Sketching for Beginners: Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Started with Your Drawing

A very good book for re-learning about drawing human heads.

This is an absolutely fabulous book and have been working through it. It is very simple to follow and then examples to try and the end of each section, brilliant and I would definitely recommend it.

Received in 4 days for the birthday gift to my daughter. My daughter is learning sketching. The book is the good reference for her to learn some basic skills

There are step by step text instructions. But I found it challenging because the illustrations always skip 2-3 steps. For adults, yes. Not for kids. I’m keeping the book as an everyday sketching exercise.

Pros:1) This book's main thrust is to teach the student how to look at objects in and out of nature in terms of basic, relateable shapes, and see them as the first step in drawing what you see. That is, circle, triangle, square, globe, box, cylinder, cone, etc.. It doesn't matter if you are trying to draw a club chair or a daffodil, once learned, this skill of seeing basic shapes within the form is the first step to proper placement on the page and having a successful drawing.2) The first chapter lists all of the supplies the student will need without going overboard. There are many books in print that go into supplies and materials already so as not to lose sight of the mission of this particular effort.Cons:1) The book is full of blank "practice pages" that I find annoying. To me, this is just filler and a waste of space that could be used to introduce tonal values and texture.2) The book does not go into shading. Preferring to leave that to the students' discernment. This is a mistake because new students have no idea how to see or deal with tonal values, or how to take a 2D form into a visual 3D object by sculpting lights and shadows.3) Too many of the renderings in the book use very subtle shading not recognizing that students new to drawing aren't sensitive to this. They don't see or recognize all of these subtleties, yet, and this can lead the student to become frustrated and discouraged when their drawing doesn't match up to the finished drawings presented in the book. A better approach would be to show the student only three values, light, dark, middle tone gray, and teach the student to see and block in these three values only.4) Basically, this book only has one main goal which is to see basic shapes within a form. The book would be more helpful to the beginning student if it had two or three stated goals: (a) teach basic shapes within the form, (b) the basic three tonal values of light, medium, and dark only, and (c) an introduction to basic visual textures that help define and bring to life the subject being described (like fur on the squirrel on page 95.)Summary:Having three well defined and express goals for the book and beginning student, (1) to see basic shapes within the subject they wish to draw, (2) teaching them how to block in the three tone values, and (3) examples of different textures to help the student define and describe their subject visually, are enough stated goals for a "beginners" book. I would suggest these for a second edition while discontinuing the practice pages.