The Illustrator's Figure Reference Manual - Tapa dura

A reference guide for those who draw or paint the human figure. It contains over 6,000 photographs of men, women and children in a variety of poses both clothed and unclothed. It aims to illustrate all the common positions of the human body from sitting and lying down to reaching and climbing stairs. Professional actors and actresses were chosen as the adult models because of their ability to pose naturally and expressively. Each pose was photographed 40 times always from the same position, so enabling the illustrator to select a number of figures in different poses, and then draw them as a group from precisely the same angle, with the help of a cross-referencing system.