My favorite art books

A number of artists I know collect how-to-draw books and books on anatomy for artists. When asked by other students at the Art Students League, I am happy to recommend the books by Joseph Sheppard, an American painter and sculptor who now lives and works in Italy.

If I am not mistaken, Sheppard was a student of Reginald Marsh. (I believe Sheppard is about 79 years old now.) You can see that there is a liveliness to Sheppard's rendering that seems to have derived from Marsh. But although Marsh taught anatomy and figure drawingand painting, he is not remembered today as a great anatomist. In fact, one instructor at the Art Students League recently recalled that Marsh was fond of saying to his struggling students, "When in doubt, add more muscles." That may be apocryphal but it seems like something Marsh might have said.

Sheppard's figures are much more convincing and accurately rendered. In the 1970s he realized that the anatomy that artists need to learn has very little in common with what doctors and biologists need to learn. Sheppard created a number of books on drawing the figure and, in them, he sometimes uses the term "surface anatomy," meaning the visible clues to anatomy that will be most valuable to an artist.

His drawings, some in pen and ink and others in white and dark chalk on toned paper are works of art that are as enjoyable as art as they are informative and demonstrative.

Yet another book by Sheppard deals with the painting techniques of the old masters. In this large format paperback, Sheppard takes his readers step-by-step through the techniques of Durer, Titian, Veronese, Caravaggio, Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt and Vermeer. It's fascinating to see how, in each case, the demo painting ends up looking somewhat like the work of the master being examined while nonetheless showing Sheppard's irrepressible animated style as well.

Most of these books are still in print. They are far and away the resource books I value most as a painter.