Customer Reviews

Art of the Pencil: A Revolutionary Look at Drawing, Painting and the Pencil

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been working seriously with graphite for several years and this was one of the so-rare times I opened a drawing book and had my hopes exceeded. By a lot.

While her colored pencil examples are sophisticated and gorgeous (nothing like the strained, harsh works in so many books) my primary reason for buying this book was to refine my graphite techniques. What a gold mine I hit! Traditional graphite pencil, water soluble graphite, powdered graphite...intense detail to smokey frottage...it's here. It makes me shiver to think how close I came to not buying this book because it covered both colored pencil and graphite and my experience has been that in such cases graphite gets awfully shallow treatment. If that's what you're thinking too, it's not the case here.

Art of the Pencil is not a beginners book, but beginners should definitely see or own it as inspiration as to what the humble pencil can do. For those of you working seriously with pencil, haunted by it's potential, Sherry Wallerstein Camhy has written a book you will drop everything for when it arrives.

I am not the author of this book, but I have had the pleasure and privilege of knowing Sherry Wallerstein Camhy for the past four years as I've made the effort to strengthen my own drawing and artistic skills. The tone of Art of the Pencil perfectly embodies Camhy's actual teaching style, with expertise kindly and gently served. Art of the Pencil is a very beautiful, colorful book, with a provocative premise that drawing and painting are not separate techniques--with painting of course far superior to drawing--but instead can be successfully combined. Camhy uses a wide variety of her own work to beautifully and effectively illustrate her points on the many ways drawing techniques can be used to achieve painterly effects. Chock full of useful information and ideas, this book is an excellent proxy for those who are unable to benefit personally from the author's inspirational mentoring style in the furthering of their artistic development.

This is not a trivial how to book but an equally reasoned argument about the line between "painting" and "drawing" (the author I think correctly posits there is none). In addition she is a highly skilled artist...not a second rater like most how to authors...And that's another thing!...she DOES show you how to!...the best of all worlds. If you want to be serious about your drawing you must have this book.

Too many books of art instruction sell high but deliver low, cynically layering truncated photo-demonstrations accompanied by inadequate captions over puny discussion of materials and technique. Sherry Camhy's book belongs to a rarer kind, the sort that is determined to help and knows how.
Ms Camhy is a much-honored artist. Her resume, unobtrusively included in the book, offers evidence of how she has developed the ability to produce the many masterly drawings that also appear in it. On well-designed and well-printed pages, they are a pleasure in themselves. And the accompanying advice, discussion and extensive information are informed by an unfailing artistic sensibility and an impressive talent for teaching. There is vital information here, much of it not easily found elsewhere. And all of it is communicated with conviction and an elegant clarity. You sense that this detailed, wide-ranging advice, which majors on the pencil but covers almost all drawing media, is the McCoy that makes a true difference. It stirs both ideas and ambition. That goes, too, for the vivid and cogent demonstrations from which, having studied the preceding pages, one is well equipped to benefit.
This is a fine, intelligent book, a delight for any reader interested in drawing, and one that will certainly enhance the enjoyment of those keen to improve their skills.

This is a truly great book. Sherry Camhy writes simply but in an interesting way and especially does not assume that all her readers are beginners. She is very knowledgeable in her field and it is obvious she has done a lot of research. I have found this book very useful and the drawings, paintings and other illustrations are superb. Would recommend it for any artist who has been drawing and/or painting for 2,3 or 4 years.

I bought the book for the cover which to me was a gorgeous example of painterly drawing. The book delivers in this vein. Anyone whose sat through a lecture in college about drawing versus painting can find proof in this volume that "it ain't necessarily so". The illustrations and discussions are inspirational and her work is stunning. This is not a book for a beginner or someone looking for a "system" to make drawing or rather creating visual imagery easy and predictable. It is a book for someone who wants to see deeply and create images of beauty and substance that serve both the linear aspects of drawing and the plasticity of painting.
She is right, it is revolutionary to view traditionally linear tools from the perspective of a painter. The samples in this volume speak beautifully to this idea.
Again it is not for beginners unlesss they are daring and love a challenge and it is not formulaic: but it is a marvelous tome to the joy of creating images and the means to do so.

This is a book packed with information,history of the pencil medium.But as a beginner of pencil drawing I have simpler books to follow.The pictures are beautiful!.I use it as a reference book. I am VERY GLAD TO STILL HAVE in my Library!!But for me,I use other books to work off of daily.

The author first examines the nature visual perception -- how we see. 3 dimensional rendering, light, color, depth, shadow are discussed before working with various combinations of materials and techniques. This is a wonderful book. Few drawing texts address the nature of seeing -- Carolyn Bloomer's Principles of Visual Perception, Bert Dodson's Keys To Drawing and Douglas Cooper's Drawing and Perceiving. Anyone can learn to draw but few people try to help us see.

The book skims over various aspects of drawing, never focusing on anything in parlticular, never dealing with any subcategory (animals, portrait, media, black and white or color).
Everything is mixed up. This is another of those books where the author tried to do everything at the same time in one volume, but in so doing never dealt with anything very clearly.
It lacks organization, definitely not a learning tool, but rather a rambling on a mish mash of unrelated examples.
The title is very very misleading:
The ART of the Pencil: that is not what Wallerstein discusses at all.
A REVOLUTIONARY Look at Drawing, Painting, etc: there's ABSOLUTELY nothing revolutionary in this approach, believe me.
I really regret having bought that book.
The 2 * go to the drawings, not to the writing.

I might take a drawing class with Sherry Camhy and this was a great introduction to her work