Monday, October 16, 2017

Draw 50 Sea Creatures Step by Step

Draw 50 Sea Creatures
The Step-by-step Way to Draw
Fish, Sharks, Mollusks, Dolphins and More!


Available on Amazon
Draw 50 Sea Creatures is a simple book on, you guessed it, how to draw sea creatures!

The only equipment you'll need is a medium or soft pencil, paper to draw on, and a kneaded eraser.

There is not a lot of written content in the book.  There is a letter to the reader giving you just a handful of tips on how to use this book to improve your drawing.

There is also a short letter to teachers on why that even though freedom of self expression is important, its also important for young artists to learn how to do things step by step as well.

From there it is just page after page of how to Draw 50 Sea Creatures.  Most of the creatures break it down into 6 steps.  A couple have 8 steps drawn for you to follow.  Even with 8 steps, some of the more detailed animals have several details are added in one step.

To me this makes this book more suitable for someone with some drawing talent as opposed to an absolute beginner. I'm not a very talented artist.  Here are 2 animals I drew from the book. 



The anemone was pretty easy, but you can see that the step by step didn't do much for me with the seahorse.



Lee J. Ames, the artist behind the Draw 50 series has been drawing for most of his life.  His first job was for the Walt Disney Studios when he was 18.  Since then he has led a career as an advertising artist, fine artist, cartoonist, designer, animation in-betweener, illustrator, and as an artist-in residence at Doubleday. 

It is his minimalist approach to teaching drawing that makes the 26 books of the Draw 50 series such a success.

(Disclaimer:  This book was received from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.  All thoughts and comments... and bad seahorse drawings ...are my own.)

1 comment:

Ruth Cox said...

I have always wondered if "how to draw" books are truly helpful. I have always wanted to draw but I do not seem to have a real talent for doing so.