This inspiring book makes drawing in a realistic style easier than you may think and more fun than you ever imagined. Authors Mark and Mary Willenbrink (Watercolor for the Absolute Beginner) cover it all—from choosing materials and the correct way to hold your pencil, to expert advice on the tricky stuff, like getting proportions and perspective right, drawing reflections, and designing strong compositions. (It's not as scary as it sounds…not with Mark and Mary as your guide!) At the heart of this book, a series of fun, hands-on exercises help you practice and perfect your strokes—24 mini-demos lead up to 9 full step-by-step demos. Each exercise builds on the previous one as you develop your skills, build your confidence, and enjoy yourself along the way. The lessons you learn by drawing simple subjects such as coffee mugs, clouds and trees will help you take on progressively more challenging matter like animals, still lifes, landscapes and portraits…the kinds of subjects and scenes you've always dreamt of drawing. This book is just the ticket for budding artists of any age. It's never too early and never too late to discover the pure joy of drawing.

Open this book as an absolute beginner, and come away as a proud portrait artist. Mark and Mary Willenbrink's Absolute Beginner books have helped thousands of novices tap into their inner artists. In this book, Mark and Mary help the beginning artist take on portraits, showing that absolutely anyone can draw faces. Their encouraging, easy-to-follow instruction style makes learning fun—you'll be amazed by how quickly you achieve impressive results. Drawing Portraits for the Absolute Beginner covers everything from warming up with sketches, and capturing facial expressions, to framing your finished work. Page by page, you'll build the skills and confidence you need to draw lifelike portraits of your friends and family. What's Inside: • A simple two-stage approach to drawing portraits: sketch a likeness, then build up values to bring it to life • Step-by-step instruction for drawing eyes, noses, mouths, hairstyles, hands, glasses and other tricky elements • 13 complete demonstrations featuring a range of ages and ethnicities • Tips for evoking more personality in your portraits by using props, costumes and accessories

Have you ever experienced the peace of walking through the woods or the excitement of a storm gathering on a beach? Drawing Nature for the Absolute Beginner will help you capture these moments in artwork and share them others. In their fun and friendly teaching style, Mark and Mary Willenbrink offer a great beginner's course on drawing nature, showing you how to realistically capture the world around you. All you need to get started are some simple supplies, basic techniques, and inspiration. From field to forest, beach or mountain, begin with a structural sketch, apply values and textures, and, before you know it, you'll be drawing everything you see. You'll even learn how to render favorite wildlife such as chipmunks, deer and eagles! • Follow along with easy step-by-step demonstrations to draw rocks, seashells, butterflies and even more developed nature scenes. • Gain a working understanding of key concepts such as perspective, value and composition. • Discover simple tools and tips you can use right away to improve your art.

Everyone can draw and paint, including you! Even if you have never drawn or painted before, you can start creating your own beautiful artwork. Let the Willenbrinks show you how! Beginning with materials and basic techniques, these pages will teach you everything you need to know to get started in drawing, watercolors and oil painting. Follow along with 75+ demonstrations and mini-demonstrations as you learn how to draw and paint a wide variety of subjects: people, landscapes, buildings, still life and more. Every essential art topic is covered, from sketching and shading to composition and color. Simple step-by-step instruction and many enormously useful lessons and tips will have you making your own masterpieces in no time! You may be an absolute beginner, but great results are absolutely within reach!

Perspective made simple. How to draw in a realistic style. Perspective is arguably the most important element of drawing and also one of the most difficult to master. It's what gives drawings dimension and is the key to realistic drawing. Now the best-selling authors of Drawing for the Absolute Beginner are here to demystify perspective, simplify concepts such as vanishing points and multi-point perspective, and make it easy for you to experience success...and have fun while you're doing it. • Tricks and techniques for creating depth and dimension using lines (linear perspective), values (atmospheric perspective) and color. • 23 mini demonstrations on how to apply basic principles of perspective make getting started easy. • 12 full step-by-step demonstrations, each with a structural drawing, cover a variety of subjects, including interiors, architecture and still lifes. • Starting with a simple box to illustrate fundamental concepts, artists will develop a working understanding of how to cast any subject in realistic depth and dimension. This book puts it all into perspective.

Discover the limitless possibilities of pastels with this beginner’s guide to creating modern, lively, and colorful pastel artwork. Artist and teacher Rebecca de Mendoça offers beginners a complete course in using pastels. Step-by-step exercises and longer projects help you to build the essential skills you need to paint a range of subjects, including landscapes, still life, portraits, and animals. Vital drawing techniques are explained and demonstrated, along with easy-to-follow explanations of color theory, composition, and the pastels themselves. This volume includes techniques for using both hard and soft pastels, eight skill-building projects, and a wealth of finished artwork to provide ideas and inspiration.