I wanted to read The Realism Challenge not for myself but for my daughter who has always loved art, I thought I could point out some of the techniques shown in the book to her. When I brought this up to her she became very excited, I didn’t know this beforehand but she’s watched Mark Crilley’s YouTube video “Realism Challenge: Crumbled Paper” several times. She explained that the videos he makes shows how he draws in time lapse. He places a real life object (crumpled paper) on screen first and then he begins drawing the object in real time. When he has completed his drawing it will look like the mirror image of the real life object. This concept sounded very fascinating! Due to her excitement and obvious knowledge of Mark Crilley we both decided to read the book and try a few lessons for fun. Now, I am no artist but I found his instructions and step by step process to be very clear and easy to follow. I only tried the first few challenges with the torn & folded paper and was surprised that when I followed his steps, and went very slowly, then I actually duplicated my real life object pretty well. Of course, these first few exercises were the easy ones! My daughter tried some of his more difficult challenges later in his book and they turned out really amazing, her roses especially.

The challenges in this book start out very basic and then increase slowly in difficulty. This allows the reader and/or artist to truly grasp his techniques and instructions, in fact he states throughout the book to repeat the challenges, to make sure you’ve really grasped the different techniques before moving on. This is a book that I believe anyone with varying degrees of artistic ability would enjoy. Mark Crilley gives great insight to his process and really makes you feel like you can complete these challenges easily. I also found his section on art supplies to be very helpful and informative. I tend to spend a lot of money when I buy paint, brushes, paper, etc. for my daughter since I don’t know what’s best in terms of brands. It was nice to read about and gain some insight on which supplies are worth investing your money in and which ones aren’t. Highly recommend and I know were already planning on purchasing The Realism Challenge once it’s released, my daughter wants to continue perfecting her new techniques.

**I received a complimentary advanced copy of this book from the publisher, Ten Speed Press and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review**
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