
The book I'm working from in this video is Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters. Gerimi Drawing Comics Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters Gerimi. It’s really too bad that with the video techniques available today, someone doesn’t enhance the lectures and put them on reasonably-priced DVDs.2009 by Watson-Guptill Publications in New York. It’s hard to understand why this is so if Jo-Ann is really the wife of Terence Coyle, who did so much to make the Hale books available. I agree the tapes are overpriced, especially given the poor quality.
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Yes, he does go through a description of the artistic anatomy of the figure, which is very useful, but while he’s doing that, he’s repeating again and again how to approach drawing the figure, which after it finally sank in, I found even more important. To me the real thrust of the lectures is not the anatomy at all, but his analysis of the classic approach to drawing the figure. I have made audio files of all ten lectures and listen to them over and over in my car. I don’t agree at all that Robert Hale was old and senile when the videos were made. It looks like no one is reading this thread anymore, but I had to put in my two cents. I always admired the fact there was always two or three young pretty girls at his side, keeping him steady, as he walked about the school. The video camera and recorder(a Sony reel-to-reel black and white VTR) were bought for the sole purpose of the video and are probably still sitting somewhere, collecting dust, in the basement of the Art Students League. And, as anyone can clearly see, I also didn’t know much about making a video. I also hope it is Hale’s family who is reaping the rewards. It was only afterward that someone saw a way to cash in. It was never intended by anyone, at the time the videos were made, that they would turn into a teaching tool. I don’t believe they were intended to leave you with all you would ever need to know on the subject of artistic anatomy.Īgain, the whole reason the videos were made was so that Robert Beverly Hale would have a face in the future and one could get some idea of how great he was.
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These videos were a lectures series given one night a week for 10 weeks. I’m sure there are competent artistic anatomy instructors out there these days but can they make an accurate drawing on a ten foot high black board with a piece of chalk at the end of a three foot stick? My favorite was “every subject eventually yields to study”. On the other hand, he was also fond of saying “it’s all in the books”. Sometimes Hale would say that a “flick of the wrist of a good instructor could explain some things far better than words in a book”. Wow, what a great way to learn artistic anatomy. Hale’s quotes are accompanied by a diagram that Coyle has annotated so you know exactly what part of the master drawing Hale is referring to (image at left, below Daniel E. Coyle took material from lectures by Hale, who really knew the work of the masters in addition to his knowledge of figure drawing and anatomy, included the corresponding images from Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, Michaelangelo, Pontormo, Leonardo, Prud’hon and others, and arranged them on opposing pages to illustrate important principles of artistic anatomy. Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters is my favorite book on artistic anatomy. Paul Richer), and “Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters” (with Terence Coyle).Īll of them are excellent. Hale was the author or co-author of some of the best books ever written on figure drawing and artistic anatomy: “Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters: 100 Great Drawings Analyzed, Figure Drawing Fundamentals Defined, Master Class in Figure Drawing, Artistic Anatomy (with Dr. I began to realize just how good he was when I started to pick up his books. His lectures, however, left no doubt that you were getting the real goods from someone who knew his subject in extraordinary depth. To me he was just “the anatomy lecture guy”.


I was pretty young at the time and unaware of Hale’s status or reputation as a teacher. When I was a student at the Academy I had the privilege of attending Hale’s lectures on artistic anatomy. He was Curator of the American Painting and Sculpture Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Instructor of Drawing and Lecturer on Anatomy at The Art Students League in New York, and Lecturer on Anatomy at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Hale was probably the foremost teacher of figure drawing and artistic anatomy in America. Green I found an image of his incisive pastel portrait of Robert Beverly Hale (left).
