Spirit of the Pose (2nd Edition)

A must-have book if you are interested in Life Drawing and the human figure. Karl Gnass is a fantastic teacher and a master of the subject.

Karl and his drawings helps infuse figure drawers like myself with how to see beyond the form, to capture the motion (less of a static form) and to inject artistry into the drawing.

Nice book

I had seen the first edition of this book on Amazon for a while but never picked it up. Recently I joined the new Masters Academy and watched several of the authors videos. I was impressed with his teaching and picked up the second edition of Spirit of the Pose. First, you should realize this is not an instructional book. Outside of about 8 pages added to the end of the book, there are no notes or teaching in the book. However if you are looking for beautiful examples of Karl’s gesture drawing this book is packed with them. This is not a cheap book, but it is filled with enough art to make it a great value for the price. I have a few nitpicks about the book. If you watch Karl’s classes he teaches drawing the figure in stages. All the drawing in this seem to be finished to about the stage. I wish the book had examples of figures drawn to different stages. That would have added to the appeal of the book for an artist to learn from. As it is Spirit of the Pose is a beautiful collection of Karl Gnass’s gesture drawings and a worthy addition to the bookshelf of any artist interested in figure drawing.