How to Draw and Paint Fairies: From Finding Inspiration to Capturing Diaphanous Detail, a Step-By-Step Guide to Fairy Art

I am awful at drawing--have never even tried it seriously. I saw this book at the local Michael's and, being an avid lover of fairies, had to get it. The book offers step-by-step guidelines for drawing! I've had the book for two weeks and have done amazingly decent-looking fairies! The book also provides templates for eyes, noses, mouths, ears, garments, hair-styles as well as basic face templates to trace. Included in the book is a very good overview of basic types of art--pencil and pen, watercolor painting, acrylic and oil, as well as the basic tools needed for each medium. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves fairies--even if they think they can't draw!

I purchased this book for my 12-year old daughter who enjoys drawing but never had any real instruction. She loves fairies so I thought this was a perfect fit. This book is not intended for small children, and even older children may not benefit if they aren't willing to study the instructions and try them. However my daughter absorbed the book and her drawings improved a great deal immediately. She's had the book 4-5 months now and still uses it quite often to study the drawings and then attempt to draw her own. This book was a great help to her and I highly recommend it.

An absolutely delightful book. I'm almost convinced that fairies really exist. Linds Ravenscroft seems to define just what fairies look like. As she says in the introduction, painting fairies offer a unique challenge, how do you draw and paint something you can't see. You have to paint what is in your mind. But then you have to train your mind to see things that others don't. In her couple of pages on hands and feet she shows things I couldn't see. You're not going to paint like this without a very, very good sense of anatomy, drawing, the human form. Here is a foot, pointed like that of a ballerina. Then her caption says: 'This foot is not bearing the fairy's weight - perhaps it is airborne.' A world of vision in a simple drawing, a few words. Or the hand with long thin fingers and long nails - 'Elongated fingers with long nails suit an otherworldly fairy who performs no daily chores.' And for the beginner to draw, here is a foot, wearing a sock so you can get a good result without worrying too much about the details of the toenails. For a youngster, especially a girl (but maybe that's being sexist) who is interested in art I can't imagine a better gift.

How wonderful to have the one fantasy artist I have admired for so long and who has influenced my work that I successfully passed my Art entry to University. Linda Ravenscroft has imparted so much of her skills and techniques in this book. For the more experienced it is always good to be reminded of the basics of coloring, and for the budding enthusiast ready for a new and exciting hobby this book clearly helps getting started. Oh Linda, how exciting are your basic shapes and forms chapter, the Fairy World is such a creative place allowing scope where freedom of expression and imagination will benefit so much from the techniques learned from you in the instructive chapters that follow, on shapes, forms,techniques and styles and rounding off with galleries of images showing the varying styles of other fairy artists. This is definitely a book for every budding artist who wishes to express their colorful feelings for nature and the spiritual connection to the fairy and fantasy world and be guided by one of the greatest. I can't wait to see more from Linda Ravenscroft whose work I have so long admired maybe she will be encouraged to have a book showing all her own paintings!