Tuesday, January 05, 2010
The sincerest form of flattery?
Remember that old saying about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery? Maybe we can take that one step further. We recently learned that various sites and blogs are offering PDF scans of our Famous Artists textbooks—free. The people who scanned them and the people who downloaded them can’t say enough wonderful things about them, raving about how thrilled they are to be able to study and learn from this classic instruction by some of the great American illustrators.
Let’s leave aside for the moment the uncomfortable fact that these materials are copyright protected, and therefore to scan them for public use is theft. What these enthusiasts don’t realize is that our textbooks are just one part of an integrated Course whose central feature is the personal critiques by real artist-instructors—that as good as our textbooks are, the full Course, including the critiques and the one-on-one attention from instructors, is a hundred times better as a learning experience.
And not only that: we are about to launch a revised and updated version of the Famous Artists Course built on the classic material that is so highly regarded, but expanded to include even more color and demonstrations.
We’re delighted that there are so many artists and potential artists out there who love our materials. But let’s be fair. We’re still in business, our books are still in print, and our complete Courses are the most thorough and in-depth method of art instruction ever developed—and the best is yet to come!
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