I was first introduced to this artist when my oldest was in school twenty some years ago. He’s wonderful at giving easy to follow instructions so that you too can draw amazingly. Great book!

This is a great little book for people who are interested in learning how to draw quirky characters, but who have no previous drawing experience. I found it quite enjoyable to flip through, and tried several of these characters myself. Explanations are well thought out, and when I followed the directions I felt like a drawing superstar!

This book has really come in handy with the art class I teach. There are so many great ideas in here and wonderful tips and advice. Highly recommend!

What a fun book! I absolutely loved it. I’m a big doodle person so this book but inspiring and had great ideas . Perfect gift for any young artist and I highly recommend it. I loved just grabbing a sketch pad n seeing what was next. Good layout. Fir those new to sketching it could have had better tutorials but honestly it didn’t stop me from truly enjoying the book!

Half Hour of Pencil Power is a fun all ages book of drawing tutorials by Mark Kistler. Due out 30th Aug 2022 from Hachette, it's 176 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a collection of 25 simple and engaging tutorial lessons. They include step by step humorous directions between the progress pictures showing each new line as it's added. The language is simple and easy to understand and the finished drawings are cute and full of whimsy. They're deceptively simple but contain really useful techniques such as shading and light, reflection, and perspective.

The author has also included an introduction for each lesson with a bit of background about the drawings and how he came up with them. I loved getting glimpses into his process and inspirations.

Five stars. This would be an excellent choice for public or school library acquisition, makers' spaces, or for gift giving, possibly bundled with some drawing supplies. It would also make a great choice for adults who spend a significant amount of time with youngsters, and who are trying to learn some simple drawings to up their "draw-with-me game" for their young charges.

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

Netgalley book for review. I enjoyed this one, it took me back to my childhood. We only had a few books of Mark Kistler's, and I maybe caught him on tv in a mall's toy store once; but these art books showed me doodling was cool and could be fun. However, I had to learn how to draw and doodle in my own style, because I couldn't "copy" anything properly in the books, which was frustrating at the time. So if you're at that point, don't give up, learn to look and see, and you'll be able to draw anything eventually!

There are all sorts of tips and ideas you can learn from fantastic illustrators like this. Even just taking the time to study paintings and think about what you like and why can be useful in learning how to draw and develop your own style.

Anyway, sharpen those pencils and keep drawing!

Apparently this author has been a well known art instructor online and on places like PBS for decades, but I hadn't heard of him. This book compiles dozens of free tutorials he gave online during the early months of lockdown in 2020. They are pencil sketches of cute cartoon scenes for the most part. He talks a lot throughout and is very encouraging and conversational. He gives you step by step instructions using simple shapes and lines that you add to and erase as you go. Children and adults can follow this and produce pieces similar to his and all you need is a regular pencil (and eraser). The only down side for me is that I didn't really like most of the drawings and they just weren't my style of art (see cover for examples). That said, this is an excellent tutorial to get started drawing or to introduce kids to drawing.

Three stars -- liked it.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

Really fun lessons from Commander Mark. As a big Secret City fan I was excited to check out this new book. Each exercise is explained well and in that familiar way we all know and love from Mark Kistler. It was nice to see the techniques I remembered learning when I was younger. I can see how his zoom lessons are really popular!

This is a really cute book with drawings that make you want to try them. The sucky thing on my end is that it's one of those books you have to read from the computer and I can not see half of it.


Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review.