Bloomsbury The Art of Pencil Drawing (Collector's Series): Learn how to draw realistic subjects with pencil

Franks, like Barrington Barber, has made good money pumping out drawing books. But there is a little deception here: both authors copy photographs for their "step-by-step" examples, and never tell you that. You are led to believe that they are drawing things from life. Gene Franks at least mentions throughout his book that the reader can use photographs as sources (although Franks does not admit to it himself), but Barber does not even mention photographs as a source. This is important, because copying a photograph is a lot different than drawing from life, and it takes skill to take a good B/W source photo to even draw from, yet neither author mentions this. How do I know they copy photos? Because both authors include drawings that MUST be photo-sourced (like wild animals, or boats on a windy day), yet they both show the same step-by-step technique as drawing a cabbage. By deduction, one can conclude that their confident pencilwork on all the other drawings is simply because they have a static source where everything is worked out for them, i.e. the photograph, and all are drawn in the same "style". Having said this, neither artist tries to make their drawings look "photogaphic", and their drawings DO have a certain charm. But do not be fooled! To draw like this you had better assume your sources are photos, not real life. There are very few drawing instruction books that do not use photographs as sources, except Bridgman's Life Drawing or the Bargue/Gerome books from the French Academy, or Anthoy Ryder's book (and these all have their flaws). Having said all this, these books are decent if you can take good B/W photos and copy from them. The best drawing books are just books of master drawings. You learn about a wide variety of techniques and approaches and media from a single book (Robert Beverly Hale's 3 books are good, economical compilations--just ignore most of the anatomy discussion and look at the drawings).

Excellent reference material. Step by step detailed instructions are quite helpful.

Very good Just the job.

今度購入した本が自分の勉強してることに役立つ。絵描きが好きな人に僕の薦めだ。

I like all of Walter Foster books he is a great teacher, the book came just as the seller said very neat and clean