George Bridgman was a renowned figure drawing instructor whose books are still immensely popular with art students. He taught many students at Art Students League of New York who became well known artists, including Andrew Loomis, Norman Rockwell, and Will Eisner.

He taught figure drawing by breaking down the human form into simple forms - mainly boxes - and used gesture lines to interconnect the parts and create a fluid drawing. His books were a huge influence in my own art and is how I first started to learn to create figures from imagination.

Bridgman wrote several books including, Bridgman's Life Drawing, Constructive Anatomy, The Human Machine, Heads, Features and Faces, The Book of a Hundred Hands, Drawing the Draped Figure, and Drawing the Female Form. Most of these books were then collected into Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing From Life.

I would highly recommend picking up this last book if you’re interested in learning figure drawing. However, it’s not a book that gives you a simple step-by-step guide to drawing. It’s helpful if you have a little experience with figure drawing because he jumps right into some more advanced topics. His anatomy lessons are really helpful in understanding the three-dimensional forms of the muscles, but again you need to have a little anatomical understanding to help you discern what he’s teaching. Overall, it deserves its place in the classic texts of figure drawing but it may be better for someone with a little experience.

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