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I'd like to start by pointing out some general things about "how to draw"
books. Personally, I've never really found them as useful as they claim to
be. And I can tie this in to some of my thesis research, oddly enough. :)
In the language of problem solving research, a problem is something you don't yet know how to do, and an exercise is something you do know how to do and just have to work through. In solving a problem, you often make false starts, go off in directions that don't work, and generally bang your head against the wall a lot. In working an exercise, you go from beginning to end in a pretty linear fashion, knowing where you need to go next at every step. Things that are problems for novices are often exercises for experts. Most "how to draw" books treat art as an exercise. Follow this procedure and you'll get a finished product. This is the way professionals do it (leaving out high art vs low art arguments, please). When the guys in PLEX draw a new robot, they lay out the blocks and rods and stuff, sketch in details, erase the old lines, add more details, etc. But a novice trying to follow this method will often be limited to just reproducing the pictures in the book, it doesn't really help you learn to draw. I can copy stuff and have it look far better than my own work. It's a lot harder to incorporate lessons into my own style. In an average art instruction book, I might manage to absorb one or two lessons from it after some work, but otherwise just use the book for inspiration. So, in the long run, the most useful parts of any "how to draw robots" book will be:
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