7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Get Classical Drawing Atelier instead., December 12, 2010
I am currently a professional portrait artist, and have taught both high school and college art students. For legal purposes, you should know that the following review is just my opinion.
I dislike wasting my time and my money. This booklet (actually pamphlet is probably more appropriate) is an absolute waste of both. The author claims to have over 20 years of experience drawing and painting like the old masters especially Rembrandt. Ha! In his own mind, maybe. His ego appears to be the only thing that allows him to make such a claim, unless he is refering to the fact that he draws and paints while seated just like they did.
All of the drawings appear to be hacked out by the same individual though I saw no credits. The best of these drawings is just barely above the level of a high school student. The drawings are crudely done, distorted, and often are just plain wrong. So is too much of the sparse text. There are also useless labelings such as "hip muscle bulge"; there is no muscle named the hip muscle as the hip joint is articulated by multiple muscle groups; or "adams apple", though with these drawings it may actually be appropriate to label what that attempt at the adams apple was. I'm wondering if this guy's relative isn't his publisher, either that or he self-published.
Many of the sketches appear much like doodled copies from one of Bridgeman's books on figure drawing and one sketch a hacking of a face from an Odd Nurdrum painting. The only value from this mostly wasted paper might be the dozen or so photographs of ancient statuary (he does nothing with these images just placing them there for you to "study") and the partial image of DaVinci's drawing on the cover. Oh wait, there is a totally blank page at the back that might be cut out for your personal use. If you want to study Greek or Roman statues, finding online images would certainly be faster.
To summarize, even if you are a rank beginner, please don't waste your money on this product that looks like a project your unemployed uncle threw together over the weekend. Instead, look for books by George Bridgeman, John H. Vanderpoel, or the contemporary author Juliette Aritides who's books are accurate, complete, of lasting quality, and currently selling for less than Mr. Van Derven's.
Classical Drawing Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio PracticeThe Human MachineThe Human Figure
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great drawing book!, December 15, 2010
I found this book to be very useful. It starts you from the very beginning with the basics of perspective and three dimensional objects. Then it moves into planes and shading. Finally it ends up describing the usefulness of anatomy in drawing a realistic figure. The portrait drawing was better than the others in the book, which were somewhat sketchy except for the male figure.
I found the upside down head to draw at the end of the book interesting, as I was able to draw the head better upside down rather than right side up. The author explains that drawing upside down activates the "right side of the brain". My drawings have improved as a result of this book.
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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Disagree with Artist523's harsh review, December 15, 2010
I am a working artist learning to draw figures, currently studying the techniques of the "Old Masters", and my teacher basically says "Copy what you see". I have found this book to be incredibly useful in its teaching of reliance of knowledge rather than just "copying what you see". I think Artist523 review of this book was extremely innapropriate, so innapropriate that I reported it. He obviously is afraid to use his or her real name. The drawings in this book could have been a lot better, but I found the ideas in the book extremely useful and my knowledge of anatomy has greatly improved the drawings. The author's observations of studying the Classical Greek statues was very important. Good book. Terrible one star review.
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