Fun with a Pencil by Andrew Loomis

Who would've ever thought that a drawing instruction book might be controversial?

So this book was published in 1939. And if you're sensitive to cultural stereotypes then you might be horrified by what you see. But if you're like me and well have no cultural stereotypes in your head then this is a perfectly innocent art book. Besides nobody seems to complain about how the white people look like aliens... Racism is a learned behavior after all.  Politics aside, let's talk about the book itself.

Fun with a Pencil by Andrew Loomis will mostly teach you composition, perspective and how to relax your view of what a human should look like. The examples are mostly comical caricatures. But they are deceptively simple. Once you have mastered the fundamentals of drawing a line or a circle you'll find that the next logical progression would be the characters you see in Loomis's book. He will make drawing a person dead simple. He will break it down into manageable chunks and give general guidance on how to approach drawing.

It's also a relatively short book unlike Edward's Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain which you can't really get through in one afternoon.