How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs: Amazon.ca: Lee Hammond: Books

Product Description

If you've always wanted to draw beautiful, realistic-looking portraits of your favorite people, this step-by-step guide shows you how to do it - better and more easily than you ever thought possible.

Lee Hammond quickly teaches you how to add the illustration of three-dimensional highlights and shadows to simple shapes using pencil shading and blending. After you've got the basics down, you'll learn how to use the same techniques to portray every feature of the human face. You'll also discover how to figure out what the features of your photographed model really look like so you can draw them from different angles. Then Hammond shows you how to put all those features together to create a lifelike portrait that truly captures the individuality of your subject.

After you've completed these easy-to-do drawing exercises, you'll soon be turning the memories frozen in your old snapshots into warm, beautiful works of art.

Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
A good portrait is the product of many important elements. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

36 Reviews

5 star:		(29)
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Average Customer Review

4.5 out of 5 stars (36 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars satisfied first time amazon buyer, Jan 30 2012

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margo - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs (Hardcover)

I would like to say thank you to this vendor for been prompt at shipping my book. I was a bit leary on ordering from amazon but turned out to be a good transaction. Thank you again

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5.0 out of 5 stars Jumping in to Portrait Drawing, Feb 4 2002

By

Dennistoun Brown "Absaroka Studio" (Billings, MT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs (Hardcover)

Lee Hammond's book was the only book of several I purchased on drawing portraits that got me off to an immediate and credible start. The technique of gridding a photograph is a wonderful way to begin creating accutrate line drawings. Despite what many may say, there need be no apology for using this method. Many, many professionals use grid drawing as did the Great Masters. Beware the critic who says there is only one way or that certain techniques are "cheating". It is the result that truly counts. Nonetheless, every aspiring figure artist should make learning to draw from life their goal. Before then, however, build confidence with the method Lee describes.

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Too many flaws, artwork isn't very good, Mar 13 2002

By

skunktrain (So. California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs (Hardcover)

I've been drawing (and selling) portrait art for a long time. I had been hearing all sorts of good things about this book, so I got it to find out what all the fuss is about. What a disappointment.

I can tell that this book has helped a lot of people, and I'm glad for that. I can also tell that the author is a friendly, helpful person, and I'm glad for that too. However, there are MAJOR problems with this book.

For one thing, the artwork isn't very good. In fact, only a few portraits are marginally OK. For one thing, the smudged graphite technique doesn't look very good. This is a classic "newbie" technique, and is rarely done well. (Many of my art teachers forbade students from smudging graphite, because it usually looks so tacky.) To be fair, a few of the portraits in this book didn't look *too* bad (the portrait of Ryan White was OK). However, for most of the portraits, the words OVER RENDERED come to mind. Too much rendering and blending just make the face look flat and smudged. Rendering the teeth too much (a classic no-no in portrait art) makes them look dirty and grungy. Yet this book shows such over-rendering, as if it is attractive, and OK. It isn't.

Some of the drawings are just WRONG, or way off. The illustration (of the bald person) showing the placement of the ear on the head from side view is a bit freaky-looking. The shape of the head is all off. The entire drawing looks awkward, like she wasn't really comfortable or sure of what she was drawing. And then there's this truly dreadful picture of the eye and nose in profile, where the eye is itty-bitty, but the nose is HUGE. Wildly out of proportion. There are other bad drawings such as this, which makes me wonder - how can someone learn how to draw from a teacher who is a little unclear herself?

And the grid method: Sure, this is fine as a learning aid, but other drawing methods should be taught as well. One cannot be stuck forever, gridding everything. Some attempt to learn how to draw freehand should be made, if the artist ever wants to draw from life, or have *any* kind of flexibility with drawing. Even artists (like the "old masters") who used the grid method a lot also learned other techniques, like freehand drawing. So, it's too bad that all this book teaches is the grid method. That's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to drawing.

If someone wanted to use this book in conjunction with a book that teaches good drawing principles (like the Douglass Graves portrait books, or Betty Edwards' excellent "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain") I suppose that would be fine. The author seems to be a friendly, encouraging sort, and that's great. Too bad that most of the artwork in the book isn't very good.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Lifelike Portraits
I bought this book after I was visiting my sister. She had drawn a picture from the book and it looked pretty amazing. Read more

Published 1 month ago by B. L. Kaiser

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book!
This is one of the best books on drawing portraits I have seen. There are several other fine books that go into more detail about the basics of drawing faces, proportion, etc. Read more

Published on Nov 28 2003