The secondhand booktrade is awash with books on 'how to draw', and in particular, 'how to draw people'. One of the things I intend to protest about should I ever reach the pearly gates along with why I never learnt to tap-dance, is why was I never any good at drawing. Books like this don't help! I assume they must be helpful to some people or they wouldn't continually be produced but I just can't see it.
This one, however, stood out. Not because it magically transformed me into da Vinci: I've not picked up a drawing pencil for years. Rather because, for once, the example drawings had some real style about them. This is Drawing the Human Figure by Arthur ZaidenBerg published in New York in 1944, which explains the somewhat Art Deco tone to the drawings. The photographs are rather accomplished too and have a separate credit on the title page to Berenice Abbott which is unsurprising given the status of this standout photographer known for her views of New York architecture and her portraits of the European literati of the 1920s
