Spirit of the Pose

Karl Gnass and Glen Vilppu have to be some of the best contemporary life drawing instructors out there today. I acquired Vilppus DVDs a long time ago, but have only been able to view them at an agonizingly slow rate due to work and school, something I hope to change this summer. But I've always managed to spare a moment here and there to skim through Karl Gnass's Sketchbook 1, "Spirit of the Pose". The title effectively tells you what this book is about. Gnass is a master of life drawing, and his style is engaging. I could spend hours looking at his work. I managed to get a signed copy of the book through Stuart Ng Books.

This book has been an incredible resource lately as I study gesture drawing more and more. I guess this is what I'm shooting for in my own work (image below). I dare not post my work side by side with Gnass's, but if you scroll down to my last post you can see I have a long way to go. I would imagine Gnass knocked these out in a similar time frame. How humbling.

I visited Gnass's website for the first time a couple day ago, and I was delighted to find YouTube videos. This is the first time I've seen him draw, and I love to see a master at work. Below is one of the videos on his site where he analyzes a Michelangelo. There are two more on the site you must check out, including one where Gnass analyzes a Daffy Duck pose from Duck Amuck. Click here to go to the site.