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.)