Instructional & How-To Art Books

The Artist's Way

Julia Cameron

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Total reviews: 284 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good, and the sequels are even better. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I borrowed the original from a friend and worked with it a couple of years ago. I bought the tenth anniversary edition because this year I was determined to get beyond my midlife crisis and I couldn't find this book in the library. Of course I saw the related titles in Amazon.com, and looked them up. I kind of wish Amazon and other online stores had a discreet way of indicating the order of the titles in a series. I immediately gravitated to Vein of Gold, and started to use it, but now I am in a class that is based on Walking This World. I can't do both at the same time, so I'm concentrating on the class. Artist's Way is an excellent introduction.

Immensely helpful book 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I first bought The Artist's Way a few years ago as part of a creative writing class, and came back to it recently. I'm in week 11, and it's changed my life so much! Every week provides exercises, which along with the morning pages, are meant to mine out some important insights as to why you're stuck as an artist, or to help you do more things for yourself. If you don't have any sort of block, long-term or short-term, then it probably is not the book for you. The book could be divided into three important parts: morning pages, artist dates, and essays. The essays are pretty helpful to read, generally well-written but sometimes a bit on the New Age side. An artist date is just taking yourself somewhere or doing something without interruption from anyone else, to do something fun. Morning pages, as nearly everyone has already said, consist of three pages written in a notebook every morning. They are about the most helpful facet, but I still recommend getting the book. Remember though, it doesn't actually have anything to do with any technical or historical aspects of art. Just more of a preliminary step before creation, for people that feel too shy or ashamed or something.
Somewhere at the beginning, you'll list changes that could happen in your life, things you always wanted to do, ways you could be nicer to yourself. By the end, you'll have done them. I swear I've gotten better at nearly everything. I can play guitar better, my voice can hit high notes clearer, I've improved at drawing and I go more places. I can't pick out a single flaw in this book. Others may find something bad to say, but personally I think it all works.

Editorial Review:

NOW AVAILABLE _ Digitally remastered, and on CD for the first time

Read by the author

An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration from the Private Sketchbooks of Artists, Illustrators and Designers

Danny Gregory

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Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

AMAZING and so inspirational! LOVE IT!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I absolutely love this book and can't believe the amazing price. What a find!!! Danny Gregory is an inspiration to me. It's so great to read about each artist's process and to learn about the different materials they use and how that evolved.

And I love the glimpse we're getting into the lives of these artists. (I guess I'm a bit of a voyeur, but who isn't!)

There are a couple of reviews here that say the font is too small. I can honestly say I hadn't noticed that. I just went and looked and yes, it's on the small side, but too small? NO. If you have trouble just go to the drugstore and buy a pair of those reading glasses they have. There are some totally fun and artistic styles. But I'm 44 and have no trouble reading the book.

There is another reviewer who is complaining about the color... WHAT!??? No way. it's a gorgeous book. If you're concerned about either of these too things i'd say, don't be. If you're really concerned, just go to your local bookstore, pull it off the shelf and see for your own eyes.

It's not printed on glossy paper... maybe that's what the reviewer means/prefers... but to me this natural paper is lovely and more in keeping with the original works. Watercolors, pen and inks, etc. aren't done on glossy paper, after all. Journals aren't made out of shiny paper...

It's a *gorgeous* book and it really is in a class by itself.

Editorial Review:

An Illustrated Life offers a sneak peak into the wildly creative imaginations of top illustrators, designers and artists from around the world through the pages of their personal visual journals. Popular visual journalist and author Danny Gregory reveals how and why keeping a consistent, visual journal leads to a more fulfilling creative life. Designers and artists working in all mediums will find creative inspiration from these insightful interviews and stunning examples.

Wall and Piece

Banksy

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Total reviews: 60 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

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The collected works of Britain’s most wanted artist.

Artistic genius, political activist, painter and decorator, mythic legend or notorious graffiti artist? The work of Banksy is unmistakable (except maybe when it’s squatting in the New York’s Metropolitan Museum or Museum of Modern Art.) Banksy is responsible for decorating the streets, walls, bridges and zoos of towns and cites throughout the world.

Witty and subversive, his stencils show monkeys with weapons of mass destruction, policeman with smiley faces, rats with drills and umbrellas. If you look hard enough you’ll find your own. His statements, incitements, ironies and epigrams are by turns intelligent and witty comments on everything from the monarchy and capitalism to the war in Iraq and farm animals.

His identity remains unknown, but his work is prolific. And now for the first time, he’s putting together the best of his work—old and new—in a fully illustrated color volume.

Banksy, real name unknown, was born in Bristol, England.

The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence

Betty Edwards

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Total reviews: 170 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

illustrated with 12-page color photo insert and line art throughout

A revised and expanded edition of the classic drawing-instruction book that has sold more than 2,500,000 copies.

When Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was first published in 1979, it hit the New York Times bestseller list within two weeks and stayed there for more than a year. In 1989, when Dr. Betty Edwards revised the book, it went straight to the Times list again. Now Dr. Edwards celebrates the twentieth anniversary of her classic book with a second revised edition.

Over the last decade, Dr. Edwards has refined her material through teaching hundreds of workshops and seminars. Truly The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, this edition includes:

* the very latest developments in brain research;
* new material on using drawing techniques in the corporate world and in education;
* instruction on self-expression through drawing;
* an updated section on using color; and
* detailed information on using the five basic skills of drawing for problem solving.

Translated into thirteen languages, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the world's most widely used drawing-instruction guide. People from just about every walk of life--artists, students, corporate executives, architects, real estate agents, designers, engineers--have applied its revolutionary approach to problem solving. The Los Angeles Times said it best: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is "not only a book about drawing, it is a book about living. This brilliant approach to the teaching of drawing . . . should not be dismissed as a mere text. It emancipates."

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

David Hajdu

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Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

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In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created—in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. No sooner had this new culture emerged than it was beaten down by church groups, community bluestockings, and a McCarthyish Congress—only to resurface with a crooked smile on its face in Mad magazine.

The story of the rise and fall of those comic books has never been fully told—until The Ten-Cent Plague. David Hajdu’s remarkable new book vividly opens up the lost world of comic books, its creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority.

When we picture the 1950s, we hear the sound of early rock and roll. The Ten-Cent Plague shows how—years before music—comics brought on a clash between children and their parents, between prewar and postwar standards. Created by outsiders from the tenements, garish, shameless, and often shocking, comics spoke to young people and provided the guardians of mainstream culture with a big target. Parents, teachers, and complicit kids burned comics in public bonfires. Cities passed laws to outlaw comics. Congress took action with televised hearings that nearly destroyed the careers of hundreds of artists and writers.
The Ten-Cent Plague radically revises common notions of popular culture, the generation gap, and the divide between “high” and “low” art. As he did with the lives of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (in Lush Life) and Bob Dylan and his circle (in Positively 4th Street), Hajdu brings a place, a time, and a milieu unforgettably back to life.

The Complete Maus

Art Spiegelman

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Total reviews: 192 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Yes. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I went to a exhibition on the history of comics a couple of years ago. They had all kinds, from Little Nemo to Jack Kirby, and many things in between. One of the things featured was several pages from Art Speigelman's Maus. I was so intrigued by what I saw that I had to buy it off Amazon, and I have not regretted it. Don't be fooled by Speigelman's seemingly simplistic black and white work. His storytelling is powerful stuff, I tell you.

For any who doubt what graphic fiction can do, this is the revelation. 5 out of 5 stars.
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The Holocaust hangs over western society in the second half of the twentieth century. One man said that poetry was impossible after Auschwitz, but great artists in numerous mediums have dedicated themselves ot proving this wrong. The great crime has provided a great canvas for stories of humanity in the face of evil, such as Steven Spielberg's film "Schindler's List". "Maus" is the comics world's prime entry in this difficult field of literature. Writer and artist Art Spiegelman brings us the story of his father (and mother, by times), two Polish Jews who narrowly survived the war. Having already chosen to tell his story in the form of a comic, a medium often looked down upon as inherently childish by those who don't know any better, he further chooses to cast his characters as anthropomorphic animal, in the manner of an animal fable.

This choice has attracted some controversy (on display in many of the reviews on this site), in some cases because they believe it trivializes the subject-matter (to which I would say "Animal Farm"), or, more commonly, because they take issue with the seeming racialist use of different animals for different nationalities (Jews are mice, regardless of nationality, other Poles are pigs; Germans cats, the French frogs, Americans dogs, etc.). Spiegelman actually discusses the implications of the latter thing within the narrative, which includes an extensive b-story set in the then-present (from the 70s to the 80s), following Art, his wife Francoise, and his elderly father as Art writes "Maus". Francoise is a French Christian who converted to Judaism, and wonders what animal she should be cast as (he chooses a mouse, for the record). Spiegelman never casts all of one group as behaving the same way.

"Maus" reminds me a bit of Paul Verhoeven's "Black Book" in its depiction of wartime Europe's complexity, including the now-uncomfortable degree of collaboration or prejudice found in the occupied countries. Vladek and Anja encounter everything but solidarity with their fellow Poles on the journey through the war; fellow Jews rat them out to the Nazis, others require payment to help Jews avoid death, something that Art expresses amazement at, but Vladek seems to see as very reasonable. Spiegelman doesn't paint his father as a saint, indeed, expressing concern that his father comes across as a stereotypical miserly Jew; at one point, Vladek is shown to be strongly racist against blacks, again to Art and Francoise's amazement. The animal characterizations are never binding; for all Spiegelman's concern over France's history of anti-Semitism, the one French frog we see is an amiable fellow-inimate of Vladek's; even among the German cats we find a Polish Jew married to a German woman, the product of this union being peculiar cat/mouse hybrids.

"Maus" is ultimately a very affecting, personal work from Art Spiegelman, and does a fantastic job of communicating the life story of his father. it is a shining example of what the graphic novel form is capable of achieving.

Editorial Review:

Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. A contemporary classic of immeasurable significance.

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Scott Mccloud

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Total reviews: 126 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Brilliant Book! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Okay, this is seriously one of the most brilliant books I have ever read, and I have Henry (who is also brilliant) to thank for introducing this to me. (Thank you, Henry.) Although this book has been around since '93, I suspect it's nowhere near as recognized as it deserves to be, but with time that will change, I hope.

The full title is "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art," and what Scott McCloud does is explain what we take almost completely for granted, not just about comics, which he convincingly raises to a fine art, but also about the way we 'see,' and think we see, the world around us, especially as it is represented in words and images.

It's an important book because he talks in deceptively simple terms about how we perceive reality. McCloud shows the reader, through the seemingly "childish" mechanism of comics, how we think about what we perceive. Therefore, it's an epistemological text, and those are always of tremendous interest to me. It's also a book about how creativity works, and that's a central theme to my research. I've spent most of my adult life dealing with 90% of what he encapsulates in 215 densely packed (and highly entertaining) pages. Did I mention that the entire work is written in the form of a comic book? No? Well, it is.

It purports to be about comics, but that is only the tip of the philosophical iceberg. It's a study of how to think about words and images, and how we have come to use them, not just in Western society, but also in the East. He calls this the "invisible art," the effect of the combination of words and pictures, and if you read this, you'll get a much better understanding of the term "closure," which is the phenomenon of what the brain does when interpreting the gaps between words and pictures (in comics, this gap is represented visually by the space between each frame of words and images). We make up a story in our minds to close this gap, and it's a crucial piece of the story-telling process, this 'silence' that leads the reader to decide what really happens.

Scott McCloud combines semiotics (the discussion of the meaning of signs and signifiers), art history, rhetorical analysis (why it's so brilliant), cognitive and neurological research (another reason it's so brilliant), with an analysis of art and literature's influence on human social dynamics. The synthesis he reaches makes the invisible, visible, and will help the reader understand how comics evolved and where they come from. Hopefully, it will give the reader a new appreciation for the comics art form.

I have studied the theory behind virtually every aspect of what he's talking about, except comics, and so I know the sources he's relying on to get to the information he's condensed for the reader, and I also know you won't like those sources, but you will like this book because it's accessible in a way semiotics, rhetorical analysis, and the finer points of art history, are not. But if you read this book, that's part of what you'll be reading, and you'll be glad you did.

Editorial Review:

Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, this innovative comic book provides a detailed look at the history, meaning, and art of comics and cartooning.

Scrapbooks: An American History

Jessica Helfand

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Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

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Combining pictures, words, and a wealth of personal ephemera, scrapbook makers preserve on the pages of their books a moment, a day, or a lifetime. Highly subjective and rich in emotional content, the scrapbook is a unique and often quirky form of expression in which a person gathers and arranges meaningful materials to create a personal narrative. This lavishly illustrated book is the first to focus attention on the history of American scrapbooks—their origins, their makers, their diverse forms, the reasons for their popularity, and their place in American culture.

 

Jessica Helfand, a graphic designer and scrapbook collector, examines the evolution of scrapbooks from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present, concentrating on the first half of the twentieth century. She includes color photographs from more than two hundred scrapbooks, some made by private individuals and others by the famous, including Zelda Fitzgerald, Lillian Hellman, Anne Sexton, Hilda Doolittle, and Carl Van Vechten. Scrapbooks, while generally made by amateurs, represent a striking and authoritative form of visual autobiography, Helfand finds, and when viewed collectively they offer a unique perspective on the changing pulses of American cultural life.

 

Published with assistance from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund

How to Draw 101 Animals (How to Draw 101)

By: Top That Publishing PLC Amazon Marketplace: 4 new & used starting at $48.18

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A good idea, but probably not for children. In fact, probably not a good idea for adults either. 3 out of 5 stars.
15 of 20 people found this review helpful.

Well, it started out good enough. Owl, pig, dog, crab: easy peasy, mac and cheesy! I was in a drawing frenzy by animal number 8, which was a lion. I could draw a lion with my toes, and even then I could draw a decent one with only my left pinkie toes using one of those useless tiny stub pencils that you find in public libraries.

So then I turned the page and there was animal number 9: The Fishhawk. I had never seen a Fishhawk before, but there are a lot of animals I haven't seen. So I learned how to draw this half-fish half-hawk thing and continued on to number 10, which was a Fishbook. Now, Fishhawk, I'll buy. But I don't see how something could be fish and book all at once. Furthermore, the Fishbook was pictured as if it was reading about itself in a book called "Fishbooks: A True Story".

Well, there's a lot about science and zoology that I don't know, and I can't argue if there's a book out there called "Fishbooks: A True Story". So I drew this and continued on to number 11, which was, literally, the "Elevenosaur". Easy enough, I guess, but numbers 12-18 were, in order, the Twelvopotamus, Thirteentelope, Fourteencat, Goatifteen, Sixteengoose, Seventelephant, and Monkeighteen. Each of these was an anthropomorphized version of the number itself, only with some sort of vague animal resemblance.

Nineteen was actually just directions for writing the number "19". Under the side notes, called "Quick Hints," it says, "First draw the number 1 and then the number 9! Now combine them!" Number 20 was finally a real animal. It was some guy named Dave who, technically, is a human animal. However, 21 was "Doubledave" and 23 was "Tripledave" and so on until 29, "Polydave." Each of these was exactly the same drawing as the previous one, only with one more Dave.

The thirties were actually animals 1-10 again, but now with hats or actually themselves in the form of hats. For example, "Cat in a Hat" and "Lionhat" and "Dave wearing a pig hat." Although, I admit, #35 Crabhat looks pretty cool, but I don't see how it's kid-appropriate to have him injuring Dave's head with instructions on how to realistically draw arterial spray.

At this point, I started to skip ahead. Some of the notable animals in the remainder of the book are listed below:

#40. Beezoriite. A bunch of human-like bees coming out of a nest that looks like, I kid you not, the US Capitol Building. Bees aren't animals, but at this point I'm not going to nitpick. They are, however, illustrated with a strange accuracy. The queen is apparently Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, and several painstaking steps are included as how his "lipless smirk" should be precisely drawn.

#41. Jackelopemesopotamia. Described as "half jackrabbit, half antelope, half Mesopotamia".

#42. Dave, once again, but wearing a shirt that reads: "The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything." I don't get it.

#52. The Syrripidon. The author took a full 80 pages to describe how to draw everything involving The Syrripidon. This apparently includes a pencil-like arm that the Syrripidon uses to draw other body parts onto itself. I supposed that explains why it has 4 beaks, 12 sets of legs, and something like 70 arm-like appendages that include a grappling hook, can opener, and "arm made of money". The final illustration is largely kid-inappropriate because the Syrripidon is pictured in a cartoon saying, in a vulgar and uncensored manner, how he cannot stop drawing things onto himself and that "no eraser can erase this pain."

As of the date of my writing this, Google cannot find one instance of the word "Syrripidon" on the internet.

#70. Cow. Strangely enough, these are well-written instructions on how to draw a pleasantly-cartoonish barnyard cow.

#72. Dogcow. Okay I see where this is going, all the way up to...

#79. Catdogcowcrabowlpigdavegooserabbit. As a "Quick Hint" the author instructs you that goose genes are the dominant phenotypes here, with rabbits coming in a close second.

#80-89. Multiple poses of the author's cat, Jinx, who is described as his "only friend now."

#90. A bottle of whiskey, but with arms. The bottle is drinking a smaller bottle of whiskey.

#98. The Authoridox. I believe this actually some sort of animal incarnation of the author. Included are several pages on how to draw everything from his "heart injured from the evil Exwifica", to his bloodshot eyes, and his "back, stabbed by the backstabbing best friend I once had." This is a very challenging animal to draw, which is probably why it's at the end of the book. I found the Authoridox's cirrhotic liver to be difficult to render, and I've never before attempted to illustrate the effects of a retrovirus-suppressed immune system.

#99. Daveasaurus Rex and Exwifica Regina. Well, this one really isn't child appropriate, and I don't see how the publisher failed to edit out this horrible, horrible image. There aren't even instructions on how to draw these "animals", but I don't see why you'd want to draw them anyway. Incidentally, Rex and Regina are the proper Latin words for king and queen, which tells me that a scary amount of thought went into this particular drawing.

Overall, I give this book a 3. I would have rated it lower, but it's difficult to fault a thorough, 900-page children's book for being incomplete. I would have rated it higher if not for giving me nightmares.

Design of Everyday Things

Donald A. Norman

By: MIT Amazon Marketplace: 11 new & used starting at $14.99

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Total reviews: 150 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

It's OK - but how can this be the seminal book on usability...? 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Having heard that this was the seminal work in usabiliy, my expectations were probably too high.

Some of the principles laid out are indeed excellent and well illustrated.

The structure of the book is - ironically - not crystal clear. As I am reading the book I find myself looking back at the table of contents to understand the structure.

The writing style is slightly entertaining at first and you sympathize with the author hanging out himself as a clumsy and spacey academic. However, after the first 30 pages the rambling style and the somewhat unstructured content makes the book really boring. I had to push myself to finish it.

What strikes me is the lack of other books in this topic. Despite my criticism I'd be curious to read Norman's new book.

One of the best books any designer could read 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

So often "design" books seem to go on about looks and "feel" yet only brush over the physiology of design. This book shows you how to think like a user, explorer like a user, error like a user and design for helping the user love your product.

Anyone reading this book will instantly appreciate truly good design over the average mud we currently live in.