Could you recommend some books that helped you learn to draw?
I get questions about my process/requests for advice a lot, and I almost never respond, because I don’t know what to say and my advice can basically be summed up as- mess about until you figure it out. No one can impress an artistic idea upon you until you are capable of seeing it on your own.
BUT- I do have an answer, in this case. Here are some books that taught me many things about art and the craft of drawing.
Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters, by Robert HaleThis is a classic that’s been in print since the 60s, and for good reason. It teaches you not only anatomy and how to represent it, but, more importantly, how to learn from the art you observe. It will change the way you look at models, your own representative work, and the work of your favorite artists. I use the observation techniques I learned from this book every damn day. It’s got like 10 different covers, but mine has this ugly head on it.
Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth, by Andrew LoomisAnother classic, this one from the 40s. The purports to be a figure drawing book, and it is, but it also has lots of lessons on expression, mood, and design. It came out of one of the high points in advertising and graphic illustration, and focuses on clean lines, expressivity, and realism. Many many artists love this book, and will tell you about it at length.
Making Faces, by Kevyn AucoinThis book showed up at my house when I was about 12, and it completely changed how I look at characterization and visual shorthand. Legendary makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin (RIP) taught me so much about shading, mood, and how to use cliche to achieve my goals. Outside of being an amazing resource on the actual application of makeup, there’s loads about performing personality and gender through visual cues. What makes a brow line “masculine?” How do you convey innocence? How do you approach the giant hill of not making every face look the same, but giving them all the same amount of life and interest? This book will give it to you.
Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, by Will EisnerWill Eisner taught me how to divorce interest from beauty. His work on the understanding of graphic storytelling is less well known now than some of his proteges’, including Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics, by McCloud, is also amazing) but Eisner is the one who set down the rules that McCloud expounds upon in his own work. A lot of people don’t love this work because it feels basic- he tells you how to communicate through cliches and quick cues. And that’s antiquated, because we like to subvert tropes and add layers of symbolism over our storytelling today. But it’s still a great foundation of rules to understand and then cheerfully break.
Dinotopia, by James GurneyWhen I was a kid, I was obsessed with National Geographic. Back in the 80s and 90s, they used illustrators, including James Gurney, to illustrate what life was like on a Roman war ship, or what ancient Minos might have looked like. Dinotopia took everything that I loved about “real” illustration, fine art, scientific and graphic illustration, and gave me my first hints of possibility. You CAN be a great artist and still draw your dreams. You can have a sense of bigness and possibility and also use all the craftsmanship and skill of a “real” artist. This all feels obvious now, but my copy of Dinotopia (with intact dustcover) follows me wherever I go, and continues to inspire me every day.
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