Book Review: Drawing on Tablets and Smartphones for Absolute Beginners by Etienne Nguyen Tan Hon

Drawing on tablets and smartphones: For absolute beginners

Reviewed by Teodora Totorean for Readers' Favorite 

Drawing on Tablets and Smartphones for Absolute Beginners by Etienne Nguyen Tan Hon is a manual for people who want to try their hand at digital drawing. The book starts by presenting the advantages and disadvantages of traditional painting vs. digital painting and finishes with sketching tips. In between, the author shows readers how to choose the right canvas size, the drawing, painting and blending tools, how to use technical tools from the application like zoom in and zoom out, digital colour theory and colour coding, uploading and sharing the artworks. Packed with step by step exercises of various drawing techniques using the tools available from the application, the book offers a variety of projects that people can do while reading the book. You will learn how to draw various shapes (circle, cone, square, etc) while gaining valuable knowledge about shadow, perspective and contrast.


Drawing on Tablets and Smartphones for Absolute Beginners by Etienne Nguyen Tan Hon is a hands-on book of learning while reading. The exercises are easy to follow and understand and the images that illustrate the steps are relevant and useful. The technical explanations are informative and no different from the ones I learnt when attending art classes. The only change is using the digital tools instead of brushes and pencils. Also, the hand warming exercise by drawing free lines and curves before starting your project is no different from what you would do before starting to draw with a pencil. The book is a useful manual for everyone who might want to start drawing and painting on tablets and smartphones, be those amateurs or professionals.