The Art of Pencil Drawing: Learn how to draw realistic subjects with pencil (Collector's Series)

Franks, like Barrington Barber, has made good money pumping out drawing books. But there is a little deception here: both authors copy photographs for their "step-by-step" examples, and never tell you that. You are led to believe that they are drawing things from life. Gene Franks at least mentions throughout his book that the reader can use photographs as sources (although Franks does not admit to it himself), but Barber does not even mention photographs as a source. This is important, because copying a photograph is a lot different than drawing from life, and it takes skill to take a good B/W source photo to even draw from, yet neither author mentions this. How do I know they copy photos? Because both authors include drawings that MUST be photo-sourced (like wild animals, or boats on a windy day), yet they both show the same step-by-step technique as drawing a cabbage. By deduction, one can conclude that their confident pencilwork on all the other drawings is simply because they have a static source where everything is worked out for them, i.e. the photograph, and all are drawn in the same "style". Having said this, neither artist tries to make their drawings look "photogaphic", and their drawings DO have a certain charm. But do not be fooled! To draw like this you had better assume your sources are photos, not real life. There are very few drawing instruction books that do not use photographs as sources, except Bridgman's Life Drawing or the Bargue/Gerome books from the French Academy, or Anthoy Ryder's book (and these all have their flaws). Having said all this, these books are decent if you can take good B/W photos and copy from them. The best drawing books are just books of master drawings. You learn about a wide variety of techniques and approaches and media from a single book (Robert Beverly Hale's 3 books are good, economical compilations--just ignore most of the anatomy discussion and look at the drawings).

I like all of Walter Foster books he is a great teacher, the book came just as the seller said very neat and clean

This book are a good way to introduce pencil drawing (I have taken other training). Does not include a lot of basic information.

lots of great examples. I just wish there was a kindle version since I'm trying to reduce the book clutter.

Gene Frank's books are my favorite learn to draw books. This one contains many of his drawings from his other publications. It is fun to go through the steps as he does with each drawing and see your results. Not a lot of words, just what tools he uses and 4 or 5 steps. This is an exceptional book.

I found this book to be just what I wanted. Started to take up sketching again after 24 years and got hooked again. Great for beginners .

I got this because, I draw as a hobby. I have attached one of my pictures. I'm not great so I thought this book would help. The book does have some good techniques and lets you know some of the drawing tools required, but it is also very vague in my opinion when you need step by step instruction. I would say this is more for the advanced artist. I also got the Basic Drawing book from this series, I will post a review after I dive into that one. I am thinking about doing some of the Kuberts school correspondence courses but that's around 200.00.

I like the look of this book when I when to an arts group meeting what I find good it has drawing of so many different things that I can practice seen am no good at drawing and it would help improve my drawing skills yes I would recommend this book to any one who is interested in drawing

Me encanta se aprende muchoMuy bueno llegó muy rápido

Excellent reference material. Step by step detailed instructions are quite helpful.

Very good Just the job.

今度購入した本が自分の勉強してることに役立つ。絵描きが好きな人に僕の薦めだ。

Very useful.