recently i have been exploring portraits of people through photography, drawing, and painting. however, i realize that i would love to go deeper into the entire human figure and try and explore that for the next four weeks. i chose to review the book "The Figure: An Artist's Approach to Drawing & Construction" by Walt Reed. the title is pretty self explanatory, and i hope that it provides me with new and interesting insight into the figure. i decided to start from the beginning at "The basic form figure". it showed me that each body part is broken down into simple and proportional shapes. the way the book breaks down those simple figures made everything seem a little less intimidating, and more plausible. the "ideal" body can be divided into seven head lengths that line up at the top of the head, the chin, the nipples, underneath the bellybutton, mid-thigh, above the knee, mid-shin, and the bottom of the foot. this proportion is extremely helpful because proportion is probably the easiest thing to mess up when figure drawing. the chapter continues with other proportions that include the hands and feet. tomorrow i will try and draw some of these proportions and get some practice.