This is one amazing book!  This is a must for anyone who not only does art, but who appreciates it.  There is so much valuable information.  It goes in depth on composition, form, values and materials.  If you only buy one book for art reference, this is the one!  It not only covers all the basics, but covers advanced techniques along with it.  I have a pretty hefty arsenal of art books lurking on my shelves.  This one is a must for every artist.

More specifically the book cover the subjects as follows:

Artistic training in the twenty-first century.  

     Detailed information on classical ateliers, their purpose, and how they have been nearly forgotten.  All the great masters trained as apprentices or in ateliers.  Every brushstoke, composition, and color was backed up by hours and years of practice and learning.  While training as students the masters basically ate, drank, and studied everything art.  So much was put into each and every painting.  This gave way over the last century or so to a more hurried, abstract modern type art.

This section of the book covers all the foundations of not only drawing but a painting overall.  It covers in depth on the golden ratio and its relation to art and nature.  Along with basic compositions used by the old masters.  And to top it off, there are lots of photo references!  Makes understanding the mathematical and scientific parts of art so much easier.  This section then goes on to explain values.  Changing from two dimensional to three.  How to build form.  There are some very good examples on light and value.  How it effects objects and so forth.  

This subject goes more into the atelier style curriculum.  Explains in detail why master copy drawings, cast drawings, and working from life are so vital to really knowing and developing your art.  Though this section (and most of the book) is geared around figure and portrait drawing, the principles are really relevent to any type of drawing and painting.  There are specific parts in this section focusing only on figure and portrait.  Buy hey, studies show that people will always love and admire paintings and drawings of people (themselves or others).  So there is a little something for everyone : )

This my favorite section of the book.  Its made up of five different lesson plans to better your drawing and drafting skills.  The lessons are as follows:

1. Sphere drawing

2. Master copy drawing

3. Cast drawing

4. Reductive figure drawing

5. Portrait drawing

Being a stay at home, high school dropout, self taught artist I naturally really enjoyed the lesson plans.  They are simple (to understand anyways, actually doing them is quite a challenge).  Very useful.  Help instill timeless principles and good foundation for drawing.  And had lots of pictures!

So on the off chance that your not busy at the moment (your just sitting around browsing the internet aren't you?) , your interested in improving not only your drawing but your foundation for art in general, go check out this book.  You won't regret it!