The Fairy Artist's Figure Drawing Bible: Ready-to-Draw Templates and Step-by-Step Rendering Technique

Excellent condition & even with a hurricane it arrived promptly. Definitely a good seller.

I really had great hopes for this book based on the few reviews I'd read of it on Amazon.I have found certain areas of the book where a subject appears that interests me -- mainly the mean and nasty creatures, and I like the way the author gives us the opportunity to try different ways of drawing images already presented in the book.But overall, I'm disappointed.1) Almost all of the so-called "good" fairies look like they're about 12 years old. This interests me almost as much as hunting for the missing sock that I KNEW I just put into the wash, but which never came back out. One or two female fairies seemed close to being adults, but not many. It's like the author thinks her readers all wish to draw Alice in Wonderland over and over again. I'm not one of those readers. I was looking for something far more edgy, and that's not what I got.2) The author does a really bizarre thing in this book. She gives you ways to COPY selected drawings in the book (to copy the basic figure outlines, that is), and then tells you how to achieve the same effect she achieved. How doing this is going to TEACH YOU ANYTHING except how to copy pictures better, I cannot imagine.To make things worse, she tells you what colors to use, when to use a wash and when not to, what color wash to use (even if you hate the color) and on and on.Colored sketches of, say, different poses of faces almost always gives you faces of 8th-graders to study. These faces look like they haven't even had time to enter high school. This does not help me even slightly; I'm not interested in drawing children.She does give you different versions of hats, costumes, footwear, wings, tails, and other whatnot, but then she shows these objects placed upon a little kid and for me everything falls flat.I'm not likely to use this book much; when I did use it, I ended up erasing everything the book suggested I draw and let my imagination decide what to do [with many thanks to Ed Org].If you think of fairies as cute little cherubic beings that flit from here and there doing whatever it is that cherubic beings do, and you aren't interested in working at drawing and really LOVE the fact that you can COPY selected illustrations in this book, then you'll like it.I don't think of fairies that way. I think of fairies as mythical ADULT beings who may or may not be good fairies [bad fairies are much more interesting]. So if I want to draw my kind of fairy, I won't look at this book. The book is useful for goblins and spriggans and various kinds of mean, nasty fairies, and I may at some future time refer to the book for specifically that purpose.But I found the book a real disappointment, and wish I'd had the opportunity to thumb through the book so that I knew before spending my money that it wasn't a book I wanted.If, however, you're in 7th or 8th grade and want to draw fairies that look somewhat like you look, then you'll be happy with this book. If you're in 7th or 8th grade and your favorite RPG is DOOM, skip this book. You won't like it.This is an author who TELLS YOU TO COPY HER ILLUSTRATIONS! And this author apparently doesn't care very much about her work, given that she encourages wholesale copying of her own work -- and that is a phenomenon I'll never understand.When someone does not encourage you to trust your imagination and see just how far you can trust your own ideas, there's something wrong. It's certainly not a mode of teaching that I'd ever advocate.If you want to start drawing in a way that challenges your imagination, this is not the book to buy. The author doesn't challenge you to do your own thing.So decide to buy this book or not based on what kind of artist you want to be. If you like cookie-cutter "art", then you'll love this book. Otherwise, buy a different book.Personally, I won't be buying this author's books again.

This book is 256pgs long and covers a lot of information in excellent detail. I liked the sections on color, wings, costumes and accessories, rendering, fairy silver and the character directory.The section on color gives you a color wheel and shows how to combine and modify colors for different colors, moods, schemes and seasons.The wing section gives you good detail and understanding on how to place them on your fairy in different poses. It also shows you different patterns and types of wings, such as: feathered, bat, butterfly, leaf, flower and branch wings.The section on costumes and accessories and fairy silver, gives you an idea of what to place on your fairy and gives you inspiration to create your own.The character directory section has about 23 different characters to choose from and each have their own costume and accessories that aren't shown in the costume section. The directory shows the character in its habitat and gives the name and a detailed description of the character, along with color palette used and costumes and accessories used. I like the directory because you get many poses, backgrounds and costumes to modify or to create your own based on this as reference.This is a great book to reference and get ideas from. Most of the fairies are children or teen, so if you were looking for adult fairies, you won't find them in this book. But this is still a great book for referencing and it has so much useful information.

I originally purchased this book for my 20 year old niece who I wanted to encourage to get back into drawing. While younger, she had drawn action figures and really showed some talent. Upon receiving the book, it gave me some ideas and I decided to order another for myself. The fact that the book lays flat is also very helpful. I've always drawn pencil portraits and wanted to expand into whimsical figures. Now that I'm taking colored pencil classes, I hope to create some small artworks using the basics in this book. I might even try using polymer clay to sculpt fairies and this will provide ideas for the hairstyles, expressions and costumes.I don't see anything wrong with tracing a draft and using a correctly proportioned drawing as a guide. Sometimes people new to figure drawing get discouraged when their first attempts are "out of whack". Also, I didn't find a problem whatsoever that the fairies appeared to be young. Most people would tend to think of them as small dainty beings and having child-like features. And besides...part of being an artist is to expand on what you see, so that's where the creativity can come in.

Like her other drawing books, Linda Ravenscroft gives a general overview of some diffferent art techniques for first time artists. She also offers several ideas showing how to incorporate nature into the varied aspects of your drawings, how to make the clothing and other items appear fashioned from leaves and twigs. Ms. Ravenscroft provides several samples of her own work and breaks them down to demonstrate how she acheived different effects. I find this useful to learn how she created specific looks so then I can apply them to my own drawings in different ways. The fae within the book vary from young to old (most do fall in the ageless youth category), enchanting to grotesque, and include one very hot fairy king;-) I personally appreciate the inclusion of pages of fairy art by other artists that open up new ideas for treatment of the fairies.

An amazing book

I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination , but this book allows me to have some fun , my grand daughter likes this book as well.