We have been working on our drawing skills lately and one of the resources that I have really enjoyed using with the kids is this book by DK  –  How to Draw

The book starts with a general introduction into different art materials – pencils, pens, crayons and pastels as well as the different type of lines.  Then the first real drawing activity was drawing trees – we have done a number of different tree drawing activities before but my daughter still found this one helpful and I must admit after she followed the examples her trees where more detailed and realistic.

Then there are some really useful concept pages – what I mean by this is it breaks down some basic drawing concepts into understandable chunks which the kids can easily follow and try to incorporate into their drawings.  They were – Arranging Your picture (composition), Colours, Close and Far away (so perspective), How to draw a landscape, Shading and How to draw a 3D mug.  As someone who draws I was really impressed with these pages as they broke down drawing concepts which I think I take for granted and made them easy to understand, follow and then implement

Then the book goes onto drawing animals.  I loved these pages because it showed examples of how you break an animal’s body down into shapes and then use those shapes to get a realistic animal body. And after trying two of the worked examples my daughter commented that she felt more confident in breaking an animal’s body down (for drawing purposes).

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After the animal drawing pages the book went onto using grids (something we have done a lot already and I highly recommend), drawing an underwater scene and how to draw a face – another really useful page.  And then How to draw a person.  Both the face drawing page and the person drawing page are exercises which we are definitely going to do soon as they are good drawing exercises for the kids.

Then there are pages on drawing a still-life, drawing silhouettes, how to draw a dragon (this one is going to be popular with mine) and then a number of different pages on how to adapt your drawing and use them in fun ways like cartoons or patterns.

The instruction part of the book is 79 pages and that is then followed by a number of blank pages for the kids to draw on.

The book is aimed at kids aged 7-9 but I actually think that is a bit misleading as you could use it for a much wider range of kids.  For me this book is more about kids who need some drawing tools so they can become more confident with their drawings and then hopefully enjoy it more.

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I personally think this is a great drawing book and I have been very impressed with the pages that we have used and I am planning on going back and working through the other activities with the kids

I approached DK and asked if we could review this book because I like the look of the activities that were included.

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