The Art of Spiral Drawing by Jonathan Stephen Harris

The Art of Spiral Drawing

by Jonathan Stephen Harris

The Art of Spiral Drawing offers a fresh, modern take on everyone’s favorite childhood toy from the 1960s through today, the Spirograph®. With The Art of Spiral Drawing, no complicated tools are needed, as artists of all skill levels learn to create their own spiral art using little more than paper and a pen or pencil.

Written and illustrated by Jonathan Stephen Harris, the author of the popular The Art of Drawing Optical Illusions, the book opens with helpful sections on tools and materials, perspective, and shading, ensuring that beginning artists know the basics before getting started on the step-by-step projects that follow. Instructions for creating basic shapes, including a triangle, a circle, and a square, progress into more detailed patterns featuring perspective, florals, and more. Instructions are also included for creating a variety of subjects, from flowers to animals, all featuring a spiral pattern as their framework. Artists can even add color to their spiral artwork using the tips featured in the book and simple tools like colored pencils and markers.

Beginning and intermediate artists, doodlers, optical illusionists, and more will love creating their own spiral and geometric art with the help of The Art of Spiral Drawing!

Reviewed by annieb123 on

4 of 5 stars

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Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Art of Spiral Drawing is a tutorial and technique guide for drawing/doodling geometric illusions by Jonathan Stephen Harris. Released 14th April 2020 by Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 128 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats.

The layout follows the familiar Walter Foster book formula. An introduction covers tools and supplies and is followed by a short and easily accessible general technique tutorial and an introduction to perspective. There's a good subchapter on techniques for different geometric shapes as well as a short intro on how to compose a drawing and developing forms from simple line drawings (sailboat, tree, cupcake, butterfly, etc).

This is a very basic book but full of good techniques and will provide some useful takeaways for the majority of readers/artists.The techniques here would be great for bullet journals, notebooks, wall art, fabric drawing, painting canvas for needlepoint, counted thread/canvas embroidery, leatherworking, and more. This would also be a great resource book for anyone wanting to up their drawing-with-young-family-members game.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 22 April, 2020: Finished reading
  • 22 April, 2020: Reviewed