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Art Encyclopedias books:
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The best of Art Encyclopedias books by number of unique Reddit comments:
Top Reddit reviews mentioning Art Encyclopedias books:
“The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Creating a Champion”
I highly recommend it! There’s so many amazing facts and illustrations ☺️
Link to how the book looks like: https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Zelda-Breath-Wild-Creating-Champion/dp/1506710107
If you're serious about learning and this isn't a shitpost I would suggest reading through
https://www.amazon.com.au/Drawing-Head-Hands-Andrew-Loomis/dp/0857680978
and
https://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-Invention-Michael-Hampton/dp/0615272819
You could probably find them online if you can't afford to buy them. Working through those books and practicing what they teach will help you see massive improvements. As much as people will say to just keep practicing, it's important that you practice correctly lest you get into bad habits.
MSRP is $40 in the US, but hardly any place will sell it for that. As others stated, it is $24 on Amazon at the moment, which is about the price I've paid for all the other Legend of Zelda books.
So the Ocarina is from the Zelda game Ocarina of Time. You said he's played Skyward Sword Twilight Princess and breath of the wild? And that he especially enjoyed breath of the wild...
This is basically a book that has a lot of lore stuff about breath of the wild. Explanations of locations, events, concept art the works.
It's kind of pricey but it's something that most fans of breath of the wild will enjoy.
The English version of the book is called “Creating a Champion” here’s an amazon link (assuming you’re in the US)
This. A thousand times this.
I highly recommend Figure Drawing For All It's Worth, by Andrew Loomis.
This will teach you everything from dynamic figure drawing to perspective. This was essential to every comic book artist of my generation and before. Not so much for the artists (and I use that term loosely) today, and it shows.
Measuring! When I was first learning how to draw the figure I measured it constantly. After you do it enough you'll eventually get a feel for it and you'll measure less and less until you don't have to anymore.
I suggest looking at a book like Andrew Loomis' Figure Drawing. He shows you how to measure, even in more difficult poses.
For a simple explanation, the standard figure is about 8 heads high. Obviously, people can vary in height so I would look at pictures of people at different heights and measure how many heads high they are.
If the pose is curving, be sure to measure following the curve.
For arms, the distance from your shoulder to your elbow is the same as the elbow to the wrist, and the wrist (when at your side) lines up with the bottom of the pelvis.
Your legs are similar. The hip to the knee is the same as the knee to the ankle.
This might help with a visual breakdown lol but I hope that gets you started :D
Should I get this? It's currently $33.08 CAD for Pre-order at Amazon Canada.
Gonna copy and paste my earlier text:
“The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Creating a Champion”
I highly recommend it! There’s so many amazing facts and illustrations ☺️
Link to how the book looks like: https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Zelda-Breath-Wild-Creating-Champion/dp/1506710107
I'm not a pro so I have no personal insight on this other than agreeing with the people who point out that invoices getting paid and repeat business happening should tell you something.
For:
> Am I the only one that deals with this a lot?
If you want to read about similar issues in general, Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking is a decent book, IMHO.
Yea they're on Amazon
That's the Art Book which is the first. The second book will be an encyclopedia of sorts and isn't up for preorder yet. And we don't know what the third book will be, but should be out this year.
I didn't have any preorders and got in line at Best Buy at 5:15 yesterday. I easily got a console and couldn't help but buy this cool picture book because Best Buy matched Amazon from $39.99 down to $23.99! They didn't have any Breath of the Wild Special Editions. I was disappointed because I really wanted that case. I just bought the regular one anyway, resigned to not having it.
Luckily, I'm too old for all-nighters anymore, so I went straight to bed when I got home. I decided when I woke up to check some local Targets and one nearby said they had one left. They said they wouldn't hold it so I drove like a maniac, ran to the electronics department, and snagged it. Since I never opened the regular game, I can just return that to Best Buy. I can't wait to get started with some Zelda now!
Wait, I can't find the Amazon link. Can you link me?
Edit: Never mind, found it. I had no idea that they renamed it to "Breath of the Wild - Creating a Champion"!
Just sketching whatever you feel like. Household objects, stuff like that. Then head drawing( This book is wonderful to start with) and/or gesture drawing. You could also look up some tutorials on drawing landscapes and do that, if you want to.
Learning gets more complicated once you become a little experienced and decide to study it more seriously, but you don't need to worry about that for now.
You have an eye for detail! Study anatomy, it will really breathe life into your work. I recommend Andrew Loomis' book on figure drawing. You can also get an ebook of it on Google Play for dirt cheap.
There's a Loomis method for the whole body. His models have easily memorable proportions and are built up over layers so you can see how he gets from each step in his thought process.
Best book on ink drawing I can think of. it will let you develop your ability then you can develop a style.
I suggest stating with those learnt o draw tutorials to understand humans faces
this book is incredible at vreating the basics. This also just takes time
It's the breath of the wild: creating a champion book. Bookshop dot org costs more than amazon but supports local bookstores. Amazon link if you can't spare it.
That's definitely pen & ink, if you want to learn how, this is one of the classic books, also check out Alphonso Dunn and Frank Lohan's books.
When I'm doing my own maps I approach it from the perspective of creating a Photoshop map. (I hand draw my maps, but sometimes do pictures in Photoshop).
I would draw out the outline of the map with no details and examine it for a while, tweaking it. (In PS this would be layer 1). Then I add rivers, mountains (PS layer 2). Then other areas like bogs, forests, and such. (Layer 3)Then cities and other habitations (PS layer 4).
All these layers are eventually merged.
In short, build up the map in stages. This enables a better idea of where everything goes and helps avoid clutter. It's so easy to get carried away making maps.
A great book I'd recommend is: https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Fantasy-Art-Maps/dp/1440340242
I hope you get the ideas. And apologies if you're not familiar with Photoshop.
I think the 4 Against Darkness are available on Amazon, but not the D100 dungeons. Amazon’s chunk is pretty sizable for single-person book developers I believe.
If you’re really looking purely for map making, there are a ton of YouTube videos you can check out too. There are also a bunch of results on Amazon for “how to draw fantasy maps, like this result”
Study the 8 head Loomis proportions for ideal anatomy, study Proko construction models for building individual pieces of anatomy, and study a method for building gestures so you can draw people fluidly in dynamic poses. Loomis' mannequin process from Figure Drawing For All It's Worth is an okay way to learn the mannequin, but I personally find Samantha Youssef to have a far better approach with her gesture process.
You then want to draw from life, either from pictures, paused videos, or models in real life. The point of learning a gesture process is to be able to put down drawings that capture lots of information from quickly looking at a person. You should be able to capture the foundation of a person and a pose within 30 seconds of line work and major body masses. It'll look like a glorified stick figure but it'll have so much information for who you're looking at that it provides the foundation for building each form of anatomy.
If you learn a gesture system that let's you put down dynamic pose information within seconds to minutes, then you can go to a public place and observe people moving around to draw them. You can also find local art colleges / art studios that host public drawing classes where they bring in models for you to draw and study while they hold a pose for a long time.
The point is, learn how to build the body parts individually, learn how to set up a loose, quick gesture wire frame that let's you get your whole mannequin down as fast as possible, and then sculpt that mannequin to fit your model with as much detail as you want.
It gives basic structure and is less "dry" than some of the academic anatomy books. (I love my anatomy books, don't mistake—I think my favorite was this one: https://smile.amazon.com/Atlas-Anatomy-Artist-Stephen-Rogers/dp/0195030958/ )
Loomis was a game-changer for me, though. It's been considered a classic for so long for a reason. There are a lot of newer anatomy books and I don't have them all, and I'm sure many of them are excellent. I think Loomis is a welcome addition to any artists' library and for me, was essential.
If you only have a small amount of time to practice then spend a lot more time studying. Examine the things you want to improve on for a couple of days without practicing, then spend a whole session trying to draw and paint that out.
Like if you wanted to improve on hands you could study the proportions and characteristics that make hands look like hands one day, then the next day draw and paint out a ton of hands according to the study session from the day prior.
Drawing doesn't actually teach you anything, it let's you work out the ideas you've spent time studying so that you can remember them. If you're drawing from a reference then you're going to get better at drawing that particular reference, but if you study construction models, planes of forms, painting techniques and processes, etc. that are larger than a single reference I find growing is faster.
For example, when I bought Figure Drawing For All It's Worth I read the entire book in one sitting. It took a few hours but when I was done I had a much more robust understanding of what I was missing and that helped me practice with more focus on my weak areas.
Some of the preview images on Magic the Gathering The Visual Guide had spoilers but have been taken down. Here's the gallery with spoilers.
Allow me to introduce you to my man Loomis. There are grids in there with front, side, and back views for male and female proportions. I'd recommend getting the book, reading it, and drawing those poses out in 8 headed grids until you memorize the anatomy markers. If you want to understand the three dimensions of an object, then draw all three of the faces. Your brain will bitmap that together when you start drawing things in odd rotations. Then study individual body parts that give you problems.
This is a little more architecture focused, but it does go into a ton of detail about line work and what lines to use to produce certain effects.
And not sure this is what you want, but here's a free copy of the classic Successful Drawing by Andrew Loomis
It was here but the particular spoiler pages were pulled from the preview: https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Visual-Guide-Annelli/dp/0744061059/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=31OCJ5HRFHT20&keywords=mtg+visual+guide&qid=1658928559&sprefix=mtg+visual+gu%2Caps%2C662&sr=8-1
Here is where somebody preserved a screenshot of it and there is some discussion about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGRumors/comments/w598u5/story_spoilers_in_image_preview_for_new_mtg/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share