Your cart is empty.
Your cart is empty.
This Is Not A Sketchbook, It's An Art Class, Spiral-bound, This Isn't A Sketchbook, An Interactive Work Book For The Aspiring Artist
Specifications:
Product Name: This is Not a Sketchbook Drawing Book
Material: paper
Color: yellow
Size: 12x9inch
Package Includes:
1 x Drawing Coloring Book
Lisa Wiley
Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2025
I have been looking at this book for a while now. I saw videos about it and way intrigued. I was so happy to have the opportunity to review it. Unfortunately the first thing I noticed is that it’s pretty flimsy. However, that really doesn’t matter. The lessons inside are fantastic. I’m self taught and do a pretty good job. Not having had actual classes this has taught me about more technical things it have struggled with. I like having something to draw that I don’t have to think about. It’s all there for me. I love the workbook style of learning rather than reading then grabbing paper and doing it. This is a great tool for the aspiring artist.
mandim
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2025
I bought this for my 16 year old as a way for her to learn new techniques and improve on others. She has drawn several of the guided images and is very happy with the videos and says they are easy to understand and model.
ZoneWombat
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2025
I've taken several courses on the fundamentals of drawing, and have attempted to turn around and teach some of the techniques to my family and to adult students in professional training courses. As a result, I was very interested to see whether this book could do all that - and it can! All the key concepts and techniques are presented here, in an order that builds nicely from basic seeing and pencil control through lighting, composition, etc.The wire binding allows the book to lay flat so that it's easy to work in. Reference images for exercises are provided and well-selected, and I appreciate the fact that workspaces are bounded to the size of the reference image to help new artists locate and orient their work. While I found the exercises self-explanatory, recognizing them from prior courses, the magic of this book is in the QR codes! Each concept and exercise comes with a QR code that brings up a good video from the author. She explains the concept and goal, and then demonstrates the technique. I'm Gen X so I normally avoid videos as a how-to source, but these are clear, to the point, well-framed, and very useful. I ended up appreciating having videos so that I could go back repeatedly.I removed one star from my rating due to the paper and print quality. The paper is OK but not great; it's a little slick for a sketchbook, although it's thick enough that you can work on both sides. I assume this was a tradeoff to keep the cost down, and I would have made the same decision, but it does limit the use to pencil, pastel, charcoal, maybe light pen. You aren't going to paint in this or use alcohol-based markers. I would also have preferred higher quality reproduction of the reference images; they are good enough to work with but some subtleties of shading and detail are lost. Overall, I would like to see the next version of this with better paper and better image reproduction, and would happily pay at a higher price point. This book is a great value for the cost, and I hope it does well enough that the authors/artists can come out with a $30 version.
Tiffany bunting
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2025
Obsessed with this book recommend completely if you want to increase your skills, I’m only the 5th lesson in and have learned so much already
Bethany
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2025
This is a “knock off” of the actual book. The basic content is the same, so I’m keeping it, but there are spelling errors and the paper is very thin (like thin xerox paper). The cover is also very thin. The book sent to me has 2025 written on front (should be 2024) as well.I am sad that the actual creator is not making any profit from this :(
Anon for Now
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2025
This is a workbook with a twist: every page has a QR code that links to a short, but complete, video explanation and demo of the concepts to be learned. The explanations are very clear and seem like they'll be easy to follow. (If you're curious, there are a couple of public videos on the author's YouTube under ThisisNOTaSketchbook.) There are about 25 lessons, covering topics from how to see like an artist to perspective to values. There are lessons on portraits, covering each feature of the face, culminating guidance to create a realistic self-portrait. She uses a gridding technique to make the drawn image very precise.While it's not a sketchbook, it is intended to be drawn in, which leads to a slight weakness in the book: I think it's plain copy paper rather than drawing paper. For a beginner, this may be okay, but I don't see it holding up to erasing. It might help to draw lightly at first then go back over the drawing to darken the lines once you're satisfied with the sketch.Overall, I like the book. The author has obviously put a lot of thought and time into creating a course and making the videos to make it a good value for her readers. I anticipate many hours of learning a different approach to seeing and drawing from it.
customer
Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2025
I like the concept but having no instructions and everything on a youtube video accessible through QR codes makes it rather annoying to use as this requires a phone and internet connection. I can't just go somewhere quiet like a park to disconnect from tech and draw with this workbook. Pages 73-97 are blank pages - they are intentionally blank as "Open sketchbook." I thought this product was "This Is Not A Sketchbook, It's An Art Class"...? I think if the 25 pages were actually utilized to contain brief instructions for each lesson it would have been so much better design. In my opinion, this "workbook" is not a good value as it heavily relies too much on external videos. If I wanted to learn through videos, there are plenty of free resources on Youtube. The paper is very thin, worse than regular printer paper. I would not buy this again.
Recommended Products
