Review of Art Studio, Volume 1, by James Watt

As a blogger with a moderate-sized readership, sometimes I get books in the mail, or emails offering me books to review. Recently I was contacted by the publisher of Art Studio, a series of books on “real art for real children.” The author writes that his book “is geared to showing children that art and math are complementary studies, where one helps you learn the other.” I was curious so I asked for a copy.

The book is really interesting! Just to situate myself here, I like to draw sometimes but I’m bad at it. I think I can confidently say I’m in the lower half of the distribution of drawing ability. To put it another way: You don’t want me on your Pictionary team. But I’d like to get better.

I flipped through the book, and I’m getting the impression I can learn a lot from it. Some of the basic ideas I’ve seen before, for example the idea of drawing a figure by first putting it together as as series of simple shapes—but I like how Watt presents this, not just as a trick but as a matter of underlying form. And he has some good slogans, like “the right place at the right size.” I guess I resonated with the mathematical principles.

Also this, on Drawing Hair:

Usually children will scribble hair floating about the head. They wonder why it looks so awful. Well, so would your own hair if you ‘scribbled it’ instead of combing it!

Art is the ‘study of Universal Form’. If you want to draw the forms of the Universe, you have to understand ‘how they are actually formed’ and simply copy the same movements. There is no magic to art. It is simply seeking a clearer view of how the Universe really works.

That’s very statistical—he’s talking about generative modeling! It’s the Bayesian way: you don’t fit a curve through data, you construct a process that could create the data.

Also I like how he flat-out says that some ways of drawing are right and some are wrong. I understand that ultimately anything goes, but when I’m learning I’d like some guidelines, and a straight permissive approach doesn’t really help. I like to be told what to do, not in detail but in general principles such as to start from the center and go outward from there.

My plan now is to go through the book myself doing all the exercises. I guess it will take a few weeks. I’ll report back to let you know if my drawing has improved.

The target audience for this book is kids, so I showed it to a 10-year-old who likes to draw and asked for her thoughts:

Q: Tell us about yourself. What sorts of things do you like to draw?

A: No comment.

Q: Do you prefer to draw with a pencil? Pen? Does it matter?

A: It depends. Pencil is the obvios choice, since you can erase. Some pens have erasers, those work also.

Q: What was your first impression when opening this book on Basic Drawing?

A: When I first opened the book I thought it would be a journey-esque thing through drawing.

Q: Did you learn anything from the book? If so, tell us about what you learned.

A: It showed shapes and lines then formed them to drawings. I learned different techniques.

Q: Would you recommend this book to someone of your abilities and experience?

A: Yes, it takes you through drawing, helping you gain knowledge about drawing that you might not know.

Q: Would you recommend this book to a drawing newbie?

A: Yes. You learn all the starting things plus things that experienced artists might not know.

Q: What is your favorite thing about the book?

A: I like how it goes through drawing like a journey.

Q: What is the most annoying thing about the book?

A: It is pretty good, what could be improved is that they have some long parts they could substitute with something shorter but still learn the same amount.

Q: If the book could have one more thing added to it, what would it be?

A: I honestly don’t know.

Q: Thanks for answering all these questions. You now get a popsicle!

A: Thanks!

Q: One more question. The author writes, “This book is geared to showing children that art and math are complementary studies, where one helps you learn the other.” Did you seee this connection when reading the book?

A: Not really, I guess with shapes but that’s all.

P.S. The above drawings are not intended to represent great drawing; rather, they’re examples of two of the early lessons in the book.

33 thoughts on “Review of Art Studio, Volume 1, by James Watt

  1. > he’s talking about generative modeling!
    I was wondering about a connection to as it was put in the abstract of the paper you blogged about this week – “statistical and mathematical models as representations of reality”.

    Recently when talking about probability models as representations of how the data could have been generated by reality and simulation as a choice of math to discern what the probability model implies would be repeatedly observed, I have been saying that choice is a choice of medium as in art. Similar to say pointillism in painting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism.

    Representation is representation though the purpose can be very different. In statistics, it is to better grasp uncertainty/variation.

    • Possibly another parallel – “young children’s understanding of pictures: what pictures are for them and how their use of pictorial meaning develops. I concentrate on picture comprehension and not production: i.e., drawing. One finds in the literature more studies on the development of drawing than picture understanding.” – When similarity qualifies as a sign: A study in picture understanding and semiotic development in young children. SM Lenninger

      In that most of the effort in statistical publications is about showing how to do statistical analysis rather than what people should make of them, at least by experts?

  2. Andrew

    This blog is always a delight! This is a twofer for me:
    1. You had me at:

    > That’s very statistical—he’s talking about generative modeling! It’s the Bayesian way: you don’t fit a curve through data, you construct a process that could create the data.
    >

    I had always been an industrious curve fitter since I was a tad. The Bayesian process model for thinking about data now seems so natural and intuitive, but it’s been a long journey to get that way.

    2. Art, modeling and math. As an unreconstructed technoid from birth I’ve always wanted to be able to draw and make art, but didn’t have the time or inclination to dig into it. Upon retirement and other events I took up pottery (and r), which I dearly love. It took a while to accept that I was an artist. Still, my drawing sucks. Your reference to ART STUDIO, VOLUME 1 BASIC DRAWING I, was a happy event. I’m a sucker for self help technical books (like “Regression and other stories”).

  3. Andrew –

    Great post.

    To extend the connections you make….

    >… but I’m bad at it.

    This is like a student saying “I can’t do math” because they were taught it badly or becise they have integrated a set of judgment criteria that actually have little to do with math (or at best are only a limited subset of important related criteria).

    • Btw –

      It might be horribly dated (especially considering what had been leaned since about brain architecture), but I ran across “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” many years ago and thought it was very interesting in ways that are related to this post.

    • Another thought along those lines (and then I’ll stop filling up the recent comments list).

      > To put it another way: You don’t want me on your Pictionary team.

      I’m going to offer a guess that while you might not be terribly effective at rendering in a way that people easily recognize what you’re drawing, Pictionary draws on a variety of skills and abilities. I’ll bet that you’re quite good at putting together creative and logical and conceptual connections that would make you a useful team member.

      I’m suggesting that as a way to underline my point that the way we approach learning taaks of all types often stems out of truncated and/or falsely dichotomous paradigms.

    • Joshua:

      1. I don’t know if I’m inherently bad at drawing, but right now I think I’m bad at it. Some people are bad at math, too!

      2. Yes, this Art Studio book did remind be a bit of “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” but I preferred the new book, maybe because it’s more concise and focused or maybe just because I liked its explanations better. I’ll have to try out the exercises and see how it goes. I read “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” many years ago and I found it interesting, but I didn’t come out of it feeling like, Yeah, I could do this! Rather, I found it kind of intimidating. This new Art Studio book has much more of a Yes, you can do it! vibe.

      • Andrew –

        > Some people are bad at math, too!

        Well, obviously that’s trivially true – say some people with certain kinds of brain damage, perhaps.

        And I suppose it’s also non-trivially true to some extent also

        But….my point is that the set of people who say “I can’t do math” is much larger than the set of people who actually can’t do math. I’ve watched many people (adults as well as children” go from “I can’t do math” to “I can do math” or maybe at least “I can kinda do math” when “math” has been demystified and re-conceptualized in exactly the way that you’re describing with art.

        Much of the people who think they can’t do math, think that’s so because they were poorly taught about math from people who have a very limited view of what math is.

        • Joshua:

          To clarify, I didn’t say “I can’t do drawing,” I said, “I’m bad at drawing.” By which I mean, I’m bad compared to most other people. I can draw a little, and I think if I go through the exercises in that book, I might well then be an above-average drawer.

        • Andrew –

          Sure. Didn’t mean to mis-characterize what you said

          So I’ll modify what I said also, that people can go from “I’m bad at math” to “I’m not so bad at math” by undergoing pretty much the same re-conceptualizing process as what you’re describing with art, and understanding that math ability like art ability is less of an intrinsic or immutable attribute that many people think.

      • I was fortunate to go on a DRSB week-long residential course about 4 years ago, run by Betty’s son. It was an amazing experience, I went from barely competent to being able to draw compositions and people’s faces at a personally satisfying level (as did the rest of the class). It certainly didn’t hurt being located in an historic building overlooking Lisbon, Portugal! It was about a simple set of techniques and intense drills, with no worrying about being ‘authentic’ or ‘original’. The dedicated time and class environment makes a big difference, I suspect it’s very unlikely that I would have had the dedication to work my way through the book on my own. I think the success of DRSB is in the deliberate practice with corrective feedback from the tutor. Paul Foxton talks about that here: http://www.learning-to-see.co.uk/how-to-get-better-at-painting-without-painting-anything

  4. Does he show how to draw a cat? You could kill two birds with one stone by using a cat picture both as a cat picture for the blog and as an exemplar of the book.

  5. I think we discussed another book on drawing (“paint with your left brain” or something) before on this blog.

    And I would say that defining drawing as observational activity (“There is no magic to art. It is simply seeking a clearer view of how the Universe really works.”) goes much better with me than “close you right eye with left leg, disassociate from what you see and copy it”

    • when you read through Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain, what the tricks do is to convince you that you need to look carefully and think about brightness color and shape rather than to let your brain try to put down what it by default thinks aught to be there. In the end she doesn’t want you to just turn stuff upside down or whatever, but it’s more that the tricks make it impossible for you to do things the shortcut way that doesn’t work, and once you’ve done it the non-shortcut way a few times, you get to “feel” what it’s like to pay attention.

      I think it’s pretty successful, it certainly dramatically improved my drawings back 20 years ago when I read it. Today, I don’t use tricks, but I just carefully look. at least that’s what I do when I draw things which I don’t do often enough.

  6. Analogy between drawing and generative models looks very fine for me. At leas for the styles of drawing most dear to my heart. Quoting John Ruskin’s Lectures on Art 1870 Oxford, on painting plants:


    Now what we especially need at present for educational purposes is to know, not the anatomy of plants, but their biography—how and where they live and die, their tempers, benevolences, malignities, distresses, and virtues. We want them drawn from their youth to their age, from bud to fruit. We ought to see the various forms of their diminished but hardy growth in cold climates, or poor soils; and their rank or wild luxuriance, when full-fed, and warmly nursed.

    Looks quite generative-ish to me!

  7. There are some nice comments here. The books were checked, many times, for spelling and grammar errors in the editing process. The book is a physical book. The reason for this is to have it in front of the children while they do their lessons from it. As to ‘drawing a cat’, the book is teaching general art and encourages the student to ‘draw their own figures’ and to develop a ‘la-de-da attitude’ to whatever they draw. They learn to use the techniques based on logic to guide their steps. The process is repeated over and over in the books and because it is based on logic, it doesn’t contradict itself later on. It is showing children how logic works to their advantage in art and that this same logic process will work with whatever they apply it to.

    This book is actually volume 1 which introduces the basic logic which will be used in all subsequent volumes. I found this method had great success with children of all backgrounds because it is rational and all children respond to rational thinking. It actually delights them to learn and practice it.

    Finally, I see a great fundamental link between art and mathematics. Some of the comments here about ‘children who do poorly at math’ has been addressed in another book I wrote called ‘Eliminating Careless Error’. We had phenomenal success with this book turning students who thought they ‘sucked’ at math in to math enthusiasts. The number one reason for failure at math with children is careless error. They understand the concepts of arithmetic, but don’t trust the answers they get. This extremely simple system shows them how to instantly gain confidence in their answer so that they don’t have to look behind them for embarrassing wrong answer and concentrate on the concepts of math which use those numbers. A lot of art students I had over the years took art as a ‘refuge from math’. I am always clear in telling them the direct link between math and art and a lot of their problems with math come from the fact that math, like art, is often the worst taught subject in schools. I show them things in art that help them understand WHY they are doing certain things in mathematics – that they are actually the same thing, basically. I have seen many of those math refugees turn around and love mathematics and even go into it as a college discipline later in life.

    I hope all here don’t think I am too forward or prolix with this comment.

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