On Drawing
By (author) Roger Winter
Publication date:
08 April 2008Length of book:
158 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9780742559165
This new edition draws on Roger Winters' considerable experience from several years of classroom instruction as well as professional work, culminating in a thoroughly revised introduction to the elements and domains of drawing. More attention is given to the visual ideas of drawing in this edition, dealing with seminal topics such as letter design, geometry, and subjects, but also drawing for picture books and graphic novels, as well as providing practical information of how one learns to draw professionally. While the Internet has permanently reduced the distance between cultures, this new edition reflects this phenomenon with content on the emergence of a global art. This book shows a special interest—without taking sides—in the intellectualizing of art brought about by university art departments and technology, and the effect this has had on traditional skill-based approaches to art. A brief glossary is included, as well as a helpful appendix which offers a series of exercises on several core topics for student use.
Roger Winter's On Drawing probes the mystery of one of the greatest gifts of humanity, the urge to express oneself through images, in a word an innate need to communicate through design rather than language or sound. The widespread appreciation for the intrinsic quality of cartoons, comics, and on occasion even graffiti and advertising as a form of art underlies Winter's broad understanding of the pervasive role of drawing today. The author's full exposition of drawing's importance as a means of visual expression from prehistoric times to the present, with its proliferation of digital and other media and a nonhierarchical pluralism of competing styles, is as lucid and accessible as it is insightful. Anyone who has ever uttered the word beautiful (or ugly), much less doodled his or her thoughts on a pad of paper, will be enriched by the words of this influential mentor of a generation of leading artists.