The Complete Idiot's Guide to Drawing People Illustrated

I have several books on portrait drawing. Some of them are great and some are not. This one falls into the great catagory. What I really like is the first part of the book gives you guidence and exercises to help you learn the skills you need to draw portraits. Some books will tell you a head is shaped like an egg and the eyes are in the middle. Ok great, you know where they go, but if you don't know how to draw an eye, it doesn't help much. I really like the shading section as well. I've done some nice portraits only to mess them up by not shading them correctly. Drawing portraits can be very rewarding and stressful. This book has really helped me overcome some of the more difficult aspects of this art. I think having some drawing experiance is a plus and will lead to better results faster, but even beginners will really benefit from what this book teaches.

Way better than most art books, Covers so many necessary points. The author has a great website too.

Great book, gives you very good instruction for drawing people. A must for budding artists.

I am a stay at home mom of 4 boys and after 13 years of staying home, I thought that I would start refreshing my memory. I am a graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia and this book did more for me than my anatomy or fashion illustration classes ever did! I had always struggled with my faces and proportions and I bought Brenda's book and in minutes I had a face drawn, proportions correct and it didn't take me the hours or days that it used to and I have even used it with my Adobe Illustrator 10 software! I recommend this book for everyone, because I had always been taught that if you can master the human face or body, you can draw anything!

I became a fan of Brenda Hoddinott when I purchased "Drawing for Dummies." Her methods in art pedagogy are second to none for someone who, even though they've studied art for a long time, have yet to find out how to demystify the drawing process. Get this one, coupled with "Drawing for Dummies," and also go to her personal art education website, Fine Art Education.com, or http://www.finearteducation.com, and if you apply yourself to even a few of her lessons, you'll find yourself much more confident in yourself as an artist and a person. I tried "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" for years (well over one and one half decades), and it doesn't hold a candle to what Ms. Hoddinott has put out.