Book Review: Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 01


This is a wonderful book on drawing by Juliette Aristides.

It covers the essential techniques to making a good drawing. These are subjects like understanding lines, contours, proportion, depth, tonal composition, light and shadow. They are the usual subjects taught for drawing. The text is insightful and filled with tips, supplemented by beautiful illustrated examples from artists and old masters.

This is not an immediately hands-on book where you can dive in and draw straightaway. It focuses on the understanding of different techniques. After which, each chapter ends with a guided practical lesson on learning points.

The book also comes with a DVD containing 1 hour of video with Juliette Aristides demonstrating what was taught in the book. It covers blocking in general shapes before defining them with more detail, and finishing them up with tones to give the illusion of light and shadow. The video reinforces the drawing techniques as used in real life.

This is a well written and presented book. It's really insightful.

Highly recommended to anyone learning to draw. A great value for money.

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 02

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 03

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 04

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 05

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 06

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 07

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 08

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 09

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 10

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier - 11

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.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.cn

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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------