...Is a book I've had on my Amazon wish list for a long time, and I finally got around to finding and downloading a pdf copy from Google. It's long out of copyright, so feel free to go ahead and do the same.
The drawings are beautiful. Oddly modern looking, and not as weirdly formulaic as I'd half expected. (If you've ever looked at a collection of 18th or 19th century drawings or prints you'll know what I mean, those wavy, unlikely looking trees with feathery foliage.)
J.D.Harding's trees are splendid. He's obviously worked from life, following his own excellent advice, that he passes on in the text in somewhat indigestible wedges of dense prose, but it's well worth your effort to read and re-read his lessons and take all you can from them.
He tells you how to look at things we're all used to seeing, but in a manner that will help you draw or paint them. Consider his instruction another tool in your internal toolbox, a starting point for your own investigations. Just like the writer has been handed down the language and grammar he uses, or the musician the notes and scales and theory, painters have access to a wide and deep body of knowledge. You don't have to invent drawing.
The drawings are beautiful. Oddly modern looking, and not as weirdly formulaic as I'd half expected. (If you've ever looked at a collection of 18th or 19th century drawings or prints you'll know what I mean, those wavy, unlikely looking trees with feathery foliage.)
J.D.Harding's trees are splendid. He's obviously worked from life, following his own excellent advice, that he passes on in the text in somewhat indigestible wedges of dense prose, but it's well worth your effort to read and re-read his lessons and take all you can from them.
He tells you how to look at things we're all used to seeing, but in a manner that will help you draw or paint them. Consider his instruction another tool in your internal toolbox, a starting point for your own investigations. Just like the writer has been handed down the language and grammar he uses, or the musician the notes and scales and theory, painters have access to a wide and deep body of knowledge. You don't have to invent drawing.
