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Title: The Art of Portrait Drawing: Learn the Essential Techniques of the Masters
ISBN: 1581807120
Author:
Joy Thomas
Publicate Date: 2006-06-12
Publish: 2006-06-12
List Price: $26.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $3.05
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.05
Amazon Merchant Price: $17.81
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A "Must Have" book
The "Art of Portrait Drawing", a hard cover beautifully printed book, is a fine addition to any beginning or intermediate artists library. Joy Thomas is a highly skilled artist and the book is filled with "hands on" demonstrations and practical tips on approaching this subject. Personally
I find portrait drawing/painting to be an extremely challenging and intimidating task. Indeed there are many "celebrity" artists in the top galleries who couldn't paint a good portrait if their life depended on it.
While this book may not be the definative work on Portrait Drawing, it is very well done and well worth the investment.
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2: Sound Advise for the Intermediate
The author works from life and covers most the kinds of things you'd want to know about successful portraiture. The step-by-step was most interesting to read as she takes you through a process and how to resolve some issues you may run into. It doesn't offer a lot to beginners because she assumes you know how to see and do basic drawing and toning. I'd say this is a book for the intermediate artist who needs to reenforce existing knowledge with some very useful tips you probably never thought of, particularly for drawing from life.
I only have a few small critical things to say here. Although she reviews some basics on composition such as the golden ratio, she doesn't actually seem to practice them much in her examples. For example, she shows you how to "center" the head and says the "full face" portrait is the most common. Well I've heard alot of arguments against centering and full face views so it seems a contradiction to talk composition then not practice it in reality. I believe the 3 quarter view is most common, and you do not want to center the head for reasons I can't give here because it is too detailed. But perhaps she didn't want to overload the reader with composition theory since that's a much more complex issue.
But this is very worthwhile to read and she seems to have done a great job with the structure and language of the book.
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3: Thomas' Portrait Drawiang
I just watched the video that comes with this book. I would higly recommended both. As a beginner it was inspiring to watch an artist actually doing the technique described in the book. I can only imagine that if someone has more experience, it would be very usefull to see someone highly skilled perform their technique. I have read many books on this subject and find this to be the best.
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