This is a beautifully produced book, juxtaposing historical and contemporary works in a way that bolsters the author’s claim that the program she advocates is rooted in “timeless principles.” Color reproductions are crucial to a drawing book, even when a majority of the drawings are monochromatic. In a painting the architecture of the composition can be grasped through even a rudimentary illustration, but drawings are the record of an artist’s intimate touch. We lose their immediacy and subtlety if we are denied gradations in tone, the color of the paper or prepared ground, the warmth or coolness of the restrained palette. Juliette Aristides, who studied at the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and several private ateliers, is currently the instructor of the Aristides Classical Atelier at the Gage Academy in Seattle, Washington. Her book has a didactic purpose, providing a rationale for the revival of the nineteenth-century atelier model, in which students spend a period of years with a master artist. She follows the traditional progression from copying historical paintings and casts of classical sculpture, through working from live models. The book ends with a series of step-by-step lessons for drawing a sphere, copying an old master (starting with a faintly Cubist blocking out of forms) in both line-for-line and more interpretive versions, rendering a cast of a classical sculpture, simplifying the planes of the human figure and creating a portrait. There is an element of both manual and manifesto in this layout.
