“Structure is not merely form it is the organisation of forms.”
So this is not simply about form, but how the various forms of the body fit together, how they function as part of the whole.
“Every structure of the body is always participating in some kind of activity, called it’s ‘gesture’ or ‘action.’…By gesture, structures may be stretched, compressed, twisted, made more angular, bunched up and so on.”
So this is much more than basic anatomy. It’s about how the body functions as well as how it’s constructed.
Why This Approach?
“You may imagine that you can reproduce what you see by looking carefully, without understanding and principles, but that approach, historically, has never worked. It is essential to look with an educated eye”
That I would certainly agree with. I’ve found that building understanding is at least as important as seeing. In fact, I think that part of learning to see is building our understanding of what we see. The two, seeing and understanding, are inextricably linked. Light impressions on the retina mean nothing until they’re processed into meaningful representations by the brain.
The Structure of the book
The book is split into sections, each of which could be characterised as representing a different approach to conceptualising form, a different perspective on the construction of the human body, if you like. I can’t cover it all here, but here are a couple of examples from the web site:
Planes and Forms
Although my experiences with form and with sculpting a ‘planes of the head’ model were very useful to me then I think, The dictionary of Human Form comes from a different, more organic perspective. In particular, the emphasis on organic structure is stressed opposition to the reduction of the forms of the human body to geometric forms, since these are by definition inorganic and foreign to the nature of the human body.
The book does say, however, that a conception of ‘planarity’ is useful, since all forms, although curved and never straight, can be thought of as having a top, bottom and sides.
In particular, the book emphasis the use of blocks, planes and perspective effects in order to gain a clear conception of how forms are tilted in space, towards, or away from the picture plane, whether vertically or horizontally. The image on the left is taken from the web site on the book and shows how this is conceptualised. As far as I’m aware, this way of conceptualising the forms of the human body has been used for centuries.
Pathways
This is a very interesting concept I think, and one that I believe is unique to Mr. Jacobs. Although Bridgeman talks about ‘wedging’ of forms, being the way they fit together, this concept is about connections across multiple smaller forms and the way are strung around the human frame. Here’s a nice quote from the book on what pathways are:
“Structures arranged on pathways can be compared to beads on a curving string, where the beads may be of irregular shapes, and sitting on the string at different angles.”
Gesture
This is a particularly valuable addition I think, and is one of the things that raises this book above books that deal exclusively with anatomy, like the Beverly Hale books.
The following quote gives some idea of how gesture as it relates to drawing is approached:
“The position of a body producing gestural intent has a dynamic, tilted ‘thrust’ running through it. In a drawing, this produces the effect of a long axis, that looks as if thrown, or projected on the page at a specific angle.”
Summing up
Drawing is abstraction, not purely the copying of appearances. Drawing is thinking. How we think about what we draw and paint as we work reveals itself in subtle ways, which is why no two drawings by different artists of the same subject will ever be quite the same. This might be called expression, and the differences may be so subtle as to be barely felt, and next to impossible to detect with the eye. But they are there nonetheless and they have an affect.
It’s my belief that an understanding of the structure of form will always show through in a drawing, will give it strength and physicality, and the opposite is also the case. If this book helps to instil a better understanding of structure then I think that can only be a good thing. If reading and working with this book helps artists to the understanding of the importance of form and structure, it will be a very useful addition to an artists library.
For myself, although I don’t do any figure drawing at the moment, I do intend to get a copy as soon as I have enough spare cash to do so. One thing I do know is that it’s far better to buy a small number of excellent books on drawing and painting than it is to spend the same amount of money on a large collection of mediocre books, which is what I suspect most of us do. I certainly have in the past. So whilst it isn’t cheap, the cost of the book isn’t an issue for me.
OK, that wasn’t a short post after all. But it is a big book.
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This book looks very interesting but I couldn’t find any reader reviews of the book. I’ll think I’ll wait til I see more than the websites opinion on the book before considering purchasing. Nice find. I’ll keep my eyes open.
Hi John,
Yes, I think it’s a bit too new to have any reviews out there yet. If I see any I’ll update this post with links.
Seems a very interesting option. It’s very difficult to find a good book about this.
Saludos!
Hi Noemi, nice to see you popping in to comment.
I agree. There are a lot of “Anatomy for Artists” type books out there, and I have a few which are often recommended and supposed to be among the best. The Beverly Hale books for example.
But I can’t say I’ve ever taken much of any practical, day to day use to me from any of them. What interests me about this book is that it seems extremely practical.
Is the book available yet? If so- where from? The links you posted to the book’s website are now inactive, and there’s no mention of how to buy it on ted’s website (just, “inquiries from publishers welcome”).
Hi Tom,
The links are still working for me, maybe the website was down for a little while, perhaps try again?
The ordering page is here.
If you still can’t get to the web site, it’s priced at $150 and is available from Mariposa Press who can be contacted on the following numbers: (USA): 001 (505) 989-1295, (France): 00 33 2 47 77 95 98.
Hope that helps.
I spent about a year taking a drawing class with Jacobs student Dennis Cheaney.
I also have his book Drawing with an Open Mind as well as Tony Ryder’ book. I have learned a lot from these ideas and for what it’s worth I find Mr. Jacobs ideas and techniques on drawing sound. I do however disagree with his idea that one does not need to learn anatomy.
That said I use his ideas all the time when I draw. The idea of the envelop and using straight lines and constant measuring seem to me to be a sound practice. I’m very interested in seeing this huge magnum opus on drawing.
Hi Jeff, nice to hear from you.
I have Drawing With an Open Mind too, and recently started looking through it again. I think there are some great ideas in there and some quite beautiful writing in places. It’s quite a philosophical book. In fact, it’s a very philosophical book, to its credit I think.
I envy you taking drawing classes with a student of his. I believe Ted’s retired from teaching now.
I’m on the fence about the anatomy thing at the moment. I can’t comment because I haven’t learned any, not in any depth, so I can’t speak from experience. I’ve generally found that when I can’t speak from experience it’s better not to say anything at all. Let’s say I’m keeping an open mind on it 🙂
What do you feel a knowledge of anatomy gives you when you’re in the act of drawing or painting?
Hi Psul,
Learning anatomy does a few things. It informs you on what you are looking at beyond the surface. You understand how the muscles insert how the bony protrusions are very important. It’s also a good drawing practice coping anatomy plates. Not unlike Bargue in some ways. As you strive for being very accurate. What I have learned is that Jacobs ideas are pretty sound. Some of them are not however and I think his aversion to anatomy is one of them. After all if you’re going to paint landscapes one should know the anatomy of trees and so on. I know that Jacob Collins is very big on learning anatomy and has serious anatomy classes in his school. I think taking an ecorche class is a good idea. I wish I did and feel I’m going to have to do this even on my own. Build a good three dimension scale model of the human form.
I’m taking a long pose drawing class now with an ex student of Nelson Shanks and he also went to the Florence Academy. Doing 14 week poses and working on one or two drawings has been a huge learning experience and doing it consistently for about 18 months has been the best thing to develop figure drawing. I do find that knowing where the external oblique is helps me in the long run. My advice is to get a few good anatomy books. Pecks, Anatomy for Artist by Eliot Goldfinger and Robert Beverly Hale’ Artistic Anatomy which is really Dr Paul Richer who was the professor of Anatomy at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
I’m a little bit of a nut with these books and I also have Albinus on Anatomy as well as the first real anatomy book by Andreas Vesalius.
Sorry that was a bit long but I feel that learning anatomy is very helpful. I was just drawing the arm last night and I was thinking I never get bored doing it. I’m always learning something new about the human form and it’s functionality.
I forgot Bridgman’ Constructive Anatomy is also one should own.
It’s cheap as well and you can use it on the train.
Hi Paul,
Hope you are well – nice to see you are still painting and writing about it. I just got back from a month long intensive period of study with Cedric Egeli and he recommends The Human Figure by John Vanderpoel. Also, doing sculpture and more still life in my case. Interesting to hear your experience with sculpting. I have read Ted Seth Jacob’s other books – do you know what additional information is in this new book?
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for elaborating, I think that other readers here will find that as informative as I do. What you say about anatomy makes a lot of sense to me, understanding structure is very important I think. I wonder if a kind of synthesis of an understanding anatomy with Ted’s more general ideas about structure and pathways would be a good, rounded approach.
I remember a post from the GCA blog about Jacob teaching a block approach to form, which Ted mentions too.
I also think your idea of doing an ecorche is a great idea. I’ve found sculpting form to be one of the best ways – if not the best – of really getting a feeling for form.
Thanks for the book recommendations too. And please don’t apologise for writing long comments, I really appreciate you taking the time to share that with everyone.
Hi Laurel, nice to hear from you again and thanks for popping in and commenting.
I’m very well thanks, hope you are too. I’m glad to hear you’re still at it as well – I guess once the obsession bites it never leaves you 🙂
As for what new information is in the book, I think it’s just a much more detailed look at each part of the figure and how it related to the whole. Also, I don’t think he goes into any detail about his pathways idea in his other books. I’ve got drawing With an Open Mind and I don’t remember there being anything about it in that book. It’s an interesting idea I think.
Thanks also for the Vanderpoel book recommendation. I’ve heard that one recommended a few times but haven’t read it.
Paul thanks so much for this detailed writeup of Ted’s book! I have it, and you have given a very good description of it. Ted’s idea about Pathways is unique and revolutionary. His teaching fundamentally transformed the way I see form. However, it took many weeks of watching him demo pathways 3 hours per day for me to even believe in them and to learn to see them. It’s a subtle concept as much as trans formative. I think the artist who will get the most out of the book is one who goes into it with an open mind. If you can wrap your brain only around the one concept that all organic form is CONVEX, never concave, your drawings will be revolutionized. I once told him I felt as if he had lifted scales from my eyes.
As for Ted’s controversial stance against anatomy: Since studying with Ted, I have had the opportunity to build a clay Ecorche with the amazing teacher Andrew Ameral (www.ameralart.com), so I’ve been lucky to have had exposure to both approaches to learning form.
I do believe the study of anatomy is essential. However, the study of anatomy is greatly enhanced by Ted’s understanding of form. It’s one thing to know the insertion, origin, name, and textbook shape of a certain muscle. It’s another to notice it’s complex, spiraled, interlocking, tapering form, and how it is arranged in logic and harmony with all the other forms of the body, in “tightly packed subforms” as Ted might say. Also, Ted sees myriad subforms within any given muscle or bone we can name on the body. Every form of the body at every scale follows a system that is simultaneously unique to the individual and universal to all humans. Ted’s philosophy unveils this.
I’m so glad he wrote this book, he has absolutely added a “link to the chain.” I hope readers new to Ted’s teaching will give it lots of time and attention until the subtle concepts of pathways starts to sink in. It’s a challenging concept, the most thrilling thing I have ever been taught about drawing. I try to pass it along to my own students.
What Sadie says about Convex forms I learned from Hale and Frank Mason. Hale would say that when we see a concave from more often than not what we are seeing the overlaying of muscle groups. A good example is the arm pit. It looks concave but it’s not. Ted’s book looks great I’ll have to save up.
I agree about the concept, it’s an eye opening thing and it has helped me a lot.
Hi Sadie, sorry I missed your comment earlier.
>I think the artist who will get the most out of the book is one who goes into it with an open mind.
Nice comment. I’d extend that to artists who approach anything with an open mind. I think too often we get stuck in our ways and develop a kind of brand loyalty to a particular approach, and it closes off possibilities for us if we’re not careful.
>I do believe the study of anatomy is essential. However, the study of anatomy is greatly enhanced by Ted’s understanding of form.
See, that’s what I like about you Sadie. You have an obvious hunger for knowledge, but you evaluate what you learn and integrate it into what you already know. You set a good example for all of us.
.It’s a challenging concept, the most thrilling thing I have ever been taught about drawing.
Praise indeed! I have to get this book now.
Hi Jeff,
>What Sadie says about Convex forms I learned from Hale and Frank Mason.
That’s interesting. Isn’t there a link the Art Student’s League between Mason and Ted via Reilly?
>Ted’s book looks great I’ll have to save up.
hehe, me too. It’s going to take me a while to save up for that one. I think it’ll be worth it though.
thanks Jeff.
Hi Paul,
Yes there is. Mason, Reilly and Jacobs all studied with Frank Vincent DuMond who was a very influential teacher at the ASL. Interesting to note, so did Andrew Loomis.
It’s also good to note that DuMond was a student of Jules Joseph Lefebvre.
Other students of Lefebvre were Robert Henri, Frank Weston Benson, Willard Leroy Metcalf and Edmund Charles Tarbell to name a few.
The list of Lefebvre’ students is a who’s who of late 19th and early 20th century American painting.
Almost the entire Boston School studied with him.
Anyway I’m getting a little wonky here but I love this stuff. The connections and how influence works.
Both Jacobs and Reilly broke away from DuMond’s teachings while Mason embraced it, so much so he took over DuMond’s class at the ASL after DuMond passed away in the late 50’s.
In case you did not know Frank Mason himself passed on last year and one of his former students Tom Torak took over the class.
The first I ever heard about the convex aspect of human forms came from Robert Hale. It’s in his books on drawing.
I’m not sure where this originates from, maybe DuMond but Hale did not study with him and he is an older generation than Mason and Ted Seth Jacobs. Mason also use to say talk about this a lot.
But his ideas about drawing were all based on it being about painting and supporting it.
Uh-oh, I feel a credit card purchase in my future…!
I know that sculpting has totally changed the way I draw. For a forensic artist, there’s the danger of becoming stale, or just repeating what you see in 2D (especially for someone that draws mostly composites).
I used to do all my facial approximations in 2D (drawing over photos of the skull) because we couldn’t put clay on the real skull.
Now we can make casts of the skull, so for the past 2 years I’ve been sculpting on these instead, and it has made a HUGE difference in how I see form, and how I draw.
There’s nothing like getting your hands in the clay, and especially sculpting over a skull will bring home concepts that you may be struggling with in drawing.
Great post Paul, as always!
Hi Lisa, really nice to hear from you again.
>it has made a HUGE difference in how I see form, and how I draw.
That was exactly my experience too. I’m not entirely sure why it is, but somehow there seems to be a connection in the brain between seeing form and feeling form. It’s as if drawings become more three dimensional after feeling form under your fingers.
I’d love to do some more of that, but time is regrettably short and too interested in design in the aesthetics if two dimensions at the moment. But I can absolutely see how relevant sculpting must be to a forensic artist. Just to understand where all those surface forms comes from, to understand the structure underneath them, must make a huge difference.
If you do get the book Lisa, I’d really appreciate it if you could spend a few minutes letting me know your thoughts on it.
hey paul, i’ve been looking at your blog, and i think it’s pretty awesome. i hope you can keep up with your art, it’s great that you’re back into it. while i’m here, i thought i’d throw in my 2 cents, and maybe some more later. regarding anatomy, i would say it’s ESSENTIAL for drawing the figure. my biggest recommendation, as jeff has recommended as well, would be the Bridgman series of books, especially “Constructive Anatomy”, “The Human Machine”, “Life Drawing”, and “The Book of One Hundred Hands”. in a similar way to the Jacobs book, they deal with how things work, moreso than 99% of other anatomy books. but unlike the Jacobs book, they also deal with teaching the structures that are underneath the skin surface, so that you can know why one thing wedges into another, etc. taking a look at the excerpts from the Jacobs book, i find it to be very unhelpful as it makes reference to wedging and to depicting forms underneath the surface, but never tells what they actually are. Bridgman would serve much better, in my opinion, AND it’s probably MUUUUUUUUCH cheaper. 🙂
anyway, that’s my 2 cents, i can delve deeper if you would like. take care, and good luck, everybody in your drawing endeavors.
-A
Hi Aaron,
Thanks very much for adding your thoughts.
What you say makes a lot of sense. I wonder if there’s a happy medium somewhere between looking at anatomy from a point of view of memorising the parts and knowing how they work, and also how they fit together aesthetically speaking to make a beautiful form, or collection of forms.
I often think that there are so many conflicting points of view on how to approach drawing, particularly figure drawing, that the best approach for us as individual artists is to learn about each point of view with an open mind, learn as much of it as we can, and then integrate the parts that make sense to us into our existing knowledge.
Thanks for mentioning the Bridgeman books. Cheaper is always good for painters on stretched budgets 🙂 I’m particularly curious about ‘The Book of 1000 Hands’ – mostly because I like the title. But I’ll check all of those out, thank-you.
>i can delve deeper if you would like.
Please feel free. the point of this site is to share learning and knowledge, I’d really appreciate anything more you’d want to add as I’m sure other readers here would too. If you have a lot you want to say, too much to fit into a small comment box like this, you can always email it to me and I can put it into a post.
someone I’m spending time studying is Michael Matessi and his approach Drawing Force, it seems he’s coming from the same source of expression only in a more topological manner.
Well worth consideration once you get the knack of the body’s physical tensions being unleashed in action.
Good discussion I certainly appreciated it.
Hi Randy,
I’ve never heard of Michael Matessi before, thanks for bringing it up here. Some really interesting drawings on his blog: Forced by Mike Mattesi
Ted Jacobs is not retired from teaching, although he is slowing down. For the past dozen or more years, he has been teaching about six students in a six-month course in his little village in France. He decided to take a sabbatical this year, but will be giving a two-month workshop for five students next summer. That workshop sold out in a week.
I came across this site when I Googled Ted’s book to see what comments were posted. Ted is my first cousin – a really sweet guy.
Hi Ray, thanks for popping in and updating us. It’s really good to hear that Ted is still teaching.
I had a short email conversation with Ted whilst writing this post. It was certainly my impression that he is a very thoughtful, intelligent person and very nice too.
Hi Paul
First I wanted to say how much I enjoy the length, style and discussion in your posts.
I strongly second Jeff’s recommendation of Bridgeman’s Constructive Anatomy. There is recent edition. A free out of copyright pdf is also available from http://www.archive.org/details/constructiveanat00briduoft.
I’m interested in Sadie’s comments about pathways in relation to Ted’s teaching. They sound like they might be related to anatomy trains. (My understanding is a little hazy here) These are the means by which the forces in the body are transmitted between muscle groups via the myocardial fascia. The idea is used in relation to physical therapy but I think it is particularly significant for gesture. Has anyone come across this before?
Thank you for your website Paul. I got this book from Ted this past two weeks. I will be approaching it without any prior attachment to a particular methodology. I have a feeling that I will learn a lot. Just reading his emails on the subject has opened my eyes to a lot of things. I must say that we are blessed in Belgium, because in Spring 2013, he will be teaching a three months class on this particular subject in my atelier.
Hi Ego, I’m jealous you’ve got the book! I also think it’s very cool that you’ll be approaching it without any preconceptions.
I’d be really, really interested to hear what you think about it when you’ve had a little time to play with it.
I too found my short email exchange with Ted very enlightening. I wish I could follow him around for a few days just taking notes!
You certainly are blessed to have him come to your atelier. Do you have a website for it? Put it in the commments and I’ll link it up for readers. Feel free to let me know nearer the time when your course is on, and I’ll let everyone know about it too.
By the way – would you be Ego Lat, the knife-eating ninja admin from Art Quorum by any chance?
Hello Paul, I am indeed the knife eating ninja at artquorum. (laughing). Information on the residency will be posted at http://www.flemishclassicalatelier.com. I’ll be updating it this weekend. We are quite excited about the opportunity.
Thanks Ego, here it is linked for convenience:
Flemish Classical Atelier
The place looks beautiful!
Th notion of a structural, rather than anatomical, approach to drawing the figure can also be found in Jack Faragasso’s book: Mastering Drawing The Human Figure From Life, Memory and the Imagination. Faragasso was one of Frank Reilly’s students, and gives his version of Reilly’s structural approach. Haven’t seen the Jacobs book, but it’s not the first to tackle visualizing and drawing the figure from a structural viewpoint.