Book Review: Strokes of Genius 10: Inspiring Subjects

Here's another delightful volume of artworks from the Strokes of Genius, an artbook series that features some of the best hand drawn art. The variety of media used include charcoal, graphic, pastel, coloured pencils, scratchboard and ink. Basically, all the media that's meant for drawing and not painting.

The subject matter are the figure, still life, animals, the world around us and portraits.

The artworks are lovely, of course, and wonderfully reproduced, large. And it's quite surprising that this hardcover book isn't much thicker. There are only 144 pages so it definitely leaves you wanting more. The level of detail in the drawing can sometimes be spellbinding. There's this particular drawing of a piece of paper torn from a spiral bound notebook and taped to the wall. It's a mundane subject matter but the care at which the art is created is quite incredible. The treatment leaves me with a "wow". There are other examples of such simple objects drawn with such intricacy.

There's a nice variety of styles to check out. Each artwork is accompanied by a short caption talking about the process. If you want to see more works from the artists, you can visit their websites which are provided in the index. It would be cool to have a companion book to this book that features tutorials from some of these artists.

Strokes of Genius 10: Inspiring Subjects (Strokes of Genius: The Best of Drawing) is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | AU | JP | CN)

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