My children and I have been exploring the Art world a lot this year. We have been completing art projects and visiting the local Art Museum weekly as a family. An interesting resource I acquired to aid us in our exploration is called Foundations of Drawing by Al Gury.
This book contains a wealth of information on the history of art beginning in ancient times, tools, and techniques to produce ones own art.
I appreciated that the book is overflowing with examples of real art work from children's work and amateur all the way to professional and great artists. Some people may be uncomfortable with the amount of nudity portrayed in the examples, however, it is nothing different than found in Art Museums as artist strive to draw the human form.
I found great encouragement in learning that our own bodies anatomy creates an obstacle to drawing simple lines, yet people can overcome anatomy to produce wonderful results.
I also appreciated the extensive details on the many art mediums. The author includes how to store the mediums, types of paper to use the mediums on, how to prepare paper for adding the medium, as well as storage of final works.
Foundations of drawing seems to be a broad term, as the book seemed to progress to rather advanced concepts. I am not an expert on drawing so I am unable to speak to what might actually be advanced techniques to be contained in editions not aimed at "foundations".
Foundations of Drawing will be a wonderful resource through the years in our pursuit of improving our art work.
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I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.
This book is full of beautiful examples and wonderful details for painting with watercolors. The author includes details on color theories and drawing techniques. She also included many time saving techniques such as what to do to prepare for next steps in painting while waiting for paint to dry. It seems she took the time to really write down exactly what she does when painting. The techniques are not as accessible to my children as I had hoped, to no fault of the book, merely my hope for the activity. I will look forward to exploring the techniques with my children as they become more capable with time. I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.
