Book Review: Drawn on the Way by Sarah Nisbett

Art like many topics is subjective, and so learning how to do art will be different for everyone. I was hoping the author’s more relaxed ‘no rules’ version of learning to draw would work for me in ways that some other learn how to draw guides have not. Unfortunately, while I liked some of the principles the author professed, her style of learning did not work for me either.

I greatly appreciated the section on starting something new, that you need to ignore negative thoughts in order to simply create. The act of making art should bring joy, regardless of what the end result looks like.

I also thought the idea of starting an image with the ‘hook’ (the thing that first catches your eye) and then using that element as the scale for the rest of the image was a good technique and she explains several other clever tricks for making things look more realistic.

But the practical aspects of the book didn’t mesh with my style of drawing. I don’t like the limits imposed by some exercises used, like trying to draw an image without looking at your paper. While I can understand the point of the exercise is to make you focus on the subject and not get hung up on the end result, for me these exercises are more frustrating then helpful as I’m left with a bunch of lines that don’t look anything like the subject.

The chapters are short with only a few paragraphs explaining each lesson and in a few cases I felt that I still didn’t quite understand how to do what was being asked. Especially in one of the early lessons about interrogating the subject when determining what to draw. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of asking a still life subject ‘what happens next’?

Everyone learns differently so the fact that this book didn’t quite work for me shouldn’t discourage you from checking it out.