Lee J. Ames (1921–2011)

***This book was reviewed for Ten Speed Press/Watson Guptill via Netgalley

I was so excited to see this! I grew up with the Draw 50 series. Indeed, Draw 50 Sharks helped me win a contest in the seventh grade. As a homeroom, we drew pictures and submitted them for homeroom mascot. My thresher shark won, and we became St Pierre's Sharks. It was a proud moment in my young introverted life.

I found these instructions easy to follow those many moons ago, and perusing the pages once again I still show more find them easy to follow. This entire series is wonderful, and highly recommended to any who like to draw.

📚📚📚📚📚 show less

[This book was reviewed by Kimberly Weatherston, a volunteer with the Idaho Art Lab.]

I personally am not fond of 'How to Draw' books. I think they often prove to be frustrating, especially for budding artists, because of how so often the book takes you line by line through the drawing until ALMOST the end of the drawing...and then magically it changes from simple line drawing to fully shaded masterpiece. It was always that last step that frustrated me and had me crumpling my drawings into show more tiny little balls.

The 'draw the rest of the picture' effect is not nearly as much a problem with this book.

Architectural drawings are difficult, but this book does a very good job of going line by line to show you precisely how to go from the first step to the last one - no magic necessary. You can actually see how to go from the second-to-last step to the last one.

Probably the only complaint I could have about the book is that in each step the 'new lines' are indicated with thick lines. Someone precisely following the steps might do too thick a line without realizing it, indicating the new lines with a different color might have worked better, but that is a small thing.

The buildings you can choose from to draw are varied: from famous places like the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal, to just examples of types of buildings like a pagoda or a barn. Not all the drawings are buildings, either - there are also things like the Golden Gate Bridge or a Japanese torii gate.

I do not drawing landscape or scenery much myself, but if I needed to draw a building or structure for something, I would certainly be willing to turn to this book for guidance. show less

A great book with step-by-step techniques for drawing a wide variety of animals. They're all based on starting with geometric shapes, and expanding on the drawing from there.

Author/Illus worked on Disney's Fantasia & Pinocchio! Was also a college art professor. Easy to follow visual instructions on how to draw 50 different animals. For kids. Looks very do-able. Wouldn't mind trying this one myself. :-)