Drawing Masterclass: 100 Creative Techniques of Great Artists

by Guy Noble

Gorgeously illustrated and practical, this guide to the art of drawing employs a close analysis of great works to reveal techniques and lessons that will help practitioners at every level. The art of drawing is an essential skill for any artist. This beautifully produced book uses 100 great works on paper as its lessons. Each spread features a reproduction of one work, and offers invaluable lessons about the approaches and techniques the artist used. Organized into chapters on nudes, figures, landscapes, still life, heads, fantasy, and abstraction, the book breaks down the featured works in different ways. For instance it explores how differences in tone and shadow bring life to a standing figure and how many different weights of line can be achieved with one crayon. In addition, readers can learn from the artist’s own words in quotations drawn from interviews and archival materials. There is no better way to learn a skill than from the masters. Beginning and experienced artists can learn from masters as diverse as Kandinsky, Rubens, Monet, da Vinci, Basquiat, Beckman, and Miro, while professionals in the field will find great value in side-by-side comparisons of works from different genres and eras.

Genres: Art, Drawing

288 pages, Paperback

Published October 17, 2017

Reviews

[Dvine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every graphic artist at one point or other made drawings, whether they were intended as practice, preparation of larger works, or just to be finished pieces of art in itself.
Also, anything can be used to make drawings, from a stick in the sand, elaborate ink or pastel sketches, or even digital drawings on tablets and personal computers.
This is what makes drawing perhaps the most quintessential and relatable form of art.
The book does a good job of introducing each artist's style of drawing with an example, and then offers a quick tip on how to get to one of the characteristic elements of the drawing.
The quick tip or art technique is part of the title of this book but is not really worth buying it for, it just scratches the surface rarely more than a footnote, they should have just left it out of the title or devoted at least say half a page to it for every artist. That said I picked up the Trois Crayons technique from this book and may try out something else as well, so reading it for that purpose does work.
The biggest drawback of this book, however, is that an artist's sketching or drawing style is often dissimilar to his/her iconic works and that they don't provide one or several iconic works so you can make comparisons between the two. SO the only proper way to read this book, unless you happen to be an art tutor and know every artist's works intimately, is to read it with Google image search open so you can type the artist's name in there and have an overview of his/her works at the ready.
Other than what I mentioned above I enjoyed reading it and it's a good quality book on a topic that deserves more exposure.

[Enrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a great book which shows, reviews and briefly explains the technique/important consideration of 100 drawings from different artists. its divided in thematic sections (still nature, heads, figure, portraits, etc...)

the book is about drawing, not painting, and shows you drawings of very famous painters with all kind of drawing medias, from silverpoint until indian ink and different approaches, from realistic drawings until abstract ones

even if in the preliminaries it explains different media types, elements of art (line, value, space, etc...) and give a few tips of how to improve your drawings, its not a book to learn to draw or to become an artist. anyone can enjoy the drawings and the comments but in order to make the most of it you should have some basics in drawing/art

each selected drawing is in the book for a reason and comes with a tip box briefly explaining something important to take into consideration when drawing. again it doesn't teach you how to replicate the drawing but gives you something important, related to the commented drawing, to use in your own drawings

im a beginner in the world of art and not sure how professionals would find the book but i really enjoyed each page because if found the tips highly useful and inspiring

[Hugo Van Zoest]

interesting and inspirational

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book which analyzes different artists' drawings.