Which are best? Is one the be-all/end-all? I remember seeing a gorgeous one ages ago at Border's that I can't find now, about maybe 8"x8", b&w, in both male and female editions--does this ring a bell with anyone?

I'm not an artist, but I enjoy looking at the naked ladies.

"Dear posing model, I know we shouldn't have sex, but I really want it. I was looking at your arching back pose on page 36 (bottom right) & I can feel myself throbbing but if you don't want to..."

Once I was old enough to buy my own Playboy magazines I lost all interest in the old model pose books at the library.

I'm not a professional artist (or even academically trained), but I draw all the time and have never used those books. I have an ever growing morgue of pictures torn out of magazines or printed from various photo sites that I refer to when I can't find something in the real world in front of me worth drawing.

I am neither a posee nor a poser. Some might say a poseur, but now that's a different story.

i wouldn't suggest it but what's the goal?
if it's just to have a template of human figures, why not.

The ones at my art store are all really expensive, but I do mean to buy one at some point. It's surprisingly hard to find naked people that are worth drawing on the Internet. Naked people in general, though, no dearth there.

i wouldn't suggest it but what's the goal?

Well, I guess some artist's use them for practice sketching the way the body moves, the position of musculature in different poses, etc, the way classically trained artists used to get plenty of time with live models.

Also: they make great cheat sheets. You might be like, "I want this position, but no matter how I sketch it the [arm/trapezius/ass/whatever] looks wrong."

Comic book artists, who may have to sketch dozens of bods per issue, like these too.

I have an ever growing morgue of pictures torn out of magazines or printed from various photo sites...

Yeah, back before the magic of the 'Net, I read about at least a couple comics artists who had big file drawers full of pics of cars, buildings, people, etc for reference. And I've noticed a couple comics artists who obviously learned to draw musculature by studying (or referencing, or stealing from) body-builder mags. And I've seen a comic artist steal a background figure, or at least its pose, right from a Boris Vallejo painting. I guess these things happen when you're on a deadline.

Anyway...

...comics artists who had big file drawers full of pics of cars, buildings, people, etc for reference.

Their pics were torn from magazines since this was per-'Net, but these days, of course, you can find all the cars and such you might want online. But, like TheCosmos said, good naked peeps are tougher to find.

Their pics were torn from magazines since this was per-'Net, but these days, of course, you can find all the cars and such you might want online.

In an interview with Gary Trudeau recently he said that he used to keep a file drawer of images and then also made frequent runs to the library for reference images. But now all he does is a quick Google image search and he's done. I think the example he gave was trying to find some detail on a blackhawk helicopter.

real life naked people are pretty easy to come by, especially in a metropolitan area.

if you're trying to figure our how to draw the human body accurately, you have to give them a good thoughtful stare at some point, and hopefully make some sense of bones and muscles or how clothes hang. otherwise you'll never get the lighting or the gravity right.
if it's not that precious on the realism, sometimes images can be far more inhibiting than the idea of what you're trying to achieve.
a lot of people never really get the knack of making figures look human, but human enough works a lot of the time, better than accuracy.

i'm constantly deleting half of what i type and not hitting post