8In Sketching Women, three professional studio artists (Kozo Ueda, PhD, Takahiro Okada, PhD and Minoru Hirota, PhD) join forces to show you how to sketch the female figure through 55 step-by-step drawing lessons.

Each instructor walks you through their philosophy for croquis sketching. Croquis sketches are quickly-rendered drawings that capture the essentials of a subject's form and pose with relatively few expressive lines.

There are four levels of sketching described in the book:

• 1-minute croquis: very rapid gesture drawings that capture only the artist's impressions of the form, and where the pencil stays in contact with the paper for practically the entire session
• 2-minute croquis: another quick sketch, but with more attention paid to the character and rhythm of the lines and how they help to express the essence of the form
• 5-minute croquis: a more finished drawing where added tonal variations suggest volume and anatomical details
• 10-minute croquis: more of a finished drawing than true croquis, the longer session allows the luxury of adding fine details such as the facial expression, the character of the hands and clothing texture

Learn to sketch the following:

• Individual body parts (including faces) and their bone structure and muscles
• Standing and sitting poses
• Nudes and clothed figures
• Light and dark tonal variations
• Dynamic poses
• Color drawings

You'll quickly hone your sketching skills with this life-drawing classroom-in-a-book. The expert advice and observations, dozens of poses to study, as well as easy-to-understand notes and tips make it easy to understand how the skeleton, muscles and posture all come together to express the uniquely female form.