Book Review - The Drawing Lesson

The Drawing Lesson  by Mark Crilley is a graphic novel that is designed to teach basic art skills through its storytelling.  I found this book to be unique and entertaining, it was also helpful for me and my 7 year old daughter.

The book is interesting in that it is a story about a young boy who meets a mentor by chance and learns to draw.  The storytelling is not really that deep but you can feel the bond between teacher and student.  The art in the book in the style of a very detailed sketch using brown tones.  The art fits perfectly with the story and feels like it was illustrated using the methods taught to the reader.

The book is broken into 11 chapters and 9 of them provide illustration lessons including shading, loose sketching, shadows, proportions, composition and putting it all together.  Each of these chapters also provides a small assignment to build on the skills you just learned.

Both myself and my daughter read this book.  She enjoyed it so much that she read it in one sitting then went back to do the drawing assignments over the past two weeks.  I’ve noticed significant improvement in her shading since she started.  The small tips peppered throughout the story have been very helpful to her like the correct angle to hold her pencil.

Overall we both thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It is something new, a different take on a tired subject.  It is in a format that is enjoyable for both adults and kids to enjoy.  I would recommend this book to any beginning artist.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.