Customer Reviews

100 Creative Drawing Ideas

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The majority of the lessons compiled in 100 Creative Drawing Ideas originate from college-level instructors. Therefore, as an art educator experienced in teaching K-12 and higher education students, I must warn you: these are serious lessons aimed at specific problem solving; not meant as a beginning artist's handbook. For educators, this book is filled with ideas that can be adapted up or down, depending upon the desired target age or level. The text is well organized in terms of complexity. Consequently, it is possible to utilize these drawing exercises as preliminaries for other media. Some might find the informal paragraph style of "talking through" the activity a bit confusing. Teachers K-12 will need to adapt the lessons into a format consistent with state standards. Artists looking to expand or brush up on skills will really benefit from this text. As an artist and teacher, I think it's a great reference tool reminding us of what we've learned and what we need to teach.

The book covers various drawing ideas that other teachers have used in their classes. Although it is a compilation book, it does give added ideas to the starving art educator who needs ideas for classes. The only gripe I would have is that I was hoping that I could use it for some of my middle school students. It is really geared towards the upper grades levels and college drawing classes. I am hoping that I will be able to adapt some of the ideas for my gifted and talented art students.

Another instructor at my university loaned me his copy, and before I totally dog-eared it, it seemed only right to return his and buy my own. While this is NOT an "everything you need to know about drawing" book, it IS a great resource of (mostly) university level drawing assignments from various instructors. Of course not every assignment/idea is workable for all classrooms, but there are certainly enough good ideas to make this a worthwhile support for one's library. Many of these would be excellent for high school level classes, which would certainly raise the level of instruction at a critical developmental point in student's seeing and drawing skills.
The biggest frustration in teaching a beginning drawing course at universtiy, is "fresh-out-of-highschool" students who have no clue about the rigorous study needed to develop competent drawing skills. The assignments outlined in the text are intriguing and challenging enough to engage these new students and get them over the frustration stage of this foundational art skill. The one drawback I've found is the singularity of some of the ideas, a lack of knowing what came before or followed after, so a consideration of how the selected assignments fit into particular curricular goals is necessary.

This book is ideal for someone who likes to "think out of the box" in their art work and it provides great support for the beginner as well as more accomplished artist.

This is a decent reference book for classroom projects. I was somewhat surprised this book was intended for the college level students. I was expecting something that would build skills or even give me some routines, but many of these ideas are somewhat childish to begin with, but I think this book was intended more for the classroom setting ( a few lessons discuss students rotating and drawing on each others drawings, etc).
So, this book would be appropriate for teachers (college level?) who were looking for something for children/adolescents, but not necessarily to build drawing skills. You'll be a little discouraged with lessons such as Animated Exquisite Corpse (group projects where everyone works on same drawing but different portions of it), Fax Project (yes, students will fax over drawings to the professor and then they will pasted together), The Shape of Fear (interpretting scary words), and several others having strictly having to do with emotions and interpreting (not bad ideas, but not what I was looking for).
I would say the best lessons from this book have to do with perspective, because they are practical, useful, and creative! I know art is supposed to emotional and creative, la la la, but I was thinking of something a little more technical.
I liked Experimental Drawing(Kaupelis) a little better, out of personal taste. Similar topics are covered but the author gives plenty of examples from well known artists, and goes a little more in depth about topics in drawing.

As any art instructor will know, students can only take working from a still life for so long. This book offers some alternatives to break up the monotony of foundation drawing classes. My students responded well to many of the ideas in the book.

This drawing book gives the teacher and student a lot of cool ideas for different drawing techniques. Well worth having in your art library

I bought this book for myself to motivate myself to draw. Would be a great resource for the college level art teacher, as well as high school level.

As an art teacher, I was very happy with the ideas and instructions in this "how to teach" book. Although the illustrations and reproductions are only black and white, and of a rather poor quality, the concepts and discussions are very useable and come from actual art teachers.

As a teacher looking for journal bell work, this provided me with some ideas, but more for extended practices. However, there are some really creative ideas, which might be usable for full projects. Also creative for any artist.