****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I'm surprised at all the gushing reviews. Perhaps the print quality was better in previous runs. But in my copy, purchased new, there are only two useful finished drawings (both on the cover: the two that haven't been obscured by blue, green, or orange dye) that indicate the actual quality of the work the author and artist creates. None of the drawings within the book are anywhere near that quality (I want to stress here this is the fault of the printing, not the artist). If I were the artist, and this book was out there representing my work, I would be enraged. The production quality, printed in China on grainy paper, is so bad that neither the finished drawings nor the reference photographs have anything like the necessary detail for an art book. Considering how much of the book is given over to illustrations --- this is not a text-heavy book, but relies on visual examples --- failure to accurately reproduce those visuals is a fatal and unforgivable flaw. On many of the final drawings the lack of tonal variation in the printed piece is so bad it makes the work look amateurish at best; bland, flat and lifeless at worst. As a teaching tool you need to be able to see detail in order to learn anything: pencil strokes, gradation of shading, variation of line thickness, etc. The author mentions these things, but the illustrations meant to show them largely don't. Only the early stage line drawings are relatively clear, but that is precisely because they are not detailed. The photographs are even worse. To use them as exercises, the way the book suggests, is impossible. I suspect most of the reviewers who enjoyed the lessons simply substituted photos of their own, as the photos in the book are small gray blobs of uselessness. As to teaching technique, this book is basic and very narrowly focused. I find this approach too limited, although clearly keeping it very simple works for some people. The artist teaches one and only one method: create a line drawing using a grid, shade in the dark areas, smudge and blend the midtones, erase out the highlights. (it's interesting to note that the student artwork showcased early in the book looks very much like the teacher's. There's something too generic and mechanical about the whole approach, although I'd be perfectly willing to admit that whatever individual expressiveness and depth might have been real in the actual drawings gets blurred out of existence by the awful print job.) For contrast look at
