Drawing on the Artist Within: A Guide to Innovation, Invention, Imagination, and Creativity

I love the instructional value of the book. I am a non-artist looking to expand my artistic drawing interests.

I love to learn new things and with this book I learned something new on every page. The most surprising thing I learned is a new way to think.

This book is not a substitute for Betty Edwards' basic book on drawing, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. This book is about the creative process. So it applies to more than drawing or even visual art. For me, the part on analog drawing opened up a whole new way to develop my work. I've used it in dream interpretation and personal growth as well as for my artwork. As an artist-blacksmith, analog drawing with sumi brush and India ink has enabled me to express very specific feelings and states of being with bars of iron. You may find parts of the book unnecessarily complicated. I don't use everything in the book. But it's worth buying for the chapter on analog drawing. If you've ever had any doubts about your ability to express yourself in art, this book can dispel them completely.

This book is the sequel to Betty Edwards brilliant "Drawing on the right side of the brain", but it does contain most of the material in the other title (except for the section on colour) and adds to it a lot of material on creativity and problem solving through drawing. Mrs Edwards method is incredible (I am the one who reviewed the other book as "Took me from stick men to portraits in three days"). If this book included the color section as well it would be perfect.

I read this book as an optional "Directed Reading" for a course in Creative Problem-Solving with the University of Oklahoma. It is ironic that I had just completed all six of Frank Herbert's Dune novels just before beginning Drawing with all its exercises. My first thought was, "This is truly 'BeneGesserit' stuff!" The author guides the reader into total participation with the material and helps one to coax that much-suppressed "right brain" mode of perception and comprehension into awareness--and it is truly revelatory of the richness of one's immediate world which normally remains unexplored. Amazing it is, too, how one's skill in writing in images (i.e., drawing) improves with full interaction with the book. This is a good read, one which I suggest for those who would like to increase their awareness of the world around them and who would like to recapture some of the childlike wonder at the universe.

This is more than a book about drawing. It is a book about the creative process and techniques to tap into one's creative source. They work, and Dr. Edwards gives ample examples and exercises to get her points across. For me, it has been a breakthrough book.