Stephanie's "Learn How to Draw"


Book Description

Why You Can Draw Horses With Grids, & Why this is Important It has been estimated that less than 5% of people can draw. To many people, the process of drawing seems mysterious and somehow beyond human understanding. This is a terrible and needless situation. This is like saying that before the Industrial Revolution, most people could not read or write, and so no one can ever learn to do so. Anyone who can hold a pencil and write legibly can learn to draw well, whether they are four years old or eighty years old. You just have to teach your brain how to move a pencil in the correct direction. This book will get you started. Don't think you can't do the exercises in this book because "you can't draw"! That's like not learning the alphabet because you can't read, or not learning to count because you can't do math! DRAWING COMES BEFORE ART Most people think that drawing is art, but drawing is not art, although drawing does come before art, just as counting comes before math, and the alphabet comes before reading. BENEFITS TO DRAWING INCLUDE: Increase the ability of your right brain, so you become whole- brained. Increase the ability to perceive and solve problems with new solutions. Have another means of communication through visual methods. Gain self-confidence because you know you can draw. Have a natural way to totally relax and feel blissfully happy. DRAWING GIVES YOU A FULL BRAIN Learning to draw is important for everyone to do, not just children, because drawing exercises the right brain. Unfortunately, nearly everything you learned at school exercised only the left brain, which means that most schooling is a half-brained affair. THE ONLY FOUR STEPS TO ART: 1) Line Drawing. This book will teach you that. 2) Shading. 3) Color. 4) Painting. MOST 'LEARN TO DRAW' BOOKS ARE USELESS I remember when I was a child and wanted to learn to draw, and got a bunch of those "Learn to draw..." books. They were all worse than useless. I threw them out. Nearly all of them make you see a horse as a bunch of circles and oval sausages and squares somehow tied together. Then you fill in the 'missing' areas. Then you have to erase the parts of the circle that were never there in the first place. Then somehow redraw the areas that were not really circles to begin with. That's ridiculous! What they are trying to do is get you to see things that just aren't there. There is no part of a horse that is a perfect circle. And if there was, what happens when the animal turns a bit? It was not until I found some learn-to-draw-with-grid books that I finally learned to draw. LEONARDO DA VINCI USED GRIDS The aim of this book is to teach you how to draw accurate, realistic line drawings. Most interestingly, if you have ever wondered how the early art masters created such realistic paintings, many of which look almost like photographs, one of their secrets was that many of them used grids. Leonardo da Vinci was just one of the many artists of his time who used this method for developing an accurate outline of live subjects. Now you can too! 70 drawings on quality white paper"




The Urban Sketching Handbook: Understanding Perspective


Book Description

A good sketch starts with good bones—this guide from an architectural illustrator shows how to think like an architect and master accurate perspective. This book in the Urban Sketching Handbook series uses drawings and simple steps to explain the often challenging and overwhelming concepts of perspective in practical and useful ways for on-site sketching. Most books are either too abstract or don’t provide enough information that relates to what you actually do when you’re out in the busy, wide world about to start a drawing. Where do you start? How do you edit what you see to flatten and shrink it onto your paper? How does perspective work? The Urban Sketching Handbook: Understanding Perspective helps you learn to think like an architect, to draw buildings and spaces by reducing what you see to simple, basic shapes, then adding layers in simple steps, and finally finishing your sketch with detail, tone, and color—in accurate perspective. Full of helpful tips, it even deconstructs sketches to show you how to create them! Once you understand perspective, it will change the way you see the world—you’ll see perspective everywhere. Key concepts explored in this volume include: Basic Terms * Basic Spatial Principles * Types of Perspective * Building a Sketch in Layers * Special Conditions




Everyday Sketching and Drawing


Book Description

Everyday Sketching and Drawing offers an easy-to-follow, 5-step formula, which teaches beginner-friendly techniques for learning the skills necessary to make drawing and sketching an everyday habit. For those who have always wanted to or tried and failed to learn to draw it provides simple step-by-step instruction, plus easy-to-follow practice exercises, and provides the motivation and inspiration readers need to be successful. For those who already draw, Everyday Sketching and Drawing offers another technique to add to their drawing arsenal. Why do so many adults come to view drawing as difficult or fraught with anxiety? Traditional art instruction is often bogged down with jargon, rules, and admonishments that unintentionally stifle the joy of drawing for its own sake. Steven Reddy's new and easy approach to drawing instructs sketchers to document their unique and compelling lives in realistic yet playful sketches that record the places, spaces, and objects that help define them as individuals. He reminds artists to slow down, notice, and attend to the sketch-worthy scenes and subjects that are unstaged and always there in our everyday lives. He offers a versatile technique that can lead to a skill that fills sketchbooks with the visual details that differentiate one life from another. This approach is a meditative, relaxing alternative to academic concerns about perspective, proportion, and accuracy. Reddy encourages artists to capture in whimsical but detail-specific illustrations their unique, subjective interpretation of their visual surroundings. Steven Reddy's drawing method produces extremely detailed and realistic scenes of objects and scenes in everyday life in a relatively short period of time (60 minutes to 3 hours or more, depending on the sketcher's preference). Modifying a technique utilized by Old Master oil painters, the drawings pass through 5 clearly articulated stages where each step focuses on one visual concept at a time.




Drawing for Joy


Book Description

Jump into a series of 52 week-by-week, low-stress drawing exercises with Drawing for Joy! Learning to draw can seem intimidating, but it doesn't have to be!




Drawing Furries


Book Description

Learn how to design your very own anthropomorphic animal character with this fun and easy-to-use guide. Dive into the fun world of furries with this step-by-step drawing handbook for creating imaginative, anthropomorphic animals like wolves, foxes, dragons, and more! In Drawing Furries, you’ll learn how to sketch the human body, include various shapes and sizes of heads, eyes, and torsos. Then the fun really begins! Using a little creativity and reference images, you’ll start binging your own fursonas to life by adding various elements like cat ears, bear paws, or a wolf snout. Created by professional artist Stephanie “Ifus” Johnson, who specializes in furry art, this is the perfect companion for beginning artists as well as dedicated furry fans.




Sketching for Architecture + Interior Design


Book Description

The debate surrounding hand drawing versus computer-generated imagery has become a hot topic. Having grown up with computers, today’s interior design and architecture students are extremely adept at creating computer imagery, but often lack confidence in their freehand sketching skills, or do not know how to sketch at all. Sketching, and the careful observation that it entails, is essential for the successful development of the next generation of designers. Forty-five step-by-step exercises take the student from the simple three-dimensional forms of furniture, to interiors, to complex building exteriors, and cityscapes. Technical topics covered include tools, line weights, perspective, proportion, composition, shading, serial views, and context. Exercises are illustrated with beautiful sketches specially created by the author. Sketching for Architecture + Interior Design is an indispensable and practical guide for students wishing to master the art of looking and sketching.




The Weatherly Guide to Drawing Animals


Book Description

"The Weatherly Guide to Drawing Animals focuses on learning how to draw animals using solid drawing principles."--Publisher.




Force: Animal Drawing


Book Description

Many artists are unsure how to bridge the gap between the many basic 'how to draw' books and the more advanced ones dealing with the esoteric details of composition, perspective and anatomy. Force: Animal Drawing is the comprehensive guide to developing artistic animals that are creative, dynamic and anatomical, bridging the gap between foundational art and advanced techniques. Artists and animators alike all find animal inspiration when animating characters- be they human or inhuman. For a unique 'larger than life' character, readers will learn to apply the unique facets of animal movement, locomotion, expressions, facial features, physical build and personality to their traditional and digital art. Readers will also adapt key industry tricks and techniques to personify animal animations with key characteristics of a human's face. Explore the practical application of force theories and learn from today's leading character designers with the included artist interviews and an extended video tutorial via www.drawingforce.com.




Dreamscapes


Book Description

Bring a Fantasy World of Enchanting Beings to Life! Angels, faeries and mermaids have engaged the imaginations and enchanted the brushes of artists for centuries. Now you can evoke the spirit of these mythical creatures and create fantastic works of ethereal art in watercolor. Step by inspired step, Stephanie Pui-Mun Law shows you how to paint the otherworlds' most marvelous creatures and exquisite settings. Twenty step-by-step projects show you how to create fantastic scenes that are elegantly styled, brilliantly colored, and alive with a sense of wonder. Fabulous Realms! Create strange and lovely backgrounds, such as the meandering oak branches of faery folk, the celestial surrounding of angels, and the seascapes where mermaids dwell. Delightful Details! From angel wings to mermaid tails, from flowing robes to faery gowns, learn to paint an imaginative variety of features, clothing and other details that ensure one-of-a-kind results. Mystical Effects! Discover special watercolor techniques for adding magic and mystery to your paintings. You'll begin by learning about essential materials, including brushes, paints, paper, then will move on to important techniques such as planning and sketching; figure proportions; specific characteristics of angels, faeries and mermaids (including clothing); developing backgrounds; and finishing techniques that add an air of magic.




Dear Data


Book Description

Equal parts mail art, data visualization, and affectionate correspondence, Dear Data celebrates "the infinitesimal, incomplete, imperfect, yet exquisitely human details of life," in the words of Maria Popova (Brain Pickings), who introduces this charming and graphically powerful book. For one year, Giorgia Lupi, an Italian living in New York, and Stefanie Posavec, an American in London, mapped the particulars of their daily lives as a series of hand-drawn postcards they exchanged via mail weekly—small portraits as full of emotion as they are data, both mundane and magical. Dear Data reproduces in pinpoint detail the full year's set of cards, front and back, providing a remarkable portrait of two artists connected by their attention to the details of their lives—including complaints, distractions, phone addictions, physical contact, and desires. These details illuminate the lives of two remarkable young women and also inspire us to map our own lives, including specific suggestions on what data to draw and how. A captivating and unique book for designers, artists, correspondents, friends, and lovers everywhere.