Drawing – techniques and tutorials for the complete beginner || Christine Allison

This is the sort of book that GMC manages really rather well. General introductions are prone to two main traps: being too specific so that the beginner is shoehorned into the author’s personal obsession or so general that the instruction whizzes by faster than you can focus on it. Those latter are the books I often remark seem to be aimed at the non-artist who is buying for a friend.

This is certainly general, both in terms of subject and style as well as mediums, which range from charcoal to ink blocks. At 96 pages, there’s no great detail, but that’s good, because it encourages those new to art to dip a toe in a variety of waters. The introduction to materials and techniques is undaunting and makes you want to get started rather than feel you’ll never get to grips with the complexity. The nine demonstrations are quite short, but contain plenty of information and manage to cover most of what you’ll need to know, including colour, tone and even positive and negative shapes. Subjects include still lifes, portraits and landscapes and Christine deals with both monochrome and colour work. There’s even a nicely thought-out chapter at the end on where to go next.

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