Figure Art

Where to Start

Jump right in and explore the Pose Tool, which has thousands of Poses that are
Free to search and browse for inspiration
over 100,000 photos! (including those on the contact sheets.)
If you are learning how to draw the figure, this huge catalog of pose reference photos will give you loads of material from which to practice.
Seasoned artists will find life drawing figures for all kinds of work; personal projects and those for sale.

Get 2 free art reference Poses:

A great way to get a feel for how the site works is to Create A Login and click the link in the email (we won't spam you). 2 free fullsize poses will be added to your own Pose Library, one male and one female. When you download the poses you'll have 48 high-resolution photos to use for drawing, painting, sculpting, sketching, or other art projects, completely Royalty Free! (see Policy.)

Poses are photographed in rotation at high resolution

The animated image shows how a pose can be zoomed-in and rotated for portrait and detail views. You can see any part of the figure close-up from multiple angles.

• Create finished sculptures with the 24-point pose rotations.
• Practice painting portraits with a zoomed-in portrait view.
• Practice gesture sketching with the full figure model pose.
• Practice drawing hands, drawing feet, drawing ears, or any other challenging part of the body from multiple angles as you view different angles of the pose.
• Look for the action poses (Art Models 7, for example) for comics, graphic novels, and other dramatic subjects. Many have alternate views such as ground level looking up or overhead looking down that are great for studying foreshortening.

Find Figure Studies

The Pose Tool is great to find additional male and female art models in thousands of reference poses—all free to browse and use. Searches can be done by criteria like

• Gender (male and female models)
• The lighting used
• The position of the model (crouching, kneeling, sitting, standing, etc.)
• Nude or Clothed
• The Poses from one particular model (over 80 different models)

• Date added
• Resolution
• Number of photos in the Pose

To support the site, we do actually need to sell poses. So, the sample photos are of limited resolution and show just one view when enlarged. For choice of viewing angle and for the greatest detail, you can buy high resolution Poses in a variety of formats. There are many options to choose from, such as

• Individual Poses from the Pose Tool
  (Pose Credits are easy to use and give a discount when buying individual poses).
• Session Downloads, which give a big discount from the individual pose price.
• Companion Disk Downloads,, which offer the best price-per-pose.

Use the photos as a reference, and the art you make is yours to do with as you wish 1.

Why Buy when the Pose Tool is Free?

Details!
50% Size

• The Pose Tool is free to browse for inspiration in finding nude pose reference photos. There are over 100,000 images of life drawing figures to view!
• The sample photos are 512 pixels and the Poses you can buy are as high as 48 megapixels! They give incredibly rich detail in hair, skin, eyes, feet, hands, face, and other areas.
• A Pose you buy has many photos at these high resolutions so you can choose the view that works best for your art project.
• Your purchase helps keep the Art Models project going, making these pose reference photos available.

What is a "Pose"

A Pose is usually a collection of photos of a model in one position.
For example, a nude model standing in the contrapposto position or the T-pose will be photographed from 24 different angles (once every 15-degrees as the model is rotated). Those 24 art reference photos are collected into one "Pose."

When the project first started, we imagined our customers as sculptors. They would be looking for anatomy reference photos and also traditional male and female nude artist's model photos but they would need to see all around the figure to create a complete sculpture. That's why we do the multiple angles.

It turned out people who draw, sketch, paint, design characters, draw comics, etc., all found that the multiple angles gave them a large amount of freedom to choose which view they like best.
As customers requested more portrait reference photos, expression photos, action poses (which can't be held for a rotation), human anatomy, and other non-static poses, we started adding Poses without the standard 24-view rotation.
To see what views are included in a Pose, tap the thumbnail photo to bring up a preview then tap the All Views button.

Art you create is Your Art to use or sell as you wish!

Policy: The photos may be used as a reference for creating traditional art which may then be sold. For example, a drawing, painting, or sculpture is permissible under these guidelines, whereas a work which uses the actual photos—such as a collage—would be prohibited. The photos may be used for games, videos, and digital art if first manipulated in a substantive way, for example, as the basis for a wireframe mesh, skin, or texture. However, they may not, in whole or in part, be resold, repackaged and sold, nor given away.
If you would like to use our photos as part of a product, class teaching art technique, or other offering, please Contact Us and provide as much detail about your project as you can. We license photos on a case-by-case basis.