John Muir Laws

¡La guía definitiva para dibujar un diario de la naturaleza! El último libro de arte de John Muir Laws, Diario ilustrado de la naturaleza. Guía de observación y dibujo, es una potente combinación de arte, ciencia y entusiasmo ilimitado: una guía práctica para ser mejor artista y naturalista. Laws proporciona claros y prácticos consejos (desde los conceptos básicos sobre la elección de materiales hasta las técnicas más avanzadas) con un texto sencillo, complementado con ilustraciones paso a paso. Docenas de ejercicios guían la mano y la mente para crear reproducciones precisas de plantas, animales, paisajes y cielos. Si bien los consejos del texto mejorarán las habilidades de artistas consumados, su entusiasmo para ver, aprender y sentir todo lo que nos rodea, lo convertirán en un libro valioso, incluso revelador, para cualquier persona interesada en la naturaleza, sin importar cuán rudimentarias sean sus habilidades artísticas.… (meer)

This book is in high demand at my library. Art books in general get checked out a lot, especially bird and botanical arts books, especially Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling. I haven't completed all the exercises yet, but I've done enough for an overall impression.

Few art books encompass most nature subjects. This one and many others have a lot of birds, sure. There's a clique for nature people who are foremost bird people. I don't specialize in birds, but I don't want to exclude them either. This book, like many art books, also has a lot of flowers. I'm a plant person, and after the bird people I've always felt like the next big nature people clique are the garden people. I'm not a garden person, but wild plants flower too, and flowers are fun to draw and paint. One section in this book includes landscape elements like water, rocks, and clouds, which are also often in many nature art books that don't specialize in birds and blooms. But this book has more, and this is where it becomes unique. It includes bears, lizards, frogs, ladybugs, caterpillars, spider webs, bark, leaves, and branches. After all, journaling isn't about picking the stereotypical picturesque, it's cataloging everything.

Other than nature subjects, Laws Guide also spans many mediums. There is graphite, colored pencil, watercolor pencil, water-soluble pens, water color, and gouache used in various exercises. Something I additionally appreciate is the use of the white colored pencil and the white gel pen for accents in the fur and feathers.

I'm not keen on Laws's subject style, but considering this is a book on journaling and not a general art improvement book, I don't see a point in evaluating his style. Journaling is meant to be simple and loose. I do, however, like Laws's composition style. For instance, a hawk will be on a branch with a rectangular offset backdrop instead of a full background, and then notes placed in the quadrant of the page that's diagonal from the backdrop. It's artsy, but functional and not time consuming. It also makes me think of the days of naturalist explorers, so it has an adventurous feel.

I'm not ecstatic about this book in the way that I am about other five star art books. This book is less about feeling empowered by it's beauty and excellent teaching style, but more about fulfilling an important niche and doing so effectively, so I'm excited all the same. It's a 4.5.… (meer)

The first third of the book had objective value. It had a few step-by-step bird drawing tutorials and basic bird biology, which was nice as someone who loves natural history but tends to gravitate to non-birds and has rarely drawn birds. However, the rest of the book was a waste of time for me.

I think it's more geared toward adults who didn't grow up with direct observation-based interests like drawing and natural history. The books spends a large amount of text on reiterating to draw what you see (what else would you draw? The imaginary monster you dreamed as a kid?), don't draw everything you presume you should see (like, as mentioned 10 times with no exaggeration and this is not a long book, individual feathers), and other ways of tediously spelling out what I thought was common sense. We didn't even get talked to like that as kids and teens in art class. However, I think there's a different mentality in adults that are just starting to express interest in art and birds, and they may need the reinforcement to observe what's immediately before them as opposed to preconceived notions ("but that's SUPPOSED to be red" or "it's TECHNICALLY red" when that's not how the color actually looks in context) or some other conditioned thinking.

I think those people would benefit from this book. I simply don't think I was an appropriate audience. There were few tutorials and a lot of text explaining what's already obvious to the way my brain works. I got bitter by the end, tired of thinking, "No ****." I had to remember I was thinking of four stars at the beginning.… (meer)