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Summary: EXCELLENT book for anyone!
Review: I have tried several different methods of artistry from pencil to oil painting. I have found pencil to be my favorite but often became VERY frustrated because I couldnt get depth and realistic detail. After a few years of NOT drawing, I found I missed it and started back up. Still frustrated, I went online and found this book. After following it step by step, I drew a picture of my daughters that shocked ME! I couldnt believe how well they came out. Now, my confidence level is HIGH and alot of people I know are asking me to draw pictures of their kids too. This book is a MUST for everyone who wants to either learn to draw or is already an artist but brush up on their skills. I cant say enough good things about it. Dont wonder if you should buy this book...wonder why you didnt if you decide not to. THANK YOU LEE! You've written a real winner here, and the illustrations are SUPERB.
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Summary: Highly Recommend This Book
Review: I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in drawing portraits from photographs. I have some experience with art from High School and also from just sketching in my free time. I am very impressed with the results that I received after using the methods in this book. For my first project, I chose to draw a celebrity portrait of Actor, Steve Martin. As I drew the outline, which is described in Ms. Hammond's book, I began to see the portrait taking shape. The more I worked, the better it became. Remember - this was my first actual portraiture! I scanned my drawing in and e-mailed it to a few friends and made sure not to tell them who the photo was of. They knew instantly that it was Steve Martin - that's how good this book is! My first attempt at drawing a celebrity portrait was a success! If you have an interest in this type of art, BUY THIS BOOK!
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Summary: Amazing Results!
Review: I just want to send a thank you to Lee Hammond, the author of this book for teaching something in minimal time that could take someone years to master who has not read this book. Since practicing the techniques in this book, I've been able to sell work on commission on a regular basis. This would not have been possible without the help of Ms. Hammond.
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Summary: like it!!!
Review: i liked the book but i don't relish the idea of drawing a graph, it seems boring, i gave it five stars because it really has improved my drawing abilities. now i can feel confident that my drawing will look good, in fact i think i shall continue using my graphs again!!
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Summary: WOW
Review: I must say I was very skeptical on how real I could make a drawing look. I had never seriously drawn a peron before. After reading this book people assumed I had been drawing for years and said that my drawings were some of the best they had ever seen. Even if you're a beginner this book will make you look like a pro.
Rating: 
Summary: blah!
Review: I see these Lee Hammond books everywhere, but cant bring myself to buy any because they are really disappointing. Mostly, the author doesn't draw very convincingly. It is hard to learn drawing from a book when the author's own drawings dont seem to quite connect. It is quite like she doesn't practice what she preaches. It is true that she has a good grip on the surface textures in her drawing, but it is all style without substance. Her likenesses are not that good and there is a ghoulish misshapen look to the drawings that is common in a lot amateur drawing. There are alot of books on drawing instruction. Some are worth the price for the art alone, but this unfortunately is not the case here. It would be easily overlooked if her text had something groundbreaking to say. Unfortunately, she does not really offer anything that is not in every other book on drawing. better to find something with more to say and better illustrations to be inspired by.
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Summary: Danger of relying in the graph technique
Review: I started drawing with the graph technique years ago and actually became a "crutch." It's a really good way to start, but later it becames childish and too mechanical. You eventually lose your respect, the awe of the human face. If this book placed more emphasis on "starting out" with graphing and then evolving to other methods, this book would have been fine.
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Summary: Drawing for All That Is
Review: I was a pencil artist over 20 years ago and took my almost natural gift for granted. I loved to draw from the very first moment I drew something well. I remember saying in suprize "It feels like I can breathe for the very first time...as though I'd been holding my breathe forever." I was taught using various methods with "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" as the basic text, so all my work was freehand. Thus I had great disdain for grafting. Even when enlarging from tiny old photographs I only used my eyes and I was very good. But things changed and I learned a much needed lesson in grace and humility.
Gradually over the last ten years there has been damage to the right side of my brain. I have for all intents and purposes lost most if not all of my artistic ability. I felt devistated when the Neurologist confirmed the test results last month. However, she did send me to a very good therapist who decided to work with me to cross train my left brain to do the right brain's artistic function as far as drawing was concerned. The first thing she did was an assessment, the next talk to me about learning to draw with grafts, and I remembered this book and how I no longer had my copy and needed a new one.
It's always easy to find fault with someone who does things differently than you do, and that stuck out in the reviews like a sore thumb. Grafting is not freestyle. It's not meant to be. It's meant to teach those whose skills are not strong, how to SEE. Right now their left brain won't shut off long enough to let them see and draw what's in front of them. A graft will help shut that down. Eventually, they arn't going to need grafts. I'm not going to be that lucky. But at least I'll be drawing and without Lee Hammond's work I wouldn't have that much.
If you are fortunate enough to draw well, that's great.It's a gift of life that is very rare. I am 1/4 Native American and for me this was a sacred experience that I disrespected instead of honoring. Perhaps this book will give me a way to make amends to All That Is.
I would like to say,I've read several reviews that have been written by well trained pencil artists and I'm suprized at what they've said. As artists, particularly pencil artists, we are suposed to be sensitive to all that is around us. We have to "draw it in" in order to draw it at all. We don't walk up to our work. We have our eyes and our brains coax it, to bring it's essence as well as it's form to us. None of us got this way overnight. Our inspiration had to be breathed into our being and our work. So, Please don't knock a tool or a person that can and will help those who are not like you...yet. They have the right and the need to feel what we feel, the "whole-y-ness" of our art." And they might turn away from this clear source of help if an "expert" says it's "no good," and never know that experience because of what they have read. This is not the book for a professional artist but it just might be step one for a person who has lots of blocks to cut through because of say "cartooning." Then they can go on to "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain," by Betty Edwards, or books by Maltzman, or Petrie etc. when they are ready. They can always prowl through the stacks here at Amazon and look inside at books before they buy. Thank you to Lee Hammond and to Amazon for the opportunity to write these reviews.
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Summary: Useful yet the title is deceiptive
Review: I'm a rank beginner at drawing. I found the book very useful, yet the title is deceiptive. This book has *nothing* to do with drawing, as Hammond begins every lesson in her book by assuming you already have "an accurate line drawing" of your model, obtained by gridding your photograph. Nevertheless, she then explains in minute details the secrets of shading, modeling and lighting, and her advice is precious indeed. I found this book especially useful alongside Douglas R. Graves' "Drawing a likeness". Graves book is all about drawing, and complements Hammond's book beautifully. If I had only one book to pick though, I'd take Graves'.
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Summary: Too many flaws, artwork isn't very good
Review: 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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