Book Review: Strokes of Genius 2: The Best of Drawing Light and Shadow

Strokes of Genius 2 is like a sketchbook except there are also paintings in addition to sketches. There are brief description by the artists on how each piece are created.

The six categories featured are portraits, cityscapes, animals, the human figure, landscapes, still life & more.

For portraits, there are some really stunning pieces. Some of the pencil or charcoal portraits are done in amazing photo-realistic style, or the why-not-use-a-camera style. Of course, the art captures the subtlety that cameras can't. The rest are sketches of various styles and medium.

Cityscapes section features snapshots of landscapes drawn, not just cities. And it's not really the usual landscapes, but a close up of areas, like under bridges, etc. Somehow, a ship mast created in scratchboard style is also included in the section. Most of the art in this section is muted in colours. Most impressive pieces are from Edmond S. Oliveros and Melissa B. Tubbs with their painstakingly hatched pen and ink drawings.

So it's like that for the rest of the sections. There are rough sketches, detailed sketches as well as paintings, but nothing too rich in colours. The book can feel quite disjointed at places because the wildly varying medium.

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