Product Description

The Drawing Bible is the definitive resource artists need in order to master this important medium. As a complete drawing course, it teaches both how to draw and how to use drawing materials. Award-winning artist Craig Nelson provides easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions that cover:

-Crucial drawing principles, from perspective and sketching to gestures and details

-A variety of subjects, including landscapes, still life, people, and buildings in both black and white and color

-Ways to experiment with mixed media, surface types, personal styles and more

In addition, this book is conveniently packaged in an enclosed spiral, making it a perfect, portable reference tool for beginning and advanced artists.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #117112 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• 304 pages

About the Author
Winner of over 200 awards of excellence, Craig Nelson's work is housed in permanent collections at Walt Disney, Warner Brothers and Toyota. He is also the author of 60 Minutes to Better Painting.

Customer Reviews

EXCELLENT OVERVIEW WITH SUPERB SAMPLES
I do not know what kind of background the previous reviewer has but as artist and art teacher I highly recommend this book. The idea of valuing it according to price, like some kind of bean counter is absurd.
The book covers the fundamentals and the drawings are superb. It is easy to carry and also serves as a continuous source of style and inspiration.
As for the price it is worth every penny. If you want beautiful though realistic images to act as an ideal and have enough intelligence not to need Parental consent to see the nudes in the book please DISREGARD THE FATUOUS AND INCREDULOUS REVIEW ABOVE.
The book dose exactly what it claims and dose so with great art, style and composition. Craig Nelson is one of the most accomplished draftsman of this era and has made, and shows great choices.
Need to be taken by the hand through everything pertaining to drawing then head for your nearest art school, as no book can do what a serious series of classes in drawing fundamentals can do. However don't trash a perfectly fine and inspirational book for the price or the heck of it.
And, yes I do own the book and am very pleased with it. So are my many students.

art student drawing reference
I almost finished with this book and have concluded it is well worth the money.

It has a lot of information useful to the drawing student that I have not found elsewhere and I have a lot of drawing/art books.

Subjects are a quick and dirty summary except fot the demonstrations which cover maybe three pages and take you step by step through the process of makeing the drawing.

lloyd lehn

a collection of generalized art medium info, much overpriced.
"Drawing Bible" by Craig Nelson, with a publication date of 24 March 2006....

The suggested retail cover price is $24.99, which is much too high for basic art information, and that is reduced by Amazon to $15.99, so the book can be had for somewhat of a "bargain" price. However, I have reviewed other books that cover the same material for less still than $15.99, and more thoroughly.

The issue here is whether or not the author is providing a beginning student of art with a book of useful information. If somone wants this BIBLE of generalized information, it is certainly a personal choice. In my experience however, looking back upon all the years that I have bought books, no beginner needs a BIBLE like this, for the simple fact that all a beginner needs to learn drawing is pencil and charcoal. In Nelson's DRAWING BIBLE, the first pages introduce colored pencils, pastel chalk, pens and inks, colored inks and other media that really is beyond the "beginner" level. Therefore, I do not see that all of the above "advanced" drawing media are useful in any practical sense.

Chapter after chapter of diffuse, generalized art info follows.

There are 11 pages on perspective, and finally, by the time you study up to pages 186, 187, 188, and 189, these four pages contain some "animated" human figures. Not much to work with really.

Following the four pages on drawing the human figure in motion, pages 205 to 219 cover drawing heads and faces.
All of the figure and head & face drawing can be had in cheaper books, and it is covered better.

If one desires a general reference book on various drawing mediums and you can afford the book, it may be something you want; but I think this book is based on the assumption that people will sit and read page after page of encyclopedic information that is of no immediate use, to be stored away in memory. In fact, most students of art will use very specific information and want lots of it on a single subject, like drawing the face & figure, or landscape drawing, or architectural drawing, and this book merely covers everything briefly, so that for every single chapter's subject, you will have to go out and buy another book to cover it thoroughly.