[.ca] Pencil Drawing Kit (ISBN 156010189X)

Brought out the artist in me:
Before I got this kit, I never really thought I was that good at art. Once I got it out, I couldn't stop drawing the beautiful pictures he teaches. When I brought my drawings to church, everyone was amazed at how good at art I was. Everyone I showed my pictures to thought they were beautiful. I would highly recommend this book. The instructions are easy to do and understand.

You Can Do Better:
The very short book has a few nice drawings of varied subjects, broken down into a few stages each. There's little in the way of real instruction, though--certainly little that a true newbie would find of use. The art materials include a very small sketch pad (just 9.5 x 6.5 inches) and a passable beginner's assortment of pencils and so forth, as described by Amazon. There's one huge problem with the pencils, though: the darkest is a 2B. For many pencil artists, that's the _lightest_ thing they'll often work with. If you want to achieve truly dark areas in a drawing for realistic contrast and shading, you need something more like 6 or 7B and darker (or charcoal pencils or sticks). You'd be better off buying basic materials at an art supply store and checking out beginner tutorials online, more detailed instructional books, and/or taking a class at your local art center, school, etc. For a newbie, I'd recommend getting a full set of quality art pencils (like 8B-2H hardness) in a case, a kneaded eraser (vital!), vinyl eraser, a couple stumps/tortillons, a small sanding block (or just use a piece of fine-grit sandpaper for carpentry, etc.), a sharpener (any standard one will do), a ruler, a circle template, and a _big_ sketch pad.