The Draw Anything Book by Robert Lambry

The Draw Anything Book

by Robert Lambry

In the 1920s and 30s, French artist Robert Lambry (1902–1934) created a series of charming step-by-step lessons for drawing for a weekly children’s paper. Now, almost 100 years later, his beautiful lineworks will guide you to drawing perfection. With over 150 easy-to-follow drawings, this visual reference book offers instructions for drawing animals, people, plants, food, everyday objects, buildings, vehicles, clothing, and more.

In Lambry's stylistically vintage form, drawing is easy and the outcome is timeless. From apples to airplanes and zebras to zoo animals, the book makes it easy to draw just about anything! Lambry breaks down the process of drawing into a series of simple shapes and lines, enabling you to recreate even the most complex things in just a few steps. Use the no-slip, woodfree pages to copy the wonderful art. 

The simple step-by-step illustrations make this book perfect for beginners or experienced artists looking for quick sketching techniques. The content is perfect for illustrators, cartoonists, and graphic artists who need to create storyboards with simple ideas. It also includes prompts and practice pages for perfecting your artwork.

You won’t be able to resist the temptation to pick up your pencil, follow these elegant examples, and learn to draw everything the Lambry way.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

4 of 5 stars

Share
Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Draw Anything Book is a tutorial guide to drawing a multitude of fun small objects. Due out 8th Sept 2020 from Quarto on their Quarry imprint, it's 176 pages and will be available in paperback format. These tutorials appear to be collected from the one page lessons by Robert Lambry and translated from the French 1920's-30's edition.

The book contains numerous deceptively simple tutorials which cover a huge number of drawing exercises listed in the table of contents grouped roughly thematically: lines, angles, curves & lines, developing an artist's eye to break down objects and render them on a piece of paper, symmetry, axes, proportions, masses, perspective, and many more. The bulk of the book is pages and pages and pages of very simple line drawings which -anyone- can do. There are numerous numbered step-by-step tutorials which also contain a facing practice page to try out the tutorials.

One of the most brilliant aspects of this book is in showing the would be doodler how to combine and build on simple elements to produce a deceptively simple cohesive piece of art which looks very complex. I've been using doodling as an awareness/mindfulness exercise and it really does work. These are cute and good fun.

This would make a really fun rainy day activity for younger kids to, well, adult age. They're appealing and whimsical. This would also be a great resource book for anyone wanting to up their drawing-with-young-kids game.

Four stars

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

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 23 August, 2020: Finished reading
  • 23 August, 2020: Reviewed