I have a great many books on figurative art and sculpture and I think I own just about every figure reference that exists; certainly I own all that my budget allows. So, I was very surprised recently to stumble across a reference book for figurative art that I not only didn't have but of which I had never even heard. The book is called Body Parts by Simon Jennings.

I was in a bit of a rush, so I bought the book just on the strength of its visual appeal. It is rather well done in terms of design, though the 7" x 7" format is awkward. This was just the first of many places where the design of the book failed to take obvious practical matters into account. When I got the book home, I started reading.

The page above is one of the earlier pages in the book, and was the first page I turned to. Now, the author of this book has some pretty hefty credentials and several art-related books to his credit, but none of those thing guarantee accuracy or quality and I was just floored by the number of inaccuracies on this one page. Polyclitus did sculpt during the fifth century BCE, but also well into the fourth century BCE and it is most likely that he published his Canon in the fourth century BCE, not the fifth. This is certainly forgivable given how little we know about Polyclitus' work, however, and is easily the least grievous problem on the page.

Polyclitus' Doryphoros or Canon sculpture was sculpted as seven heads tall, and his published treatise on proportions used that same measurement, not seven and a half heads as is stated here. Leonardo Da Vinci most certainly did not believe that ten heads was the correct measure of human proportions. There is overwhelming evidence that he thought that Vitruvius' eight-head canon was ideal for use in figurative art, though he almost certainly also knew that even eight heads was not "correct" in terms of capturing reality. Eight heads tall became the accepted "ideal" a heck of a lot earlier than the "early twentieth century"… arguably around twenty-one centuries earlier, and certainly by the 15th century it was widely accepted. It has never been and never will be universally accepted as the only way to depict an adult, but it has been in relatively common use for at least half a millenium.

It may sound like I'm nitpicking here, but to put it in perspective: There are more major mistakes on this page than there are paragraphs. The signal to noise ratio is bad enough due to the small size and design, but with these mistakes thrown in, the words became meaningless. I think it's fair to say that I had a hard time being objective about this book after reading this page. In fact, it was only a few pages later when I stopped reading the words altogether after suffering though a few more pages of nonsense, including a horrible, but thankfully brief page on the concept of Phi.

But, this book is not completely without value. A good amount of the book consists of photographic reference material. As I said, the awkward size of the book is less-than-ideal for a visual reference book; the images are small and the book doesn't lie flat no matter what you do. But the images are competently photographed and well printed.

The book features just three models: two female and one male. Both of the female models are young and attractive; the male model is middle-age and completely lacking in muscle definition. Now, I am not opposed to older models or models with less-than-ideal physiques, in fact I welcome a diverse range of models, and I am sure the male model used in this book is an excellent life model. But, if you're going to feature only a single model in a book billed as "a visual sourcebook for drawing the human body", it seems like one on whom anatomical landmarks and muscles can be discerned would have been a better choice.

The two female models, though quite different from each other, are both young and much closer to the accepted concept of an "ideal" figure. Although I would have preferred the inclusion of more models, given the constraint of having to use just two models, the author actually made good selections.

It does seem to me that the author is capitalizing on the physical attractiveness of one of the two female model, though I can't fault him for that, since I'm sure it helps sell books. He devotes far more pages to images of this one model than to the other two models combined. But even the pictures of this model are far too few to really justify the cover price of the book ($24.99). If the book were in the $10 range, I would wholeheartedly recommend it as a visual reference given the superb technical quality of the images. At the actual price it's being sold for, it's not a good value.

The words, on the other hand, well… you really shouldn't even be able to give away the words in this book.