Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Famous Arists Courses available as free PDFs

The Famous Artists Courses was a correspondence art school started by Norman Rockwell and Al Dorne. Students would sign up, get a booklet on various aspects of drawing, do assignments, get critiques, and so on. I have heard about these booklets for as long as I have been talking to illustrators — usually they have the starry-eyed stare that great explorers searching for mythical cities have in the old movies. Many people have spent hundreds of dollars hunting them down on eBay.

Daniel Caylor on “On Animation” has collected them all and made PDFs available. Go check them out -- they are designed to be serious practical lessons.

Included are lessons about drawing the human form, landscapes, color, experimental design, figure in motion, studio procedures, the list goes on. All brought to you by the likes of Rockwell, Austin Briggs, Al Parker, Robert Fawcett and, again, the list goes on.

(Thank you, Tristan Elwell, for the heads up.)

7 comments:

Eli M. said...

nice! thanks for the link.

Ben Mauro said...

thanks for the link Irene! I have been looking for those book for years.

Cheers,
-Ben

John Hinderliter said...

I took this course in the mid 70's while in high school. Living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, it was the only art education available and really pretty effective.

Astroluc (Find me on Tumblr and Instagram @Astroluc) said...

amazing! Thanks for the heads-up... and to anyone else who goes there via this link, don't forget to comment and thank the original poster!

ces said...

Got 'em!

WOW WOW WOW!

Thank you so much - a real treasure!

Matt Dicke said...

Thanks Irene. i have the 1967 edition of the books but it is very cool to see the 1960 edition too.
I though you and your readers would like to know that more FAC material is available out there:
the Famous artist cartoon course is almost totally available (they are still scanning it.)

http://comicrazys.com/category/famous-artists-cartoon-course/

and i scanned in and sent the chapter from the '67 edition of Bernie Fuchs to Lief at today's inspiration blog
http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/search?q=fuchs+famous+artist

enjoy
Matt
p.s. I also sent him the Bob Peak chapter so keep your eyes out for that.

Famous Artists said...

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