Customer Reviews

Perspective Made Easy (Dover Art Instruction)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For a book first published in 1939, Norling's "Perspective Made Easy" is still the authority on perspective. This concise book contains in roughly 200 pages and 256 illustrations all you'll ever need to know about perspective drawing. In twenty masterfully organized chapters, from simple to complex, the author explains the basics and not so basics of perspective drawing. He includes suggestions on how to make your drawings a lot simpler, drawing methods for observation and space division, a Remember section at the end of each chapter in which he summarizes the most important information and principles presented in that chapter, and a Problems section with exercises that will help you apply what you just learned. One of the best rewards of this book comes in its last chapters where the author covers perspective drawing for a great number of regular and irregular figures like a sphere, a cone, ovals, circles, lamps, cars, etc. With this the author goes many steps beyond all those other books out there that only teach you how to draw cubes and square buildings.
The book may be a bit repetitive at times, but this is not annoying at all, it just makes the author sound as if he was teaching a class in school or college, and it helps you to easily remember the most important information presented. After reading this book my understanding of perspective and the perspective in my drawings have improved 100%. If you follow his teachings and exercises you will learn how to determine the perspective you need to apply to your drawing, whether you are drawing in the field or using photographs as a model, and you will soon start making your drawings look solid, deep and proportionate.
If you are only getting one book on perspective, get this one.
--Reviewed by M. E. Volmar

I bought this book because Andrew Loomis (Figure Drawing For All Its Worth) recommended it. I'm glad I followed his advice. If you are going to own only one perspective book, then this is it. However, if you're an interior designer, architect, engineer or draftsman then looks elsewhere since this book's primary audiences are freehand artists.

This is one of the few books out in the market that exactly delivers what it says on the back cover. And it's a reprint from 1939!

I'd give this book a rating of more than 5.

I can highly recommend this handbook to anybody who likes to draw. Through small, easy to follow steps, with illustrations for each step(!), this classic author makes this highly misunderstood topic become CRYSTAL CLEAR!

You can follow along, drawing each step, or just read through the book, (like I did), and you will still find yourself applying these techniques that make your drawings much more realistic and accurate looking.

In the introduction, the author says that we should not FORCE our drawings to fit into any rigid rules of perspective, but after reading this book, I find that I don't have to force the perspective rules, I can just subtly apply them as I go about my drawings.

The author has very nice, cute, and simple illustrations of his own, to show what he's talking about in each step of the process of understanding perspective correctly. This makes the book feel very user-friendly.

This book covers a lot of ground and information, but if you take your time and start at the beginning, you will reap big results with your own improved drawings.

Comparing price to benefit, this is easily the best value of any art technique book that I have ever purchased. Buy with confidence, this book amazing!

Good, solid, workmanlike explanation of perspective, described step by step. Plain language, no wasted words. Clear drawings. Do the assignments, it's like taking a class you'd pay $350 for. I've tried to learn perspective from other books, but they were too complicated. This is THE classic. Every illustrator needs it. I use this knowledge every day.

It's funny that reviewers are saying that this book still holds up for being written in 1939, as if our eyeballs have evolved since then.
Using easily understood language the book starts with the basics, and each chapter therafter builds on these basics while adding new techniques and ideas. These topics are reinforced by a remember section at the end of each chapter, along with some problems to work out in your drawings. What's useful is all the explanations are real world examples that you can see for yourself, like the height of the horizon and locating vanishing points. At the end of the book is a summary of all the topics covered, each topic is condensed to one sentence, talk about concise. This is the clearest book on any subject I've ever read.

A very well written easy to follow book on what can be a complex subject. It is very inexpensive and my favorite of several I own on the subject. The Author gets right to the nuts and bolts of drawing in perspective. If you want the basics this book is for you.

As a representational painter I find that a sound knowledge of perspective is of paramount importance and I cannot blame modernist art enough for the damage it has done to generations of painters by ignoring and teaching to ignore perspective .
Over the years I have collected an impressive number of books about perspective, from 15th century manuals to modern textbooks. All of them are fascinating but rather complex and tend to discourage the reader after a few chapters.
Norling's book, on the contrary, is beautifully simple without being superficial. It teaches the aspiring artist all the tricks with a simple language and without burdening him or her with exceedingly complicated rules and formulas. It is equally useful to the experienced artist that wants to refresh some difficult points.
An honest book that delivers all that it promises, that is how to make perspective easy.

This book would be a good reference to have around if you've managed to paint yourself into a corner where your perspective doesn't work. Flipping through the pages, you'll probably discover why. The author gives simple exercises for those trying to figure out the principles of perspective in a very easy to understand manner. He covers things you might not think of such as where to space vanishing points, perspective up and down hill, false eye levels, reflections, shades, and shadows. There are many examples, all drawn, in each chapter.

One of the best introductory books on this ostensibly confusing topic I've ever come across. In spite of being published way back in 1939, the concepts and methods in this title are as applicable now, as then. I managed to complete reading the book in one afternoon and began practicing what I learnt that evening, and it worked. Being a Dover publication, it's reasonably priced compared to contemporary titles. As a result, I've begun a witch-hunt for other Dover books.

This is a book that teaches precision drawing. It is easy to read in that the text seems like it is written for elementary school age, but at the same time it doesn't "talk down". It's just simple and direct. This would be an excellent book for a kid (age 10 or so) or an adult to learn about the basics of drawing - vanishing points, eye level, horizon line. At the end of each chapter is a "Remember" section which reviews the main points covered in the chapter and a "Problems" section which is a list of exercises to do to practice what was taught in the chapter. Another plus is that this book covers Perspective Downhill, Perspective Uphill, Reflections, and Mechanical Perspective which I have not come across elsewhere.

Although it does a great job in explaining what the basics are and has many very good illustrations, compared to other books it lacks in explaining the exact mechanics of what to do when you draw your own drawing (e.g. how to use your pencil to figure out angles and lengths).

Bottom line is that because of the simple explanations and the unique topics covered this, I want this book in my art book library. However, this is more of a supplemental book. If you're looking for only one book that will teach you to draw, it would be better to get a different book such as Perspective Without Pain by Philip W. Metzger or Drawing Sharp Focus Still Lifes by Robert Zappalorti.