The Drawing Bible || Craig Nelson

Looking through this, the first thought has to be, “Wow, is that all drawing?”, because there’s a lot of colour and a very painterly approach throughout. Part of this is down to the inclusion of a fair amount of pastel, but further reading reveals that Craig Nelson also demonstrates the use of sketching and how the initial work is developed into a painting.

All of this produces an immediately attractive book that has you wanting to get started straight away. Because I always have a quibble, I’m going to say now that it’s a pity the format isn’t larger and that the blurb’s claim that it’s “easy to carry and use” is disingenuous. I’m sorry, but I don’t accept that people carry a library in their bag of materials; they do their reading at home and there’s no substitute for a decent-sized page, especially in a quite heavy 300 page book that doesn’t fall open easily.

Persistence is rewarded, albeit at the cost of a broken spine (not you, the book), with a huge variety of topics, mediums and techniques. Dropping in serendipitously tends to produce a sense of random chaos and this is one where it’s definitely worth starting at the contents page as the layout is really quite well organised, beginning with materials and mediums, and progressing through line and tone to perspective and proportion to landscapes, buildings and animals. As well as an excellent chapter on figures and faces, which is one of the best I’ve seen.

All-in-all, this is well thought-out and excellently produced, if only it weren’t for the small page size.

Drawing & Painting People: The Essential Guide || ed. Jeffrey Blocksidge and Mary Burzlaff

Books on portraiture are thin on the ground and any new one is a welcome addition to a select band.

I’m going to start with a couple of reservations. The first is that the style of the finished results is a little stilted and formal and the second is that it’s also perhaps a little sentimentalised. However, this is an American book and that’s how they do things.

I wanted to get that out of the way because if you found this is a shop and flicked through it, you might be put off and start to think , “Ooh, no, that’s not for me” and that would be a pity because the coverage and presentation are some of the best and most comprehensive I’ve seen. The book consists of a series of quite detailed demonstrations, each by a single artist, of specific techniques: skin tones, hair colours, facial types and so on. This allows the reader to concentrate on one thing at a time without having to hunt through the whole book to pick out the specific parts they’re interested in. Although the material has appeared elsewhere, it’s been re-edited to give it a freshness and immediacy that sets this book apart. It’s not, therefore, one you necessarily need to work through from cover to cover, but rather something to use for reference as specific needs arise.

Leaving aside the small initial reservations, the quality of the work and the reproductions, the number of illustrations and the detailed explanations of the progress of each drawing or painting are pretty near perfect. Even if some of the facial types may be less familiar to European eyes and the treatments not quite what we’d expect, anyone following the book should be able to develop the skills to adapt to what they want. Quite simply, if you want to paint or draw portraits, buy this book. It’s excellent value at 192 pages for £14.99 and you’ll get a huge amount out of it.

North Light 2007
£14.99

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