Advanced Drawing Skills: A Course in Artistic Excellence

by Barrington Barber

Artists who have mastered the basic drawing skills, push past that plateau with the suggestions in this inspiring instructional manual. Discover effective ways to design and draw compositions. Add texture, outline, and movement to enhance the realism of your drawings. Try new tools and techniques. Whether you want to improve the accuracy of your pieces or create more expressive work, these illustrated lessons are essential.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Drawing, Reference

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Barrington Barber originally worked in advertising and television as designer and art director. Then taught at Ealing Art School. Then practiced as a freelance designer, illustrator, painter at Augustine Studios. He was Head of Art at St James’s Independent Schools. Author and illustrator of Fundamentals of Drawing and about 20 other books for Arcturus Publishing. Now paints, draws and writes about art.

Reviews

[Hon Lady Selene [on a hiatus] · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was fun because Barber just takes sketches from the Masters and points out what makes each of their styles so unique:

Holbein's reduction of details to only show minimal form of facial features, see here.
Rembrandt's iconic brush strokes for backgrounds, see here.
Seurat's graduated tone rendered in charcoal, see here.

There's some really good encouragement in practicing different styles with different mediums, I especially will return to the Landscape chapters, some strong stuff there.

[Madison Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ehh nothing new

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good reference. Definately not one I would pick as a sole resoucre, but I nice supplement for instruction.