Review of The Value of Drawing Instruction in the Visual Arts and Across Curricula: Historical and Philosophical Arguments for Drawing in the Digital Age

F or many of us, drawing is a habit we do “just because...” We do it without reflecting on why we do it. Seymour Simmons’s The Value of Drawing Instruction in the Visual Arts and Across Curricula is an insightful and needed excursion into the history and heuristics of drawing and drawing instruction arcing over centuries. He perceptively examines why we draw, the motives behind the motifs. This is not a how-to drawing book; it is a book about drawing instruction. It meticulously recounts how and why artists, art teachers, designers, architects, and others have taught drawing as they have, and how their motives and methods have changed and evolved over time. It covers a remarkable range of teaching methods past and present, familiar and distant. He boldly sets out three goals for The Value of Drawing Instruction: