Drawing For Dummies [Paperback]

Brenda Hoddinott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2003

On a simple piece of paper, a fierce bird of prey can swoop down upon its terrified victim, an adoring father can share laughter with the infant daughter cradled in his arms, raindrops can glisten on the hood of a vintage sports car, a lightening bolt can cut across the night, offering a glimpse of trees ominously silhouetted against the blackness. Drawing can enrich your life in extraordinary and unexpected ways. Drawing your everyday experiences can change how you and others see the world, while drawing from imagination can give rise to fantastic new worlds. And, despite what you may believe, it’s something just about anyone can learn to do.

Drawing For Dummies offers you a fun, easy way to learn drawing basics. Its author, professional illustrator and long-time art educator Brenda Hoddinott, has a simple philosophy—that only you can teach you to draw. With that in mind, she arms you with the tools you need to explore the basics and then coaches you through 30 hands-on drawing projects. You'll quickly

• Conquer the basics of line and shading
• Develop an eye for basic shapes and contours
• Discover how to create the illusion of three dimensions
• Render still-life subjects and landscapes
• Bring animals and people to vivid life on the page

Brenda helps you tune into your right brain and see the world as an artist does. You’ll discover how to break things down into basic lines and shapes and then reassemble them on the page. Other topics covered include:

• Understanding and exercising the basic skills of drawing lines and shapes, adding life and depth with shading, and rendering textures
• Mastering the fundamentals of composition and planning drawings
• Creating lifelike doodles and cartoon characters
• Drawing the natural environment including both plants and animals
• Keeping a sketchbook and drawing from memory
• Drawing people, starting with babies and exploring the human face from childhood to old age

It’s never too late to unleash the artist within. Let Drawing For Dummies put you on the road of discovery and self-expression through drawing.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Hone your drawing skills with 30 hands-on projects

Discover how to draw still-lifes, landscapes, animals, people, and more!

Worried that you don’t have enough talent to be an artist? Relax! All it takes is some practice – and the tips and techniques you’ll find in this friendly guide. Beginning with the very basics – lines, shape, shading, textures, perspective – artist Brenda Hoddinott shows you how to draw just about anything, from flower petals to a child’s eye.

The Dummies Way

• Explanations in plain English
• "Get in, get out" information
• Icons and other navigational aids
• Tear-out cheat sheet
• Top ten lists
• A dash of humor and fun

About the Author

Brenda Hoddinott is a portraitist, graphic designer, and professional illustrator. She has taught both adult education and pre-school art classes and runs an art education Web site.

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies; 1 edition (March 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076455476X
• ISBN-13: 978-0764554766
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #292,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

111 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great way to start learning to draw, June 10, 2003

By 

Steve (Rockford, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Drawing For Dummies (Paperback)

I got a bit of an "artistic bug" a while back and thought I'd try learning drawing techniques - so far I had been able to take a standard #2 pencil and do some pretty horrid sketches on copier paper, but that's about it.

Drawing for Dummies is, as another reviewer states, like a classroom in a book.
Throwing you right into your first simple drawing project in Chapter 1, she talks about the types of pencils and erasers you should be using (before getting this book I had no idea that you could buy different types of pencils to get different shades of darkness, or that with a kneaded eraser you could lighten an area and not completely erase it).
She then talks about how to see as an artist - how to see the lines in objects, different levels of shading are, etc.
Also covered is how to create the illusion of 3 dimensions using shading, how to shade using hatching and crosshatching, how to create textures in pencil, and there is a chapter devoted to perspective.
And that's not all!
The author then covers composition, sketching and sketchbooks, how to draw from memory, drawing still lifes, and drawing animals.
There is also an entire section of the book devoted to drawing portraits, starting with babies (as they are allegedly easier to draw than adults) and then moving through childhood and to adulthood.
Although she doesn't cover them quite as in depth as the other subjects, she also touches on things such as gridding, preservation of your drawing, your work area, cartooning, and how to develop your own style.
There are drawing exercises through almost every concept, and several "bonus" exercises are included in the back of the book.

The only issues I had with this book were that when it comes to shading, hatching and crosshatching are the only types it covers (or even acknowledges). Hatching is not the only, nor the most popular, form of shading, and although I'm sure it depends on the artist I'd have to say it's not the easiest either - some coverage of blending techniques would have been nice.
I was also frustrated starting out because it was very rare during the step-by-step drawing exercises that she states which pencil you should be using for what. After enough practice it becomes somewhat natural, but when first starting out it would have been nice to see "Use your 2B pencil for the shading under the wings."

All in all though this is an incredible book, definately the best of all the drawing books I've looked through at the book stores (and there are a lot of drawing books out there!).

58 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Could stand a lot of improvement, March 17, 2004

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Drawing For Dummies (Paperback)

I've used a number of For Dummies books and have been very impressed, but this one is a bit of a let-down. I'm returning to drawing after years away and was hoping this would provide a bit of a refresher course, but so far I've only found it moderately useful.

The book has a number of strengths, including a positive attitude that's important for beginners to latch on to in order to avoid discouragement. The author is also great technician with the pencil, particularly where realistic portraits are concerned. Not everyone will warm to her fairly cold, analytical, draftsman-like style, though.

Despite those strengths, there are too many flaws in this book to make it a first recommendation:

* There's not enough info on materials and tools.

* The drawing reproductions are mostly way too small to learn from. They're fine for inspiration (or intimidation!) but won't much help you emulate the author's technique.

* The main focus is on the author's speciality of portraiture. You'll find some really interesting info there, but it would have been nice to see equal attention paid to landscapes, animals, still lifes, comic book and cartoon art, etc. As it is, they're totally ignored or covered so briefly as to be of little use.

* Instructions are vague. The author does some great texture and shading work with cross-hatching but never adequately describes _specifically_ how to do it for the different types of exercises and drawings. Why not tell us what pencil you're using when, why you choose certain stroke directions and lengths, etc.?

* The author totally ignores blending in favor of cross-hatching for shading. You can do great work with either technique, so why pretend one widely used method doesn't exist? Blending is particularly important for super-realistic renderings and portraits. Almost without exception, the very best pencil portraits I've seen have been created with blending.

Don't get me wrong: this isn't a bad book, just not all it could be. Hopefully a second edition will get it all right.

113 of 126 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Try another drawing book first!, August 15, 2005

By 

Ruth E. Belasco "artist and professor" (Mobile, AL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Drawing For Dummies (Paperback)

I have taught drawing on a college level for approximately 25 years and this book is about the least helpful one I have encountered. The reader is asked to devote time to "cute" cartooning and therefore spends less productive time on the more important aspects of learning to draw. I do not think cartooning itself is wasted time; some of the world's greatest draftsmen have been cartooners. Learning to look at something with full consciousness is the basic trick to drawing what one is seeing, and far too little time is devoted to avenues for achieving that result in this book. The illustrations are not the best, suggesting a less-than-stellar result for the reader. Even picking up a book of great drawings with no instruction included would be a better way to learn to draw, in my opinion. For solid instruction, however, look at books by Betty Edwards, Robert Beverly Hale, Kimon Nicolaides, Daniel M. Mendelowitz, or Nathan Goldstein.