Drawing Essentials, 2nd edition, is a fantastic book for students at all levels who want to learn to draw from observation. This book is also wonderfully useful for teachers, as a thorough compendium of skills and methods for the drawing classroom. Ms. Rockman's great gift is the clarity of her language when explaining how to actively see and translate the three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional piece of paper. Her explanations and instructions are straight-forward and digestible; anyone can pick up this book and follow along. She uses student drawings to help illustrate and augment ideas or topics in the text, which is very helpful, especially in the sections devoted to tricky skills like sighting, perspective drawing and color theory. Rockman also includes the work of contemporary artist who draw--and it is fascinating to see the breadth of their approaches to drawing.Drawing Essentials is an excellent book about the practice of drawing; it is neither an overly technical "how-to" book, nor an overly theoretical "art-speak" one. Highly recommended!