Keys to Drawing

i like the philosophy of this book..not only concentrating on technical details, which is boring for someone like me who only takes drawing as a hobby. also, this book is not too general. there is some essential points stated in each chapter, with fun 'project' accompanied, to provide concrete example and opportunity to practice. quite good!

Although the artwork in the book varies in beauty, the teaching is superb. And that, after all, is the most important thing. I've been drawing for nearly half a century, but these keys have pushed my drawing to an entirely new level. How these little secrets evaded me for so long is mysterious! Pity I didn't have this book when I was a kid. My life might have been very different.

I am an artist who allowed herself to put the responsibilities of life before her passion. I have been trying to rekindle my passion for drawing and painting after twenty years of " I'll make time tomorrow" excuses. I originally began drawing as a small child and fine tuned my skills in school with an instructor who used the Betty Edwards approach, so i tried using her books to "get back into art". Well, i love her approach, but the scientific instruction of how and why to draw are interesting, but reading about all that takes time away from what makes great art- simply just doing it. Keys to drawing was exactly the kick in the pants I needed to stop reading about art and start creating again. This book gets you drawing right away and gives you so many exercises and so much encouragement to just draw. I love the illustrations in the book because they are not perfect, they are real and show you the process of creating a drawing instead of making you feel intimidated by professionally drawn finished products, although there are a few of those. The author gives you permission to make mistakes, actually encouraging you to do so in order to find your own style and get over yourself and just have fun.I highly recommend this book to All age groups and level of artist.

This is a freeform drawing book that teaches draw what you see and not what you know, using the language of lines and shapes and not the language of things (very much like Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain).

Chapter 1 covers the drawing process and reviews the main points in a bulleted list at the end. Chapter 2 discusses the "handwriting" of famous artists - most interesting and enlightening. Chapter 3 covers how to draw figures and faces - here it does teach about foreshortening, finding midpoints, and taking measurements. Chapter 4 covers how to use light and shadow to model shapes. Chapter 5 covers precision drawing principles: how to create depth, eye level and vanishing points (one and two point perspective), unusual perspectives, ellipses. However, it's more of an overview rather than a "how to." Don't rely on this to learn precision drawing. Chapter 6 covers textures. Chapter 7 discusses composition (pattern and design). Chapter 8 covers imaginative drawing.

This is an excellent book to learn freeform drawing - I'm not sure what's better, this book or the "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", but I think I would still like to have this in my art book library.

"Keys to Drawing" by Bert Dodson is one of the first drawing books that I bought after I got back to doing art after a break of over 15 years. It opened my eyes, stimulated my enthusiasm for drawing again and provided me with some really excellent guidelines about what to think about when drawing.

My edition is a North Light Books paperback published in 1990. Amazon indicates the current edition was updated in 2001 and, although I've not seen that I think it unlikely that it departs much from the sound advice provided in earlier editions.

I see the synopsis on Amazon says that it "Describes the drawing process, discusses proportions, light, depth, texture, pattern, design, and imagination, and tells how to evaluate one's work." And it does do all of those things - but it also does a lot more. He has 55 keys to drawing which are introduced as he goes through each of the topics in turn - and he provides lots of practical exercises to see how they can be applied.

It needs to be pointed out that this book is NOT a manual for how to draw in a hyper/photo realism manner - there are other books that do that.

What I like most about this book is it starts by encouraging people who want to develop their drawing to develop their own 'handwriting' for their drawing. Dodson explains:
* how we draw is as individual to us all as how we write.
* all artists combine freedom (intuitive, looser, sketchy drawing) and control (analytical, precise, careful drawing) in their work - they just do it differently
I just loved the idea that this author wanted me to be me - and not like him or somebody else. What's more in illustrating the different ways in which people draw he introduced me to a better understanding of how different master artists, such as Delacroix, Rembrandt, Matisse, Van Gogh, Degas, Morandi and Kollwitz approached their drawing. Consequently I began to understand an awful lot more about how drawing is done and why it looks as it does. What's more the images of their drawings in his book impressed me so much that they have stayed firmly lodged at the front of the drawing bit of my brain over the years.

One of the especially helpful bits about the book is that it encourages the development of self-evaluation right from the start. This means that the things one needs to think about when drawing become internalised that much quicker. It really helps the budding artist to become much more self-reliant and less dependent on others for insight into how they are doing.

This is a book that I can pick up and reread and dip into over and over again and never ever get bored. It's one of the best 'how to' books on drawing that I've ever read and I can highly recommend it to all of you who are:
* interested in the art of drawing,
* wanting to develop your own skill in self-evaluation and/or
* wanting to develop your own individual style of drawing.

Interestingly since first writing this review on my weblog I discovered that lots of my fellow artists also rated this book very highly as well!