Author Description

Each of these straightforward how-to volumes for aspiring beginners is handsomely designed, chock-full of instructive illustrations, and decidedly upbeat. Hammond's book on drawing colored-pencil portraits from photographs, for instance, is positively homey: her first chapter is titled 'You Can Do It!' an appropriate approach to such an accessible, do-it-at-home art form. Photographs are terrific source materials, and colored pencils are clean and inexpensive, although not as easy to use as they appear. Drawing realistically (the only style Hammond considers) requires patience, skill, and familiarity with basic techniques. Hammond provides clear step-by-step instructions for drawing specific facial features and addresses the issue of making images vital. Warr's Coloured Pencils for All takes a broader approach, focusing first on various forms of colored pencils, from water-soluble pencils and crayons to pastels and wax oil crayons. Moving beyond materials, he offers numerous suggestions for subjects and provides examples of different drawing styles. Once he's inspired his audience, Warr gets down to the nitty-gritty and covers a range of essential colored-pencil techniques, including hatching, crosshatching, burnishing, and various methods for achieving different textures and dimension. Heim takes a confidence-building approach to watercolor instruction, providing her reader-students with 10 specific projects--simple still lifes such as a cluster of berries or a wine glass and a rose--geared to help beginners get the hang of using watercolors to create realistic images. She provides line drawings for each painting and explains how to transfer them to watercolor paper. Heim's description of materials and instructions for mixing colors, painting washes, softening edges, and other important skills are all clear, concise, and cleverly organized under the self-explanatory headings 'Problems' and 'Solutions.' Leveille tackles the most complicated and demanding of two-dime