9 Essential Books.
Sketchifer
Salutations, friend -
800 million videos on youtube and counting. No wonder learning on the internet can feel overwhelming 🫠
Enter, BOOKS.
A super-focused information nugget. Your brain is engaged as active participant (unlike a video). Magnitudes of depth on a single topic. Your friends will compliment you for owning them. Organized. And they smell good 😌
Read -> Achieve Mastery.
For the budding artist, or anyone who would like to sharpen their fundamentals, Drawcademy recommends:
1. For color & light: Color & Light
A comprehensive overview of exactly what it sounds like. Color & Light nicely stratifies lighting concepts and specific lighting situations in a piecemeal way. Best digested slowly, this bad boi is dense 🌈
2. For Visual Storytelling: Making Comics
“Comics” is in the name, but the heart of this book is about the intersection of images and meaning. It’s an instruction manual for understanding, and utilizing visual language. And it’s in the format of a comic book itself. Nice!
3. For Composition: Framed Ink
A toolbox of a composition techniques that convey mood and emotion. It covers still images, animation, and graphic novels too.
4. For Fantasy Art: Imaginative Realism
If fantasy illustration had a holy bible this’d be it. It discusses the art making process, and tells you how to meld realistic concepts with the oh-so-cool supernatural ones 🐲
5. For Illustration: Creative Illustration
The gold standard for the fundamentals of visual art. Value, color, composition, and creativity tailored for narrative illustration. It is an older book, so just skip the dated section about careers in the back.
6. For Drawing People: Figure Drawing for all it’s Worth
Anatomy, average proportions, the body in perspective, people in motion, and everything else you need for drawing humans.
For a bonus deep dive on drawing people, check out Drawing the Heads and Hands.
7. For Narrative Image Making: How Pictures Work
Narrative compoistion couldn’t get any more simple. This book shows you how to tell stories and arrange image elements using basic shapes like black squares and triangles ◼️🔺
8. For Self Doubt: Art & Fear
This book addresses some of the psychological challenges of being an artist - including the ever daunting perfectionism.
(Contains the quantity / quality true story that was the feature of this Transcript post)
9. For Good Advice: Steal Like An Artist
A cute little book with simple ideas, that have big implications. An easy read, that gives guidance on mindset, and the artistic journey.
Think less; Draw More.
Read more Transcripts.
