Artist Toolbox: Drawing Tools & Materials: A practical guide to graphite, charcoal, colored pencil, and more

Artist Toolbox: Drawing Tools & Materials is a new book in a series of manuals covering methods and supplies for visual arts. Released 5th March 2019 by Quarto under the Walter Foster imprint, it's 112 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats.

This is, as the cover states, a practical guide to the essential tools of drawing. The book is laid out in a logical format, with an introduction, a good overview of surfaces and paper finishes (along with sidebars showing how different media work with different surfaces), and then moving along to the different types of drawing materials and tools.  The book does not 'shill' for one particular company or product, there are a wide variety of brands of pencils, pastels, crayons, etc shown. The real value of the book for me comes in the following chapters covering drawing techniques and concepts along with 6 tutorial lessons exploring the different techniques.  Most of the exercises have the same subject explored using different drawing materials to better illustrate the differences and capabilities of the tools (graphite, crayon, pastel, pen and ink, etc).

This is a no-frills, well written, concise manual for tools and supplies for drawing. It would make a good support tool for a beginning drawing course or for self study.

Four stars.

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