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.
A Box of Awesome Things Matching Game is a fun addition to our family game collection. My kids were so excited to play the game with an assortment of interesting pictures. The selected pictures are a nice change from the usual boxed princess variety. The sturdy matching cards have also been used to play "Go Fish" as well as other made up games by my kids. The set of cards to make ones own matching design was a big hit too!!