Drawing

Gr 1–3—The authors walk young artists through the steps of creating figures and landscapes through nine very simple projects per volume. In Papercraft, ovals, circles, and triangles are layered to make fish, and in Printing, rectangular erasers press paint onto paper to look like city buildings. Details are added with pen. Photographs effectively show what each stage should look like, but there are no action shots: no hands showing crafters how to hold a brush or apply paint to a potato for printing. Materials used are commonplace, with some inventive reuse of household items (such as printing with bubble wrap). These are fine books to hand to budding artist, but the layering technique used so frequently in these volumes may prove frustrating when wet media is involved—watching paint dry is no joke for young crafters.