Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces

Wow. This is probably my favorite drawing book. Period. I must have at least 20 or 30 books on drawing - each one of them have different ways to teach or guide people on doing different techniques. But this book really really REALLY looks far more realistic than the others. And DOABLE too!!! I can tell a 500% improvement in my own art based on what I've learned from this book. The author gives excellent tips, and her blending technique is easy to follow and she only gives you a tiny list of things you need (special pencils, bristol paper, kneaded rubber, and a blending stump - which all adds up to less than what you'd pay for lunch). I was a fairly decent drawer to begin with, so I was actually VERY relieved that she didn't spend pages and pages talking about the really basic stuff like other books do. She gets RIGHT INTO how to do it, and how to do it well. She uses amazing drawings as a way of SHOWING you how to do it, rather than just writing it all out. I am a visual learner, as are a lot of people... and anyone can follow this. My sister and I both really enjoy this book and have gotten loads of inspiration and tips from this book. Even advanced level artists can learn a few things from this.

Carrie Stuart Park's 'Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces' is the best book on drawing realistic faces I've ever found. I'm an artist who's been searching for the perfect book and this is the closest. This book is easy if you're a beginner, you can start rendering amazingly real faces and self-portraits. The author has proven techniques and tools and hands-on exercises to help you be a well-trained artist without taking a class. The examples in the book are before and after works that will help the artist achieve success in no time. There's lots of illustrations for practice. Forget about what you maybe learn the old way of drawing a certain geometric form. Throw that out! This book help you to draw what you actually see. The techniques will help you draw in a short amount of time. You'll surprise yourself how you can produce a fantastically real portrait. And, the price is just right, too!

This book is the end result of years of training police officers to draw correct composite faces. I had been using other drawing books and found there were errors in the materials--incorrect proportions of the nose, pupil not centered in the iris, too large an iris and so forth. I also needed a way to teach the face in an extremely short amount of time. Dr. Betty Edwards introduced seven drawing tools to help you see and draw better. I uncovered about 27 tools to help you as an artist. I hope you enjoy and learn from its pages and it will help you grow as an artist.

This book is an outstanding resource for any artist who is interested in improving the accuracy of their drawings. The author's techniques apply to all subject matter, not just faces. When drawing portraits, I have always had difficulty with certain areas of the face, namely the curve of the jawbone area and the curve of the nostril. As the author explains, this is because my mind is drawing pictures from a memorized pattern of these facial features. She then gives many effective techniques that are designed to help you overcome these patterns and actually draw what you see, techniques that I had never thought to use before. Her ideas for checking the accuracy of your drawings help you to produce your most realistic work ever. I think that this book, in combination with Lee Hammonds' How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photograpsh, will give anyone (including those who can only draw stick figures) the ability to produce beautiful pencil portraits in a short amount of time. I should know, because I am one of those stick figure people myself! I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who desires to draw more realistically. The ideas contained in this book are extremely helpful and this book is well worth its price.