Customer Reviews:
DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK for anything over $100.......2007-09-26
The Dahesh Museum of Art is taking orders right now (Sept. 2007) for a new printing of the hardcover English version of the book, to be shipped at the end of October. I just put in my order, the new price is $95 (it was $90 at the first printing). For those who have been waiting to purchase this book for months, the new printing is only a few weeks away.
A definitive statement of ideals.......2007-03-11
I've heard many times that students of drawing used to draw from master drawings and plaster casts before being allowed to work from life, but I was not aware that courses were in place to direct such study. One course that came into existence under the direction of academic artists Charles Bargue and Jean-Léon Gérôme, at once a definitive statement of ideals and a last hurrah for the academic tradition, was edited by Gerald Ackerman and published a few years ago.
Ackerman writes:
"The abandonment of the study of the classical ideal in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was a serious break in an established yet vital artistic tradition. After all, Western art is an artificial activity that became self-conscious in antiquity and again in the Italian Renaissance, each time articulating an intellectual, apologetic theory of art that continued to influence the creation and teaching of painting over the centuries".
"The twentieth-century break in this developed tradition is problematic for young, contemporary artists who may not be attracted by the many schools and movements of modernism but are instead drawn to the imitation of nature. Without access to the rich lore and methods of humanist figure painting, they find themselves untrained and underequipped for many of the technical problems that confront them as Realists. Without help, today's young Realist artists may end up uncritically copying superficial appearances, randomly selecting from nature, and unwittingly producing clumsy and incoherent figures".
I've pointed out before that our present situation in art is not characterized by pluralism, but by false pluralism. Real pluralism would provide for a situation in which both the realists and the various modernists could flourish together. Instead, realism as it would have been understood by Gérôme is not generally taken seriously by art professionals and not commonly taught at schools.
The change has been good for the various modernists - I feel like I came out okay - but bad for the realists. The above is one of the first acknowledgments I've seen that the tradition of painting and sculpture requires a community of like-minded people for sustenance. The realists have it especially hard because their craft is so difficult.
No doubt about it - if you copied every plate in the course, as is recommended, you would become a champion renderer. You might also die of boredom; I doubt that each and every plate is necessary to get the fundamentals across. You might also find yourself at a loss when faced with the female model, as not a single plate in the last series, which pictures the figure in schematic sketches, is an image of a woman.
But it's clear that realists need a particular kind of education, and I think it would do the modernists no harm to revive parts of the traditional curriculum. It didn't interfere with the progress of the Impressionists, the Cubists, or the early abstractionists. Ackerman's book provides an important look into the past, and suggests constructive ideas about how art could be nurtured in the future.
Charles Bargue Et Jean-Leon Gerome: Drawing Course.......2007-03-08
The book is a complete reprint of the fabled but rare Drawing Course ("Cours de Dessin")of Charles Bargue and Jean-Leon Gérôme, published in Paris in the 1860s and 1870s. For most of the next half-century, this set of nearly 200 masterful lithographs was copied by art students worldwide before they attempted to draw from a live model. This book will be valuable to a wide range of artists, students, art historians and collectors, even as it introduces them to the hitherto-neglected master, Charles Bargue.
The Drawing Course is separated into three sections, in an ascending order of difficulty. The first section consists of lithographs by Bargue after casts of sculptures, mostly antique examples that present the structure of the human body with remarkable clarity and intelligence. The second part contains the lithographs that Bargue made after master drawings by Renaissance and modern artists, and the third section almost 60 exemplary drawings of nude male models.
The first two sections were for use in commercial or design schools to teach the principles of good taste based on classical form, the better to turn out competitive goods for commerce and industry. The last section, drawing from live models, was reserved for fine-art academies, opinion being that such training was beyond the grasp or need of humble commercial artists.
By and large the subjects for the plates are quite elevated. A prettily turned foot is taken from the first-century Medici Venus at the Uffizi in Florence; a sinewy shoulder and arm from Michelangelo's ''Moses'' at San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome; and the serenely spiritual-looking head of Anne of Brittany, wife of Louis XII, from her recumbent tomb figure by Giovanni Giusti (1515-22) in the Cathedral of Saint-Denis in Paris.
This portrait was a subject of fascination for van Gogh during a period when he was studying for the ministry. ''The expression of Anne of Brittany's face is noble, and reminds one of the sea and rocky coasts,'' he wrote to his brother in 1877, mentioning that he had hung the plate with her likeness in his room.
Experienced artists will recognize the skill and insight with which Bargue solved problems of drawing from nature; they will want to copy these plates to sharpen their professional skills. For art students, the Drawing Course is a practical introduction to realistic drawing based on the observation of nature, a course blissfully free of the usual charts and schemata requiring memorization and often productive of stultification.
For art historians, the Drawing Course documents the longstanding tradition of accurate draftsmanship prized by the late nineteenth-century figure painters who stood at the convergence of classicism and realism.
This volume concludes with a biography of Charles Bargue and a preliminary catalogue of his paintings, accompanied by reproductions of works both located and lost. Bargue started his career as a lithographer reproducing the drawings of commercial illustrators for a popular market in comic, sentimental and erotic subjects.
By working with Gérôme, and by preparing the plates for this Drawing Course, Bargue was transformed into a master painter, equipped with the skills to match his taste, talent and ideas. He became a master of telling details and exquisite tonal harmonies.
The Drawing Course (Cours de dessin).......2007-03-07
The Drawing Course(Cours de dessin); produced with the collaboration of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), France's greatest academic master; and designed to prepare beginning art students to draw from "nature", that is, objects, both natural and man-made, inthe real world. When the Drawing Course was first published (Parts I and II beginning in 1868; Part III in 1871) it was assumed that the imitation of nature was the primary goal of the artist, and that the most important subject was the human body.
The original Drawing Course contained 197 loose-leaf lithographic plates of drawings after casts, master drawings, and male models. These sheets, which were widely disseminated and very affordable when first published in the late 19th century (either individually or bound) are now quite rare. The 160 original plates featured in the exhibition have been generously loanedby Bordeaux's Musée Goupil, which possesses two complete sets of the Course.
Bargue's own paintings and drawings confirm his skills as a master artist, skills which he himself refined as he produced the Course. Bargue, therefore, can justly be called the first graduate of the Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course. A Crisis in Art Education The Drawing Course was a response to widespread dissatisfaction with the skills of French commercial art students in the mid-19th century. The root of the problem was believed to be a deficiency of taste--which in turn reflected the inferiority of models that students had been given to copy, a basic element in drawing education. In 1865, French critics called for "a complete reorganization of the teaching of drawing" that would explicitly redress the dearth of appropriate models, and help French students of industrial design and decorative arts compete in an international market. Goupil & Cie, Paris, the most important art dealer and publisher of its time, seized the opportunity to develop a new curriculum for this market and quickly developed the Drawing Course, a series of lithographic plates that would foster the evolution of taste through the study of classical form, which was defined by the style of antique statuary. The work was advertised as a collaboration between Jean-Léon Gérôme andCharles Bargue. While Gérôme certainly contributed his celebrity to the enterprise, his actual role may have been supervisory. The drawings were executed by members of the Gérôme circle, and all were copied onto stone by Bargue.
The three parts of the Drawing Course correspond to a widely accepted sequence of art education in the 19th century. Part I, Drawing After Casts (Modeles D'Apres la Bosse) and Part II, Copying Master Drawings (Modeles d'Apres Les Maîtres), began publication in 1868 and were intended for students of industrial and decorative arts--the very ones whose deficiencies argued so forcefully for the Course's necessity--as well as beginning fine arts students. Part III, Charcoal Exercises in Preparation for Drawing the Male Academic Nude or Académie (Exercices au Fusain Pour Preparer a l'Etude de l'Academie d'Après Nature)presented charcoal sketches of the male nude.
It was completed in 1871 and intended for fine art students only--drawing live models was discouraged if not forbidden in most European and American schools of design. Published without instructive text because they were meant to be used primarily in art schools, the Drawing Course sold briskly from its first publication, and continued to do well for at least three decades, with individual plates made available by Goupil & Cie and its successors until the firm's final dissolution in 1921. Its primary purchasers were institutions: the city of Paris ordered a special printing for its schools almost immediately after the first plates were finished, and the Drawing Course was adopted in Great Britain by the extensive system of schools and academies supervised by the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum).
Its influence was also widespread in America -- the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, for example, bought Parts I and II of the Drawing Course in 1876, the year Thomas Eakins began teaching there. Self-trained artists could also easily make use of the plates, progressing in an orderly, rational sequence through a program designed to develop their technical skills, while mature artists would use the plates to hone their skills, as a trained pianist might return to the discipline of Czerny's piano exercises.
Mirroring the selection of casts found in the collections of the best European and American art schools, most plates in Part I of the Drawing Course are copies after famous antique sculptures. They were meant to guide a student through a pedagogically-grounded sequencefrom plates depicting separate body parts -- eyes, ears, noses, feet, arms, and legs, with great emphasis on the head - to partial, and then complete male and female figures. Key to understanding this section are Bargue's angular schemata that lie to the left of the finisheddrawings in most of these plates, simplifying the composition of the cast, suggesting reference lines and geometric configurations that the student might use in organizing the contours of his own drawing.
Several of Pablo Picasso's student copies of Part I are reproduced in this section of the exhibition. Nineteenth-century art schools considered a collection of plaster casts a necessity; students were required to draw from them before they were allowed to turn their attention to livemodels. Museums likewise considered such collections essential to their mission. Within 30 years of its founding in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum of Art had amassed more than 2,000 plaster casts, which they kept on continuous view until the late 1930's. For pedagogical purposes, casts offered ideal drawing models for the student. They were immobile, and their white or light coloration allowed easy reading of light and shadow.
The drawings in Part II were selected both for their aesthetic value and their demonstration of specific techniques that could be learned in practice. Bargue made most of the plates for this part of the Drawing Course from copies rendered by artists again chosen by Gérôme from among his colleagues and students. The originals include works of the Old Masters--Michelangelo, Raphael, Filippino Lippi, and Hans Holbein the Younger, among them--as well as Bargue's contemporaries -- academic luminaries such as Gérôme, his teachers Paul Delaroche and Charles Gleyre, and other artists represented or employed by Goupil & Cie.
The copying of drawings by distinguished artists had a long history. Under the guild system that predated the French Revolution, apprentices copied drawings, studies, and travelnotations from their masters' portfolios. Beyond its advantages to the master--students thus trained could assist in his projects without noticeable discrepancies in style--the practice allowed the apprentice to develop a personal repertoire of subjects and poses for eventual use in his own work. This practice continued in the studios of the academic masters of the nineteenth century, and, of course, was famously reinterpreted a century later in AndyWarhol's "Factory". Twenty-eight of the 70 drawings are after Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543), said to be a favorite of Gérôme's.
Like all Old Master drawings in Part II, these are "interpretations" of Holbein, rather than precise facsimiles. They have beenfreshened and made whole: faded lines have been strengthened and fading coloration translated into lines so that they are easier to copy.
Part III: Drawing the Nude Charcoal Exercises in Preparation for Drawing the Male Academic Nude or Académie (Exercices au Fusian Pour Preparer a L'etude de L'Académie d'Après Nature) or Part III ofthe Drawing Course, contained 60 plates. Published in 1871, it is Bargue's work alone. As the plates of Part I prepared the student to work from plaster casts, the drawings in Part III represent the final step before depicting the nude male model in a "noble and classic" pose. (As the most representative product of the academic curriculum, such drawings, or academies,became synonymous with their institutions.)
Seen as preparatory notations to assist in the creation of polished drawings, rather than finished works themselves, these plates show the student how to capture a figure's most salient points. The models assume traditional poses that express a catalogue of human emotions -- thinking, beseeching, sincerity, melancholy, despair -- emotions that all academically trained artists were taught to render through specific poses and expressions. Such poses as taught by Bargue were often reused by figurative painters throughout their careers.
Vincent van Gogh, for example, copied the plates of Part III many times during his career. Excerpts from his letters to his brother Theo, reproduced in the exhibition's wall text, underscore the hold that the "Bargues" had on the artist. In 1881, he wrote to Theo, "Careful study & repeated copying of Bargue's Exercises au fusain have given me a better insight into figure-drawing. I have learned to measure and to see and to look for the broad outlines so that, thank God, what seemed utterly impossible to me before is gradually becoming possible to me now...I no longer stand as helpless before nature as I used to do.
Little is known of Bargue's early life, although it seems likely that he received much of his training at home, within a family of professional lithographers. While working as a lithographer for Goupil & Cie, he became acquainted with Gérôme and his circle, and was soon included in a group of talented painters employed to make smaller copies ("reductions") of popular paintings. After Bargue received the commission for the Drawing Course, the next five years of his life, from 1865-1870, were almost entirely devoted to that single project.
While the teaching of traditional academic practices almost died out between 1880 and 1950, Bargue's curriculum helps us reconstruct what generations of traditionally trained representational artists were taught to copy and admire. But the Drawing Course is no mere dusty artifact in the archeology of art education. The explosion of figurative work being made today by young artists; the energy of new academies, ateliers, and other institutions for training artists; and the growing critical appreciation of the importance of drawing for artists, illustrators, and even animators, promise a new life for Bargue's comprehensive curriculum. With the republication of this groundbreaking work, a rich and vibrant tradition will be sustained.
Overall a great buy.......2007-02-21
The Bargue Drawing Course has an interesting history. To understand it properly, some understanding of how academic art was taught in the late 19th century, when it was published, will help.
A typical art education in the 19th century would begin with drawing from casts of Greek and Roman statues. This was supposed to teach students not only to draw well, but to appreciate the noble beauty of classical sculpture, and to be educated by copying from example in what was then considered to be 'good taste'. Following a period of drawing from casts, students would move on to copying old masters. This education was common to all the visual arts, including commercial variants like industrial design. Once this thorough grounding in good taste had been achieved, only 'fine art' students would then go on to draw and paint from the nude.
The Bargue Drawing Course is split into three parts, roughly following this pattern. The first part is a series of drawings from casts, the second part a series of copies of old master drawings. The third part would only have been undertaken by fine art students and is a series of what we now call 'life drawings' - drawings of the male nude in various poses. Students were expected to copy these drawings with great accuracy, producing work which was to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from the originals, assuming they were up to the job.
In France in the 1860s there was a general official hoo-ha about the low standard of the work being produced by the students at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. The consensus was that this was due to the low standard of the work the students were copying. Goupil and Cie, the prominent Parisian art dealers at the time (and Theo Van Gogh's employers and for a while Vincent's too before he became a painter himself,) saw a commercial opportunity, and organised the production of the Bargue Drawing Course to answer the need for better models for the students to work from. It did pretty well for them apparently, for thirty years or so, but fell out of favour when those pesky post impressionists stopped worrying about how accurate their drawing was and started worrying about the expression of their personal vision instead.
In simple terms, academic art institutions and ateliers at that time were mainly concerned with reproducing nature. In fact, this idea that the goal of art was to copy nature, either realistically or in an idealised version, had held sway pretty much since the time of Aristotle.
To be fair, Medieval art got a bit wayward and tended to subjugate the faithful reproduction of nature to the communication of the message (Christianity), but the artist was then even less a creative individual in the sense that we're used to thinking about them now, he was a workman. The Renaissance marked a return to the natural and idealised forms of classical Greek and Roman art, but now often in the service of the Church. Those poor Renaissance artists had to spend lots of time and energy re-learning what their Medieval brothers and sisters had forgotten, how to represent nature faithfully. On the plus side though, they were beginning to be seen less as low class artisans and were gradually becoming invested with a higher social status. Michelangelo in particular was instrumental in this change of the perception of the artist. All the same, it wasn't until the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that the expression of the personal vision of the artist became more important than the faithful reproduction of nature.
This book is a reproduction of the entire Bargue drawing course, together with some extra information about Bargue himself and a few other tidbits, including excellent coverage of the technique of sight size drawing. According to the introduction of this publication, there were a few competitors on the market at the time, but the Bargue course had something extra going for it. It managed to straddle the two main camps in academic art at the time, one of idealisation of nature along the lines of Raphael, what you might call classicism, the other a part of the growing realist movement which held that art should be honest, including being truthfully ugly if the subject was ugly. Bargue's drawing style represents a synthesis of these two camps, showing his models as they really are, but with nothing so ugly that it would outrage the idealists. Bargue also had the knack of simplifying his forms in order to make them clearer and easier to copy for the aspiring student.
Although it's a very good thing that this course has been republished, the book does have a couple of shortcomings in it's present form. Firstly, the plates are much smaller than the originals, which means that they have to be blown up if you want to do a proper job of copying them. Now that's alright for the bigger plates which are A4 size, but some of them are only a couple of inches high so that the publishers can squeeze a few on a page. It seems pretty obvious to me that if you reproduce something that small you'll lose a lot of the detail because the resolution (in dpi) of these reproductions is the same as for the large ones, so these plates may as well have not been included at all in my opinion. To be fair I haven't tried it yet, but it does seem to go against common sense. I wonder if they were included to justify the "in it's entirety" selling point.
Secondly, it's in book form, with a hard spine. These plates are supposed to be taped up onto a drawing board with the copies done beside them, the same size, the better to judge the accuracy of the copies. Of course you can get them blown up, as I've done, but they're also difficult copy cleanly with no distortion on a flat bed scanner because of the book format. The printer I took them to had to try a couple of times for some of them, it's not a thin book.
Given that these drawings are supposed to give one an appreciation of what good taste was over a hundred years ago, you could be forgiven for thinking that the book is hopelessly out of date. I can't disagree on that score, but what saves this book for me and makes it worthwhile is the quality of the drawings. Bargue was a superb draughtsman, it fairly drips off the pages, with plate after plate of beautifully realised drawings. For many of the plates, a one or two stage simplification of the final finished drawing is included, breaking the drawing down into simplified forms. I haven't got that far yet (I'm still on the first plate,) but I do believe that this will be very useful when it comes to seeing the building blocks of shapes in the real world.
It must be said also that the publishers do make the point that the book is only partly intended as a course for students. It's also intended to be used by historians and also simply to be enjoyed by lovers of fine drawing, and on that score it delivers.
Apart from the reservations I've cited above, I'm happy I've got hold of a copy of this book. Of course, as with all teaching materials, you can't absorb the knowledge and skills through osmosis by sitting in the same room as the book or just flicking through the pages. You have to get your charcoal out and draw. A lot.
That the beautiful drawings in this book are being brought to a wider audience is a very good thing. The manner in which it has been done is considerably less impressive. I hope another publisher with a better idea of how to go about their business produces a more usable, better constructed one.
Book Description
A superb reference book and an ideal instructional textbook for classroom use, this beautifully illustrated guide is organized into units that reflect required courses at leading design colleges. Twenty step-by-step exercises cover methods of finding inspiration, developing observation techniques, and creating fashion drawings in both color and black-and-white media. Separate sections are devoted to getting started and understanding figure proportions, planning and designing garments, and creating and assessing flat specification drawings. The book also features cross-references to its various art instruction techniques, a designer's glossary, and a helpful index. This book guides students through their first steps in fashion illustration, covering everything that is presented in the best college-level courses. It makes a fine starting point for all students of fashion, introducing them to fashion drawing as a first step toward a career as a creative costumier. More than 250 illustrations in color and black and white.
Customer Reviews:
misleading title; glad I checked it out from the library before purchasing it........2007-06-04
The title is an absolute lie. There aren't even general sketches to look onto as templates! This book, chock full of details on how to become "inspired", may help if you need assistance focusing on what motivates you--but otherwise, it's not going to teach you at all about fashion illustration.
fashion drawing.......2007-03-22
This is a well done and well illustrated book,and can be used by novices in Fashion drawing,or by professionals.
Great Book.......2007-02-11
My daughter loves this book...she gets a lot of information and down to the basics. thank you
Excellent.......2007-01-10
Takes the beginner the next step. Gives good information on and basics on being a fashion designer. It is the book you keep in your library and go back to as a reference.
Focuses more on the Creativity and not the Technical.......2007-01-06
I gave this book four stars because it did what I wanted it to do.Granted I would've loved it even more if there were thorough instructions on figure drawing. The book only skims over the basics of drawing the fashion figure so if you need help with the more technical aspects don't start here.This book is great if your like me, someone who already knows how to draw the fashion figure but needs to find an edge, more ideas... It should be called the fashion illustration drawing course because it does focus more on turning someone into a better illustrator.
In my opinion buy the book.For the price you will learn some really creative and whimsical techniques.
Book Description
This is simply the best and most complete course in botanical illustration ever produced, with each chapter a perfectly constructed and self-contained class. Created in conjunction with the internationally renowned Eden Project—home of the only jungle in captivity—it’s put together by two leading figures in the Project’s famed art school, and uses many beautiful works from its students. Artists and plant lovers will find a wealth of practical information, with easy-to-follow exercises and case studies. The priceless advice encompasses everything from honing observational skills and plant dissection procedures to color mixing and applying watercolor. Adding highlights, producing a pleasing composition, and developing a personal style—all the building blocks for achieving excellence are here.
Customer Reviews:
Botanical illustration.......2007-05-12
This is an in depth clear book about the process of botanical illustration. Well written and great pictures. Recommend highly!
Book Description
Comic books are more popular now than ever. Kids and adults avidly follow the tales of their favorite superheroes--and now, with the lessons in Comics Crash Course, they can create their own adventures!
Vince Giarrano has worked on some of the most popular comic books in the world, including Superman, Batman, Peter Parker, and Action Comics. Now, he brings his fifteen years of experience to bear on a book with over twenty demonstrations. Starting from the basics and working up to an intermediate level, he shows readers how to create: -Super heroes and villains -Animals and creatures -Robots and vehicles -Backgrounds and settings -And much more!
With clear, high-quality illustrations, this Comics Buyers Guide-endorsed book will also appeal to its target audience's taste for dynamic designs and colors.
Customer Reviews:
SKETCH BOOK.......2007-01-09
OUR TEENAGE SON LOVES TO DRAW CREATURES, DRAGONS, AND MEN. WE HAVE SEVERAL OF THESE BOOKS AND HE LOVES TO DRAW EVEN MORE! THEY GIVE HIM SO MUCH HELP WHEN IT COMES TO DRAWING EACH WEEK. WE LOVE THE BOOK!!
One of the best!.......2005-01-28
I just bought this book last December 2004, and I must say it's one of the best how-to draw comics. It's not exactly "how to draw" because as the title says it's a crash course on how to make comic books. By this, I mean that the instructions on drawing are not very detailed. But when it comes to story-telling and do's and dont's in creating comics, this book has it all.
The author included so many tips - very helpful ones! From composition to inking. For example, he explains how to make a single panel look great, or how to work with a script, and so on.
This book deals with things that you need, without going into too much detail. And it cuts straight to the point. Thus, it's ideal for young readers as well (young adults).
Instead of buying Christopher Hart titles, you might as well get this one. It's just great, simple great!
Book Description
illustrated with 12-page color photo insert and line art throughout
A revised and expanded edition of the classic drawing-instruction book that has sold more than 2,500,000 copies.
When Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was first published in 1979, it hit the New York Times bestseller list within two weeks and stayed there for more than a year. In 1989, when Dr. Betty Edwards revised the book, it went straight to the Times list again. Now Dr. Edwards celebrates the twentieth anniversary of her classic book with a second revised edition.
Over the last decade, Dr. Edwards has refined her material through teaching hundreds of workshops and seminars. Truly The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, this edition includes:
* the very latest developments in brain research;
* new material on using drawing techniques in the corporate world and in education;
* instruction on self-expression through drawing;
* an updated section on using color; and
* detailed information on using the five basic skills of drawing for problem solving.
Translated into thirteen languages, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the world's most widely used drawing-instruction guide. People from just about every walk of life--artists, students, corporate executives, architects, real estate agents, designers, engineers--have applied its revolutionary approach to problem solving. The Los Angeles Times said it best: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is "not only a book about drawing, it is a book about living. This brilliant approach to the teaching of drawing . . . should not be dismissed as a mere text. It emancipates."
Customer Reviews:
Learning to Draw Starts Here.......2007-09-21
Whatever eventual outcome of research into right-left brain functions may be, the fact will remain that drawing is a facility that stems from the spacial relationships that the human brain perceives in the same way that reading is a facility that stems from the abstractions that the human brain makes.
Meanwhile, Edwards uses the right-versus-left theory as a touchstone to good effect in her attempt to instruct the artistic way of seeing to those living in a culture that defines cognition almost wholly in linguistic and mathematical terms.
It is a sad commentary on the state of our education system in the United States -- and indeed, on our whole idea of that which education consists -- that students are not introduced to these techniques in primary school, and well-versed in them by the end of secondary school.
Home schoolers, take note.
The results obtained by students of any age will be a revelation -- not to mention a satisfaction -- to those who take the time to work through Edwards' exercises. The road to becoming an artist -- or perhaps more specifically a draughtsman in the classical tradition -- starts here, with the ability to realistically draw shapes as seen, with a basic grasp of shading and perspective, and with the capacity to draw recognizable portraits from life.
But as others have pointed out, the road does not end here. Far from it.
For an introduction to the would-be artist's road ahead, after instruction along the lines of Edwards' -- with an invaluable discussion of line-drawing versus mass drawing, in light of which, an excellent exercise for the transition from pencils to paint is presented -- check out Harold Speed's classic The Practice and Science of Drawing. For surveys of artistic anatomy and its importance to the primary artistic skill of figure drawing (along with much else), check out Robert Beverly Hale's Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters: 100 Great Drawings Analyzed, Figure Drawing Fundamentals Defined and Master Class in Figure Drawing.
As Hale points out, gaining the skills that the masters had -- of drawing realistic human and animal likenesses, from memory, in accurate perspectives and within compelling compositons -- will take practice, practice and more practice. Around 2000 drawings would represent a good start -- without taking a whole other aspect of art into account at all, namely color.
No small task indeed, but rather, the training required of a profession. (And one for which, according to commentary on a DVD I heard recently, Hollywood, of all places, is crying out.)
For anyone and everyone.......2007-09-14
The original "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" was my text book for high school art class. I've gone through the whole book twice and since used it in teaching others to draw. It is an excellent book for all levels of skill, if you feel that you can't draw or if you have natural talent. The step-by-step instruction and exercises are clear and well researched. This book has been tested and used, and it theories and methods are sound.
Oppinion.......2007-09-12
A good reference book whitch will take a long time to study and achieve my goals
Great book.......2007-09-05
This book is really great. I always thought drawing was pure innate talent,
and that I could never draw faces, but I started reading, practising, and I already feel some improvement.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.......2007-09-02
This is a very helpful book. The concept of focusing on negative spaces is especially useful. I learned facts about positioning of facial features that I never would have discovered on my own. With the book's help, I produced drawings far better than I imagined I could.
Product Description
The Course of Human History Personified, is borrowed from Dante and recalls both grandiose artistic and literary cycles from the nineteenth century such as the New York Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole s five-painting The Course of Empire of 1836, where nature plays as large a role as humans. In Dzama s art, personification has always been the main leitmotif imagined characters and trees and beasts assume base human characteristics. (Rosenfeld, Jason. From Viewing Human History Through a Unique Lens, 2005)
Customer Reviews:
kindness/.......2006-09-16
Marcel is very kind + this book collects delicate drawings of war and violence.
Average customer rating:
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Complementary Themes for Painting Techniques (Complete Course on Painting and Drawing)
Parramon Editorial Team
Manufacturer: Barrons Educational Series Inc
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ASIN: 0764102664 |
Book Description
Written by renowned instructor John Raynes, this all-in-one guide will have novice artists successfully drawing a range of exciting subjects in a variety of mediums. The Ultimate Drawing Course delivers clear, step-by-step guidance designed to help artists build confidence, develop fundamental drawing skills and identify their own unique styles.
Divided into two parts, this book opens with a "Learning to See" section that illustrates the foundations of composition--shape, line, tone, texture, light and form--through examples of Raynes' work. Short practice exercises accompany each example, encouraging artists to "draw what they see." Raynes also shares special techniques for achieving numerous effects, including soft lights, shiny and rough textures, sharp-edged forms, and more.
In "Practicing Your Skills," artists will explore a variety of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, buildings and figures, as they work through longer, more complex exercises that encourage them to flex their skills and push their creativity.
Throughout, Raynes offers proven advice for fixing and avoiding mistakes, and also explains the unique characteristics of a variety of mediums, so artists can work with them effectively right from the start.
Customer Reviews:
Superior Draughtsmanship, Fantastic Examples to Aspire to........2006-01-10
John Raynes is one of the most accurate modern day artists that I have ever seen. His drawings are clear and concise. You can see the underlying structure of whatever it is he is drawing which makes it easier for the beginner to understand. This book is best for someone who is starting out. I would consider it the Ultimate Fundamenal Drawing Course. It concentrates on how to translate three dimensional form using everyday objects into wonderfully rendered two dimensional images using various media. I own all of Mr. Raynes books. If you are looking to learn from someone who knows what they are doing, then you have found an excellent resource. Very inspiring. For more of a textbook style, very detailed book on artistic human anatomy, start with Stephen Rogers Peck's Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist.
Rayne's probably holds WRESTLING FEDERATION GOLD BELT ..........2004-06-29
"ULTIMATE... Drawing Course" by John Raynes
"ULTIMATE"....now there's a WARNING WORD for you. Every book that uses one of these WARNING WORDS like "Ultimate" or "Essential" or "Complete Guide to" or "Absolute"....on the cover, always attmpts to draw in the buyer with the gimmick word. Really good drawing books never use such language in the title. I object also to the use of the phrase: "Easy-To-Follow Guide to Drawing"; because the simple fact is, some people find learning to draw "easy" but many others find it a struggle at first. Promising that it is going to be easy frequently turns out to be an empty promise.
The title implies that John Raynes has learned a thing or two about self-promotion from the WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION.
Raynes' "Figure Drawing" book didn't impress me either, so it isn't surprising that the figure illustrations are no better here. Raynes' illustrations of senselessly abstract and hopelessly chaotic bathroom water valves, odd bottles, sliced melons, seashells and bicycles are uninspiring enough to make one turn away. The compositions are tedious and repetitive.
An example of Raynes' droll, overly-intellectualized written instruction appears on p. 58 in the form of a page-heading in large print:
"Metal is manmade, and there is almost no limit to the forms it can take." -John Raynes
(If that is relevent to learning to draw, then Raynes will probably tell us that watching paint dry is exciting also. For heaven's sakes, SILLY PUTTY is also "man-made" and can take any form; but what's that got to do with anything? Being told this isn't going to help anyone draw any better.)
By page 140, Raynes arrives at human portraits. Unfortunately, he skips drawing of eyes, nose, lips, ears, or the head generally up to that point in his "ULTIMATE" book. (Raynes doesn't address the matter in the pages on portraiture either!) At $20.00 the book is too pricey for too little substance. Just another hack art instructor trying to "cash in" on the trend to LEARN-HOW-TO-DRAW-ON-THE-CASH-IN-YOUR-WALLET fad of art instruction.
Book Description
If you can write, you can learn to draw, as this complete course for the beginner demonstrates in ten easy-to-follow lessons. Practical examples, step-by-step demonstrations and finished drawings reveal the whole process in detail, allowing beginners to progress their skills in easy stages and develop their creativity as they go.
Customer Reviews:
It is what it saids!!! A drawing workbook!!.......2001-05-20
This is a Fantastic book to practice drawing and not have to think about what to draw but getting used to the idea of drawing and what steps to take. It is well written and the KEY! EASY TO FOLLOW!!
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