Drawing The Light From Within

Describes the importance of visualization, and suggests eleven techniques to develop one's creativity, inner vision, and self-esteem

A guide to innovation, invention, imagination, and creativity.

Refresh your creativity and boost your motivation to draw with the expert help of The Drawing Ideas Book. If you're stuck in a rut - or simply just stuck - this book is filled with ideas for what to draw, how to draw and even where and when to draw. Packed with arresting examples of creatives' drawings and sketchbooks from all over the world, it's sure to fire up your creativity. Imagine it, doodle it, sketch it, ink it and more. Discover the infinite possibilities of this essential art form, from its key mediums to unusual processes, across subjects from figure drawing and landscape sketching to abstract compositions.

“Form,” writes the author, “is developed by means of light and shade; without these every object would appear flat.” Originally published in the mid-nineteenth century, this classic approach to three-dimensional drawing was the first book to provide art students with instructions for correctly illustrating perspective outlines of various objects. An art historian noted for her authoritative reference works, Merrifield clearly demonstrates the principles of light and shade by revealing the effects of common daylight, sunshine, and candle or artificial light on geometrical solids. Her simple explanations are accompanied by illustrations of cubes, prisms, pyramids, cylinders, spheres, ovals, and cones. As useful and practical today as it was when first published well over a century ago, Light and Shade provides beginning and advanced art students with valuable insights into effective drawing and sketching.

Learning How to Draw Has Never Been Easier! Lee Hammond's All New Big Book of Drawing is the culmination of nearly forty years of teaching. No matter what your experience level YOU CAN DRAW by following along these easy step-by-step demonstrations. Whether you want to create drawings of flowers, learn how to draw animals or how to draw a person, these drawing techniques, all-new projects, and expert tips will show you how to get great results with both regular pencils and colored pencils. • Two books in one. The first half is a comprehensive course on using pencils to capture shape, form and likeness. The second half explores adding color using colored pencils • 88 step-by-step projects. You will learn to draw everything with this book! Starting with a simple sphere and working up to sea shells, sunsets, flowers, birds, horses, clothing, people--and so much more! • A lifetime of know-how! Lee covers it all--from big picture concepts (selecting tools, shading techniques, making sense of perspective) down to techniques for creating the look of feathers, capturing skin tones, and making surfaces look shiny or transparent. Using her straightforward, three-stage approach to lifelike drawings, Lee makes any subject approachable, from still life and landscapes to animals and even people. This project-driven tome will help you create realistic, frame-worthy artwork. Project by project and subject by subject, you will gain confidence and cultivate great joy in drawing.

What will become of us in these trying times? How will we pass the time that we have on earth? In gorgeously rendered graphic form, Light in Dark Times invites readers to consider these questions by exploring the political catastrophes and moral disasters of the past and present, revealing issues that beg to be studied, understood, confronted, and resisted. A profound work of anthropology and art, this book is for anyone yearning to understand the darkness and hoping to hold onto the light. It is a powerful story of encounters with writers, philosophers, activists, and anthropologists whose words are as meaningful today as they were during the times in which they were written. This book is at once a lament over the darkness of our times, an affirmation of the value of knowledge and introspection, and a consideration of truth, lies, and the dangers of the trivial. In a time when many of us struggle with the feeling that we cannot do enough to change the course of the future, this book is a call to action, asking us to envision and create an alternative world from the one in which we now live. Light in Dark Times is beautiful to look at and to hold – an exquisite work of art that is lively, informative, enlightening, deeply moving, and inspiring.

In this innovative guide, master art instructor William Maughan demonstrates how to create a realistic human likeness by using the classic and highly accurate modeling technique of chiaroscuro (Italian for “light and dark”) developed by Leonardo da Vinci during the High Renaissance. Maughan first introduces readers to the basics of this centuries-old technique, showing how to analyze form, light, and shadow; use dark pencil, white pencil, and toned paper to create a full range of values; use the elements of design to enhance a likeness; and capture a sitter’s gestures and proportions. He then demonstrates, step by step, how to draw each facial feature, develop visual awareness, and render the head in color with soft pastels.