I'm trying not to make a comeback about flicking them first! O_______k7

Also:
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards is a decent book.
How to Draw What You See by Rudy De Reyna is recommended for the "classes" above
Drawing from Line to Life by Mike Sibley is good, but is super expensive.
I haven't read it myself, but Keys to Drawing is usually recommended.
Andrew Loomis' books are good as well. You can find them for free online, but there may be a copyright issue... I'm honestly not sure, I think people posted them when they went out of print, but they're in print now, so it may not be legal/ethical. Not sure.

You can buy all of the above from Amazon.

Don't buy Zen of Seeong: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation by Fredeick Franck. I learned NOTHING except I should have paid attention to the return period so I could get my money back, and that the author really likes to draw naked fat people.

For the Sibley book, he has some samples posted on his website of what you can find in his book: http://www.sibleyfineart.com/tipsndx.htm. For the rest, you *might* be able to preview the books in Google books, but I don't know offhand,

Exactly. Like "see this knight's gauntlet? It's cylinder shaped." Oh, awesome! "Now draw the rest of the metal, reflections/shading, and flesh it out." BUT HHHOOOWWW??!!! T_T

It's actually one of the shittiest books out there on drawing. She has you drawing upside-down Picassos before she ever covers proportioning for example and her book always assumes that you completely understood and succeeded in each chapter.

This is a problem not because it's not typical, but because she has done research on the complete development of drawing from a psychological standpoint of children through adulthood. She knows how to guide people through the process from scribbling to decent drawings but she decided not to for her book to play some pseudopsychology game with her readers. She's too focused on motivating them to draw that she fails to teach them.

I've gotten sick of all of the people advertising this book as if no one has ever heard of it. Maybe we have and we weren't able to learn from it? Maybe you can find the same lessons online without her commentary? One of the biggest problems of artists is that they look at a book from the perspective of already knowing the materials and not as a first time student. You leave out anything that led you to your drawing understanding from any lessons you've taken and mistake your previous psychological development for a quality book.

People are very bad teachers and don't take into consideration what it takes to learn something. "Hard work and motivation" is the ignorant person's way to think about it. You need to develop from where you left off or to start again from the beginning (good luck finding that though).

Well, a mouse is the worst tool to draw, so don´t feel bad.

Some of her wording is unclear, but I've learned a lot from it. The point of the upside-down drawing is that you're more likely to do "blind" copying instead of trying to draw things "correctly". So when using the book, if I copied a regular drawing, it wasn't very good, but when I did it upside down, it was a near-perfect copy.

I understand if you don't favor the book, but you seem a little overly hostile about it. I think it has it's issues, but I've looked at a lot of other books (not listed in my post) that were absolutely TERRIBLE in every regard. Her book is a decent starting off point If you don't care about the reasons she gives related to how our brains process information, you just skip it and go to the actual drawing lessons.

I'm that way when someone knows better and still decides to do it half-assedly. I can understand the regular pro artists thinking that they understand it well enough to teach but when you have someone capable who doesn't it's disappointing.

GOG seems to have many talented individuals. Thank you for sharing many useful resources. I hope to have time to take up drawing again.

My most annoying lessons on drawing was when the teacher gave instructions written in poetic language. "The lines dance through space, filling the void...". And then started saying I was not doing it right. "Just do what it says on the paper!" Well, if you want me to do it right, how about using objective language instead of trying to look smart?

thats usually the kind of lesson given to students taking art in higher education and centred around creating from abstraction.

I would definitely put my name forward for the worst drawer on GOG. I would upload some examples but they're so bad, you'd think I purposely drew rubbish.

I actually had to do that at A-Level

Nope, the idea is to springboard from given suggestions, then have an abstracted (yet also guided) point to work from - a flow of conciousness directed at the paper (or clay) - back in those days at least, now digital is the thing - its my primary working model and serves me far better than any other.*

this is the basis for much of the good game concepts you will have seen in recent years (even if the final implementation didnt work out - but thats a different method of working).

its also people who work like that who tend to be the real designers, while those that continually follow all the rules end up with no ideas and a big portfolio of shit.

*Odd thing is... it was one of my first A-Level lessons in art - and one of the last good ones. After that I ended up with a tutor who decided we had to copy "A", "B" or "C" and learn nothing from it - BUT - if we handed in original work (a fw of us were looking at comics as a future) we were accused of copying.

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For the name of all that is holy, shading and shadows are impossible to draw properly! I am really close to just giving up because of frustration...

I really wish that I'd just kept drawing back in the days.

The more practical way if you don´t get the shading/shadows is starting with a cube, then a sphere. Those two objects hold the principles of any shape you´ll encounter, then it´s a matter of experience. The longer you shade/shadow will give you a better idea on how to achieve specific shapes.
Also color theory is very handy, knowing how light works will save you from some headaches :P