Book Review: Fundamentals of Drawing from Life

Fundamentals of Drawing from Life - 01


I got to know of this book because the author Michael was posting about it on Conceptart.org.

This is a book on drawing from life, or more specifically, drawing what you see. It's a 102-page paperback.

As the title suggests, the book covers the fundamentals of drawing. The emphasis is on understanding measuring, simplification and value and tones. The subjects are limited in a sense, because I would consider composition important too.

The book's heavy on the text that explains the rational behind the concepts. His words are easy to understand and if you've always wonder about the basics, they might be enlightening.

There are no hands-on tutorials though, with the exception of some ideas for exercises.

This is a beginner's book but I would not recommend it as a first book to get. It works well as a companion book to other technical drawing books, especially if you just copying examples and don't understand what you're drawing. I think a hands-on book with more exercises is more appropriate for beginners. This book helps reinforce the basics of drawing. If you feel you already understand the three concepts well enough, you can skip this book.

4 out of 5 stars.

Fundamentals of Drawing from Life is available at Amazon (US | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES

Fundamentals of Drawing from Life - 02

Fundamentals of Drawing from Life - 03

Fundamentals of Drawing from Life - 04

Fundamentals of Drawing from Life - 05

Fundamentals of Drawing from Life - 06

Fundamentals of Drawing from Life - 07

Visit Amazon to check out more reviews.

If you buy from the links, I get a little commission that helps me get more books to feature.

Here are direct links to the book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For Comment Notification, please choose "All comments". "Replies to my comment" does not work.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------