Portrait Drawing for kids, a Step-By-Step Guide to Drawing Faces is a book designed for children aged 9 to 12 but older children and even adults can use it too. This is my review after using the book.

When I first tried the book, I was happy with the result, my first drawing using the side step-by-step was very good (according to people around me) so based on my experience it is very good for kids like me learning how to draw. The bookshows how to do the faces with guidance about proportions, shapes, shading, contour, angle and drawing more than one person. It actually boosted my confidence in drawing, I managed to complete a few activities and could clearly see how improved my drawings have become.

The book itself has different sections, one for teachers andparents. So this is also very good for art teachers and parents interested in helping their children to develop drawing skills.

There are two major sections in this book: Part One, The Basics and Part Two, The Details.

Part One has four activities teaching general techniques about getting the overall shape of the face correctly and placing each parts in proportion to that overall shape. I like that different shapes of faces are covered as we don’t all have an oval shaped face.

Part Two has eight activities and is about adding finishing touches to the drawings but also teaching how to draw in various positions and how to do group portraits.

The book is about learning drawing skills such as sketchingwith a pencil but have many activities a range of tools such asusing acrylics, pastels, watercolour, markers can also be used. There is actually a section about the tools needed to complete the activities. 

I like the section at the beginning telling the readers how to use this book. It is short but useful to think about making the activities accessible to everyone and making drawing fun, which is important for children. Another great activity is the one looking at how portraits have been done throughout history. That chapiter is very educational and incorporate arts and artists from various part of the world.

The step-by-step in each activities are not very detailed but have illustrations that are helpful in showing how to do it all.Another positive thing about the activities in this book is thatthey also show how to capture emotions. 

To sum up this book will teach you every aspect of portraiturefrom how to draw hair, nose, eyes, lips, the entire face and even posture. Although the step-by-step sections could be broken down into more steps, this is a good practical book and would make a special gift to any budding artists.