Art Technique
| Drawing on The Right Side of the Brain If your work ever looked too ‘cartoony,’ get this book right now. It explains how the brain automatically tries to translate visual stimulus into symbolic representations and trains you to draw what you actually perceive. Anyone with children over the age of 10 should have a copy. |
| Drawing on the Artist Within I found the exercises in this book very useful for understanding abstract art. I was surprised to realize just how much we share our visual vocabulary: people all over express emotions and concepts in very similar ways. |
| Color One more by Betty Edwards, a practical guide to color theory. The focus is on working with acrylic paints, and unfortunately, it’s a little less accessible than her previous books. If you do get this book, you’ll want to watch out, as it advises you to buy a non-existent pigment. |
| Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green Maybe you have painful memories of trying to make purple using red and blue crayolas. You could make a satisfying purple with pink and blue, but everyone knows you make purple with red and blue – right? This book says no, and provides hundreds of good mixing exercises to help you learn how your paints interact. |
| The Natural Way to Paint Focuses on painting the figure based on loose contour drawings. Once you’ve mastered drawing realistically, this book gives you lots of help messing things up again, with really beautiful results. If your art teacher complains that your work is “too tight,” this book is for you. |