I have a couple of grandchildren who love art and already attend art classes. I myself am not very artistic but do enjoy having a try. Between the grandchildren and myself, i'm sure we shall have great fun together. The book itself is nicely set out with the type of tools used, including crayons, pencils and paint and various projects. Recommended.

My thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for my copy. This is my honest review, freely given.

This isn’t the prettiest book, but it is beautiful in its ability to inspire families to action. Too many art books for families focus on aesthetic over instruction. Their covers might fit in perfectly on your Instagram feed but the projects themselves wouldn’t fit into real life. The Grown-Up's Guide to Making Art with Kids is the polar opposite, with a short and affordable list of supplies and simple models your children will confidently attempt to replicate in their own styles.

How do I know? My six-year-old glanced my way while I was browsing The Grown-Up's Guide, and immediately picked up a pencil and started drawing. It wasn’t long before we’d made cars, dinosaurs and pink flamingos. The painting projects only take a bit more setup and cleanup too. One or two require some cutting and measuring for setup, and even then it’s minimal. This book is a blessing for busy parents (and for parents with artistic kids but no skills of their own).

Subtitled "25+ fun and easy projects to inspire you and the little ones in your life" this book was just what it claimed to be, although I have to say this is an artist working here so she might well make many of the rest of us look less than stellar; that said, she does generously offer tips hints and shortcuts to improving our work.

The book has a clickable "Tables of Contents" but there's actually only one table. I never got 'table of Contents' although many books use it. It's really a list of contents, isn't it?! That's why I never bother with such a thing, but this one does offer an easy jump to any chosen chapter. You don't get that in a print book! LOL! There's no jump back to the content page though, in case you jump to the wrong chapter, but the slide bar at the bottom will get you into easy swiping distance.

The book charts a steady course between a drawing tutorial and then a connected project, and so on, and you don't need a professional set-up for this; just some inexpensive paints you can buy at any big store, and/or some colored markers or pencils, or even crayons, along with some paper or card stock you can get from cardboard food packaging if you want. The important thing isn't the high quality materials, but the creativity, fun, confidence-building and sense of accomplishment children will feel when you work though these projects with them. I'm behind that 100%.

The book opens with some discussion of colors and how to work with them and mix them. There's a glossary at the back which explains some terms, although I'd take issue with the comment about orientation - which merely means which way your painting surface lies - if it's wider than it is tall, then it's landscape - imagine a sweeping vista. If it's taller than it is wide, then it's portrait. You'll know this if you take pictures with your phone, and that's my point - the last sentence claims orientation has nothing to do with the subject of the painting, but I disagree with that. Perhaps children won't much care, but to me letting them see that the orientation of the finished image can contribute a lot to how that image is perceived when it's done isn't a wasted endeavor. Anyone who's tipped their phone to the side or held it straight-up to take that picture understands this. It's the same with a painting, but that's a quibble.

The book covers animals, people, flora (if you haven't met flora you have no business being an artist!), buildings, and robots! The projects are a delight, and includes pop-up image like you might find in some children's book, and a shadow puppet theater - and many more. Don't feel dissuaded when you see how easily this artist throws together a sweet image. With practice and following her instructions, you'll get there, and even if you don't your kids will be inspired to strive for the little bit better look to their own work. I commend this as a worthy read.

On a slight downer, just as an advisory, I think this was yet another book designed as a print version, but of which I only get to see the ebook version, and even on a medium-sized iPad, some of the image labels were dissociated from the image they discussed. I think this is because the label came before the image instead of after it and wasn't tied to it, so I'd read, for example, "A cow has a similar structure, with slightly different shapes" but this would appear underneath the sketch outline of the horse. I had to swipe to the next page to see a sketch of the cow. This potentially may offer some confusion when following the step-by-step instructions for some of the projects, but with diligence, you'll master them.

The book begins with materials and info on the color wheel and mixing colors. Then it moves into Drawing Tutorial lessons (i.e. How to Draw Animals) that are fairly detailed, followed by a corresponding project for parents and kids to work on together using some of the info learned. I would say the drawing lessons are most applicable for older elementary school kids and beyond - as an adult who struggles with drawing, they provide great info for me. I think younger kids who are not art-obsessed might get frustrated with the complexity. While some of the projects do include other styles of art (painting, collages, paper folding), the bulk of the book is focused on drawing. Everything is very detailed and includes step by step photos. This book is a great resource for adults and kids alike who are interested in drawing.
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.