the one book (by Ron Tiner) I've encountered that is a bit more decent about different body types and ages (and to a lesser extent race) turns "scientific" classification systems from the 19th/early 20th century into artistic tools without any reflection or even notice that they were racist crap
I don't know if that's the same specific drawing book I encountered, but the one drawing book I ever found that had detailed advice on drawing a range of ages and drawing different races was also full of "cacausoid/negroid/monogloid" terminology and other language straight out of 1920s anthropology textbooks. I think it was actually a couple decades old as opposed to from the 90s, but it was still recent enough that the concepts the writer was using had already been repreatedly debunked when it was published.
Interestingly, one of my fiancee's "How to Draw Manga" books from the 90s uses some of the same stereotypes and language, except it depicts Japanese people as the norm and African, Europeans, and Chinese people as the "here's how you change the default human to look like these people" Other. I kept wondering when reading it if the dated and racist terminology was the product of a really clumsy translation of the Japanese-language original, or if it had been intentionally added by the guy who translated the book (and if so, why, in 1992, did he think "negroid" was exactly the word he wanted to use).
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I don't know if that's the same specific drawing book I encountered, but the one drawing book I ever found that had detailed advice on drawing a range of ages and drawing different races was also full of "cacausoid/negroid/monogloid" terminology and other language straight out of 1920s anthropology textbooks. I think it was actually a couple decades old as opposed to from the 90s, but it was still recent enough that the concepts the writer was using had already been repreatedly debunked when it was published.
Interestingly, one of my fiancee's "How to Draw Manga" books from the 90s uses some of the same stereotypes and language, except it depicts Japanese people as the norm and African, Europeans, and Chinese people as the "here's how you change the default human to look like these people" Other. I kept wondering when reading it if the dated and racist terminology was the product of a really clumsy translation of the Japanese-language original, or if it had been intentionally added by the guy who translated the book (and if so, why, in 1992, did he think "negroid" was exactly the word he wanted to use).