Review by Booklist Review
A quartet of lavishly illustrated, full-color how-to books encompasses many fine applications from the basic building blocks of visual art techniques, from drawing the human figure to mural painting. Becker's book quickly introduces beginners to basic materials, tools, and techniques, then progresses to exercises and demonstrations with step-by-step directions for making creative sketches with drawing media as well as watercolor. Beginners can move from a simple silhouette sketch to still lifes, landscapes, and portraiture. Colored pencils blended with mixed media are the focus of Gildow's Colored Pencil Explorations, which incorporates pastel, watercolor, acrylic, ink, and more in a presentation detailing basic application and blending, color mixing, and burnishing. In a series of demonstrations using still lifes and landscapes, each medium added to colored pencil is carefully explained in terms of its uses and techniques. Painting Murals provides step-by-step instructions for 11 projects with themes suitable for almost any room in the house. After presenting a glossary of painting terms and a brief introduction to mural painting, Grund details materials and theory before moving on to basic painting techniques, giving specific instruction on transferring the design. A listing of resources complements the instructions. From classic figure drawing flows a complete vocabulary of skilled techniques basic to visual art. Robins' guide considers the elements--line, light and shade, mass, texture, foreshortening, and more--using basic geometric shapes to achieve accurate renderings of the nude human figure. His explanation of equilibrium and center of gravity as applied to figure drawing is particularly helpful to the novice exploring this essential foundational skill, and the index makes for user-friendliness. --Whitney Scott
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
