(by Betty Edwards)

I picked this book up many years ago because I'd heard that with it "anyone can draw". It's been so long that I've forgot most of what it's about, and I never finished it, but I still retained something valuable from it. One of the exercises is to copy a picture of a man sitting in a chair - except, you are looking at the picture up-side down and drawing exactly what you see. With no real drawing experience, I did this exercise and was amazed when I turned it right-side up. There was some shakiness in the lines and places where things were a bit "off", but it was quite recognizable and with great detail!

It was enough to convince me that I "could" learn, but it wasn't a huge interest of mine, so I didn't continue with the book. Still, every once in a while, I'll experiment with drawing from a picture and also a few drawings of live people or look in the book for suggestions. It's a really great resource for helping to you "see" things differently - so that you can draw what you see and now what you THINK you see.