José M. Parramón (1918–2002)

An extremely impressive little book, packed with important tips that most books of this type, even larger ones (and I have many), fail to give. Great emphasis is placed on body proportions, à la da Vinci. There's even a posable paper model that you can create via a tracing. Page 24 has a stunning cubist drawing called Tumbling Men by a 16th(!) century artist named Luca Cambiaso. This pushes up the development of cubism by around 250 years. In my experience, any art book by Parramón (the show more author or the publishing house) is a must-own. show less

Quite a specialised book ...but good because of this. He has quite an extensive historical section on drawing at the beginning, moves into techniques and finally has a whole series of exercises. I like his approach and I like the way he gives very practical advice. I don't get the impression that he is just publishing the book to see his own sketches and drawings published, but, rather, that he is genuinely interested in imparting knowledge and technique. I will keep this book for the show more moment. Four stars from me. show less

Summary: This book is written for beginner readers. Although it was very simple, I thought it described taste in an accurate way and provided students with a tangible way to talk about what they tasted. I also felt like this book was a good introduction into teaching about how to use adjectives in writing.
Thoughts: I may not use this book as a teaching tool for all students, but I would like to have this series in my classroom. I think some students would find it very interesting and it is show more a good level for beginning readers.
Use/Strategy:
- Teach about adjectives
- Senses show less

Color Theory begins by explaining the basis of how light is composed of the colors of the spectrum. Mr. Parramón describes the lights as “painting” the objects, rather than other author’s explanations of the object’s pigments being reflected back towards the viewing eye. His theory is that you can reproduce all of the colors that are found in nature with only the three basic colors of cyan blue, magenta, and yellow.
Within this book many different topics are discussed, including: show more complementary colors, color harmonization, color throwing and shading, contrast and more. I appreciated the time that was spent on the paintings in this book. A single design would be painted several times, with different backgrounds or color contrasts shown. I found these examples helpful and enlightening. This book was enjoyable to read and very informative. show less