Customer Reviews

Drawing For Dummies

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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!).

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.

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.

This is the best book on drawing I have ever seen. I was searching for an art book to help with some aspects of drawing I was having trouble with. This book went far beyond that. It is like an art course in one book. There are many other good art books out there which do the same thing, but the book is laid out in the familiar Dummies style, which is easy to read, and great to use as a reference book. The book includes all facets of drawing: line drawing, light and shadows, patterns and textures, perspective, elements of composition, drawing still lifes, plants, animals, landscapes, people (including babies), cartooning, as well as information about setting up your own studio, developing your own drawing style, crossing over from drawing to painting, as well as other information helpful to artists. The author's style is very entertaining, and she encourages anyone to try drawing. There are tons of pictures throughout the whole book, as well as about thirty projects to try. Whether this is your first attempt at drawing, or an experienced artist, this book is an excellent choice for any artist.

"Drawing for Dummies" is a great book. I use it to teach my drawing classes. It is easy to follow and is very readable. While some of the books in this series (and others like it) are over-simplified, this one is terrific.

It is extremely useful for beginners, but even someone with a lot of experience in drawing could learn from it. I know I did. I would suggest that if you are going to only buy ONE drawing book, then make THIS book your choice.

I am currently working my way through this book and I am not only having a wonderful time, I am learning to draw. The exercises in this book are really made for you to see results and encourage you to move on the the next one. The author gives you a good dose of encouragement as well. I good book to get your feet or pencils wet!

I like this book on some levels. On other levels...erm...there are problems. I agree that there are a lot of cartoony drawings, as well as some more realistic ones where she seemed to go through a looong period of giving people strange looking round clown type noses. The effect is off putting...not charming as I think was hoped.
She also uses what I think is a lot of inappropriate hatching..making her subjects sometimes seem kind of...hairy looking.
But these are all style issues...I really can't find fault with her technical ability. In fact, many drawings are beautiful.
As for blending, she feels it is more difficult to do well , and that's why she doesn't really approach it here. On her website she states more or less that to blend or not should be up to the individual artist and gives a reasonable tutorial on blending correctly.
Her examples are often not illustrated enough...and written instructions seem hurried, without details on how to do what she is talking about.
Also the pics in the examples are far too small...
But this is a good book as far as being approachable goes.
It gives good solid info, and does cover many subjects.
One book is rarely definitive in any endeavor one tries to learn...and often you can't cover everything in one book.
Publishers sometimes have to think about the larger market and what it will pay for.As far as we know she may have a limit on how many words and images she can use!
These books are designed to be inexpensive and general.
Given that fact, I think this particular "Dummie" book, does pretty well.

I love to draw, and when I got this book for Christmas, I was a little discouraged by the title. Of course, the old saying "never judge a book by it's cover" came into play. I decided to open it up and skim through the pages. This book was GREAT! Drawing for Dummies covers all of the basic and advance techniques of drawing ANYTHING! Catergories it covers include perspective, 3-D drawings, shading, texture, and more! There are picture examples along the way incase you don't know what the auhor is really talking about. There are many exercises from the simple practicing shading, all the way to drawing a VERY REAL looking three demensional teddy bear (listed in easy to follow steps). I really enjoy this book, and anyone who loves to draw or needs to improve, this is the book for you! 5 stars!

I can't draw. I mean, I'm horrible. A friend of mine is in graphics design and he fears seeing an email from me with an attachment because it means I doodled on my iPad and sent it to him. His usual reply is about how he now has to clean his eyes with some acid and an SOS pad...

So I figured this was a great test of this book, since when it comes to drawing, I can't, plain and simple.

The book starts with the basics, even has in the first chapter a "Do you have what it takes to draw?" section. They state everyone does, but I think I clearly show that no, not everyone can draw...

They start you out simple, with lines, showing some examples of breaking down complex objects into simplified basic shapes and to start that way. And they go into discussing perspective, shading, texture, and do give some good explanations on what they're for, how and why they work, and how to do them.

But the problem for me is that my artistic abilities all involve music and instruments, not drawing, and even with the help in the book, the progression from baby steps to walking to running outlined here, I cannot draw. When I duplicate the examples they have, while I get a similar basic likeness, it's just not what I'm trying for. And I'm good at math, I understand perspective, ratio, angles, but I just can't apply it at all to paper. Which is one of the frustrating things, since you'd think it should be so simple. Look at something, and reduce it to a representation on paper. I can clearly see that the top should be this long, it should curve here, and this vertical line is twice as long as the horizontal one, etc.. But I just can't put what I see on paper.

There's good detail for how to arrange the things you're going to draw, how to light them, but unlike how to do plumbing, or how to change a wall outlet or light switch, step by step instructions really just don't work for something like this. They claim anyone can draw, and that it's not a matter of talent, but persistence. But there has to be a knack for touch, I think, for the way to blend shading, that I just don't have. About the only thing I did that looked remotely like the example in the book is a dynamic perspective drawing that was part of the vanishing point exercises, drawing simplistic towers that were representing skyscrapers. Then again, it involved nothing but straight lines, and they made you use a ruler... So there was a limit to how much even I could screw that up...

But after about three weeks of reading, re-reading, and trying to apply the lessons, while I have a bit more technical understanding of the process and what goes into it, my skills are every bit as horrible as they were when I started... Fortunately for the world, I realize that and will not use my powers for evil...

I have been working on teaching myself drawing for a while, working primarily through books and online demos. Of all the sources I used, I found this to be the least useful. I didn't feel this really helped me with useful techniques, nor did the examples given break down what they did enough to help me figure out -how- to draw them. "Figure Drawing for Dummies" is more useful, perhaps primarily because it had a tighter focus. This is not a book that goes far enough to be useful for the beginner.