About Peter Kraus Books
Accomplished fine artist, graphic designer, speaker, and instructor with over thirty-five years of excellent teaching experience, Peter Kraus is the founder of the ANYONE CAN...ARTS SCHOOL and the author of the Drawing Magic series of books. In addition to his dedication to Anyone Can...Arts, Peter Kraus is also an eminent instructor in a Los Angeles Community College. Highly proficient with multi medias and styles, Peter's aim is to bring out the expressive quality of each student. His unique teaching approach is remarkably successful with not only the artistically inclined, but also the artistically challenged, special needs children and adults, senior citizens and at-risk-youth. Proven correct time and again, his conviction that DRAWING SKILL CAN BE LEARNED is the heart of his ANYONE CAN...ARTS philosophy. "When we are growing up, we are taught that a small percentage of people have the ability to draw well, but I'm convinced the opposite is true," confides Peter. While studying psychology he questioned why some people have the talent to draw well and others don't. Something inside told him it was more than talent and his investigations led him to conclude people were not only not getting the right encouragement, but they were also getting instruction based on faulty premises. Schools teach that art comes from "intuition" and it simply flows from us. If a child isn't showing any artistic instincts from the get go, he never will. Peter doesn't deny the existence of artistically gifted individuals, but he believes drawing should be taught analytically as a skill. Instead of using the historically great artists as absolute models, our learning should start from the basics and evolve step-by-step at one's individual pace. This method gives the student a fair chance to discover he or she can actually draw well and do something with the skill. In fact, Peter prefers to look at drawing as functional and we can use it any way we want."
