Keys To Drawing, Bert Dodson – Book Review

I’ve made it to the end of Bert’s book at last.  At 224 pages long, it’s huge.

The first five chapters were fantastic.  They’re on contour drawing, “artistic handwriting”, proportions, light & shade and depth.  There are then a couple of chapters on texture and composition that didn’t especially rock my boat (and, to be honest, I’ve not yet found a treatise on composition that really chimes for me).  And finally there’s a chapter on creativity that feels like it doesn’t really belong here and that reminds me of the bit at the end of some novels where they treat you to the first chapter of the author’s next book.

There are loads of exercises throughout the book, along with interesting checklists that you can look through afterwards to evaluate your drawing (Did you draw blindfold in places?  Did you talk to yourself while drawing?).  I originally went into this book planning to do every single exercise (which I did for the Betty Edwards Book) but there were just too many of them and many of them required live models) so I didn’t follow through with this plan and, after a while, ended up just reading the book.

Look, why don’t I stop beating around the bush and just compare and contrast this to the Betty Edwards book?  OK.  Let’s do it.  I’m glad I read Betty’s book first.  I thought her book was a better starting point for someone with no confidence in their drawing.  It felt more like a study course than a book because there were few enough exercises to keep me on board and because there was a strong sense that the exercises were building up to a final big project that was the self portrait.  Bert, on the either hand, freely admits that his chapters can be read in any order, so it feels less like a course.  On the other hand, Bert seems to go into more detail and I will keep coming back to his book, whereas I doubt I’ll ever reread Betty’s.

My recommendation is that everybody buys both books but goes through Betty’s book first, doing every exercise.  Bert’s book then provides extra detail and is something to keep on the shelf to consult in future.  Bert is a book; Betty is an experience.  Both score five palettes.