Still Life: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners with 10 Projects

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Still life is perfect for beginners since every element can be controlled: composition, lighting, shape, color, and tone. Filled with expert advice, this wonderful guide offers budding artists all the information they need to get started. The ten projects become progressively more complex and highlight different skills. Arrange objects into pleasing displays and be sure that they are properly lit. Draw still lifes of fruits and vegetables, hard objects, flowers and other natural objects, fabric items, pottery, and more. Techniques covered include line and line quality, rendering tone and depicting color as tone, erasing as a creative process, using a grid, and mixing media. With endless possible variations, still life offers art students the ideal introduction to drawing basics.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This series from New Holland Publishers is intended to compete with Hamlyn's "Step-by-Step Art School" series. Both offer good, basic books at attractive prices. Hodge's How To Draw Portraits is a workmanlike manual, though her stilted style detracts from its effectiveness. Sidaway's How To Draw Still Life is a more authoritative work from a veteran writer of several art books. However, the comparable book in the Hamlyn series, Jack Buchan and Jonathan Baker's Step-by-Step Art School: Still Life, also contains a valuable history of the genre, with examples from Caravaggio, Manet, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Warhol. While the Hodge and Sidaway volumes are adequate, libraries will be better off choosing from Hamlyn's "Step-by-Step Art School" series. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.