The Big Book Of Realistic Drawing Secrets, Carrie Stuart Parks & Rick Parks – Book Review

The first half of the book is about pencil drawing generally and, while it repeats a lot from Edwards and Dodson, definitely builds on them by showing some demonstrations and espousing the use of specialist equipment like electric erasers and proportional dividers.

The second half of the book is more interesting, moving into portraits with lots of really good tips on the face, the head and facial features.  It goes into a lot of detail.  I’d seen this book in a shop somewhere at some point and it was the second half that compelled me to add it to my wish list.  My graphite pencil drawings are few and far between but this second half has loads of stuff in there that use in creating portraits in watercolour, markers, inktense pencils or oil pastels.  The stuff on eyes I found particularly interesting – I do like to do portraits just of eyes.

There was a little bit of repetition in some places and some odd references in others that made me think this book might be made up of three or four smaller books smashed together, with the editor attempting to remove duplications and to blend the edges in an attempt to turn it into a single book.  I had no problem with this – someone without my trained eye might not be able to recognise a cut ‘n’ shut.

This book scores a comfy three stars for me.  It’s a book worthy of a place in my collection, while not being worthy of the accolade of being “great”.  There’s no inspirational artwork in there but maybe I’m being a bit unfair given that it’s just about pencil drawing.  On the other hand, it’s definitely a reference book to turn to if I’m going to be drawing portraits.

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