Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RKAE9I3KRZOJB Drawing Lessons From the Great Masters is an art book that teaches by looking at the art fundamentals used by great art masters themselves -- Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Rodin, Goya, Rembrandt, among others.

There are 100 master drawings analysed by Robert Beverly Hale on the fundamentals such as line, light and planes, mass, position and thrust, and anatomy. These are all figure drawings. Each illustration is printed full on one page with a certain section selected for analyzing on the next. The commentary is simple and concise, providing great insight to what these artists were thinking. Many of these pieces are really sketches but when you realised the thought put behind every stroke and what the artist was trying to show, you'll instantly be enlightened.

At the end of this book, even if you can't draw yet, you'll be able to identify the difference between a good and bad drawing. And when you draw, you'll remember the principles.

This is a really useful and inspirational reference book, great for beginner to advanced artists.

Robert Beverly Hale has also authored Anatomy Lessons From The Great Masters, which uses the same teaching style here but focusing on anatomy drawings.

(There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Robert Beverly Hale's drawing books are some of the first one I go to on my shelf when looking for drawing advice. Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters is terrific book to get a handle on the mental aspects of drawing.

This book is a little more generic than his others, focusing more on a general approach to drawing and a very basic overview of anatomy.

The primary truth Hale mentions that many students fail to realize and some other drawing books skip over is that drawings aren't supposed to be a copy of real life. They're just symbolic depictions of life.

If a limb needs to be moved to make a better drawing, or if the entire lighting plan needs to be redone in your head, do it. The model is just the initial suggestion on which to base a drawing.

Where Hale's books shine is that he uses old master drawings for his examples. Basic art concepts such as conceiving body forms as basic geometric shapes to help control and simplify details are much easier to understand when you can see it in a Rubens or DaVinci drawing.

I will admit that some of his advice (like buying bones to study anatomy) may sound a tad odd. But you should remember that this book is 20 years old and draws on teaching experience for 30+ years before that. However, other than that the lessons in this book are just as important and relevant now and when they were first written.

I have a ton of drawing books, (almost literally) but this and Robert Beverly Hale's other books are some of my favorites.

This book is a great addition to the student of drawing's library. The author does a superb job of analyze some excellent examples of classical drawing and elucidates the formal and structural concepts in each. Although this book does not provide very much in the way of "step by step" style technical instruction, it does provide the reader with a way of conceptually approaching a drawing.

The author demonstrates where the great artist used a cylinder, or a sphere to conceptualize a part of the subject's anatomy. He shows how lines are modulated to give varying degrees of tone and shape to the figure. Many of these ideas will stew around in your head as you approach your own drawing projects. Eventually, you will notice that you are more aware of certain parts of the form and that these are being incorporated into your work. Overall, this book is a very interesting and enjoyable way of delivering basic drawing concepts to a student reader.

This is an excellent text/reference for drawing enthusiasts, or students of drawing. Both the way it is broken down, and uses examples from the masters to illustrate the concepts offer a really solid grounding in how line is used to describe space, shape and tone.

This is one of the "timeless" drawing reference books every artist should look at when he/she needs inspiration. Hale picks some of the most dynamic life drawings by the old masters--Leonardo, Ingres, etc.--and disects them in terms of composition, tone, thrust, etc. He is right on in his suggestions that artists should study human and animal surface anatomy to understand the figure. I found his discussion of light and shadow especially instructive.