Ed Emberley Interview

My Ed Emberley interview is up at Kelly's Loaded Questions blog. Check it out!

Here's a review I wrote for Amazon back in 2000.

When I was in first grade, I had an art teacher who tried to show us how to draw using circles, lines, perspective, and so on, and I remember distinctly the experience of knowing that I could draw circles (and to an extent, straight lines) but there was no way I could put them together in a way that would look anything like the teacher's work.

This book was my salvation. Within these pages you'll find instructions on how to draw all kinds of creatures, from the lowly ant to an elaborate dragon, all by adding easy shapes (traingles, circles, linnes) one-at-a-time.

There is considerable truth in this book (and the author's others, which I unfortunately didn't discover until recently). How simplicity can communicate. How you can tackle something big by working in small steps. How you can make something you imagine come to like.

To this day I can take pleasure in drawing pictures, even though they're simple and I've never taken an art class since first grade, and I attribute a lot of that joy to this book. And nothing compares to giving a frustrated five-year-old an Emberly book and watching his face light up as he realizes that maybe he can make his drawings more than just scribbles.

This book (and the others) cannot be recommend too highly.