The most recommended drawing books

Whitlatch is best known for her creature designs for Lucasfilms, so as you can imagine her book is full of amazing illustrations explaining how to design your very own creature. It specifically takes a look at breaking down and combining different types of animals from the five vertebrate classes, as well as a close look at using dinosaurs as a reference. 

Throughout this book, the artist and editor, Avis Newman converses with the editor Catherine de Zegher about the practical process of drawing. This approach was also important and also most impactful. In the book, de Zegher asks Newman "What happens in the space between the gesture and its landing on the page?" And we love all conversations around the artist’s “doing” and “thinking." Following this conversation, the book gives the reader a window into how the drawer is thinking in the process of making and illuminates a link between performance and drawing by revealing how a drawing is performative as it comes into the world.

How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way teaches artists step by step how to build construction and energy into their poses. Helping you create more dynamic versions. I love that it is really clear and simple to understand giving the artists extreme value that will guide them whenever they draw from imagination or from life.

Many thousands of adults have learned to draw better by following Betty Edwards’ course. I am one of them.

In the book, she also explains why so many people (including me) believe they cannot draw. Why, she asks, do children spend so many hours at school learning to write? What if schools devoted that much time to drawing? Why don’t they?

Letting go of thinking in words and starting to use our senses to perceive the world helps us see the world more like it is and less as we believe it is. Betty Edwards provides great methods for getting ‘out of the words’ into the senses. I see more detail around me after having spent some time drawing something around me attentively.

Anyone who loves kids' art can relate to Art 😉. McDonnell captures the freedom and love of creating from a child's perspective and beyond. A beautiful portrait of the rawness and whimsy that comes from children's artwork – where there are no boundaries. This sweet book brings us back to that simple artistic joy where there are no limits, where we can create as we feel, play, sleep, and create some more!! 

This figure drawing guide is a classic, and for good reason. Artist Andrew Loomis wrote this book for those who have graduated from the fundamentals of drawing and are ready to embark on their artistic careers. The focus is on aesthetic as well as practical, and leans toward a more commercial approach rather than fine art, but will be helpful to both disciplines. Loomis includes chapters on anatomy, planes and lighting, drawing from living models, the figure in action, and costume, among others. He discusses idealization and other tricks of the trade to help the reader produce superior work. Explanatory sketches and examples of some of his own best sketches appear on almost every page. Originally published in 1943 this book continues as a solid reference for artists struggling to perfect their own skills.

This book was important for us because it was the first time the live method of drawing was first described as performance drawing(s).

The term ‘performance drawing’ first appeared in the subtitle of Catherine de Zegher’s Drawing Papers 20: Performance Drawings, in particular with reference to Alison Knowles and Elena del Rivero. This volume accompanied a series of five solo exhibitions at The Drawing Center, New York (2001) of work that "explored the interrelation of drawing and performance." Since then, performance drawing has compellingly become an operational term – a trope and a thread of thinking to describe the process dedicated to broadening the field of drawing through resourceful practices and cross-disciplinary influence, including dance, audio, moving image, and technology. It made a big impact on our research.

This is an excellent, well-designed book for anyone wanting to improve their Anime style of drawing. Many of the young artists I talk to have an intense interest in drawing in this particular style, sometimes referred to as the “Anime” style. This cartoon-style features sharp lines and shapes with stark, colorful graphics. Although this book doesn’t get into much instruction on how to create comics, it does provide the artist with a starting place for drawing in the anime style. From there, the artists can take this knowledge and apply it to the comics that they create. The drawings in the lessons are very well done, and the content covers all the topics that make anime a unique drawing style. I highly recommend this book.

As a speaker at a conference on Howard Gardner's work on the "Nature of Intelligence," I learned that drawing what you are learning can result in eight times faster and longer retention of the information.

This inspired me to use drawing for learning. Nancy Margullies' book on using diagram drawings, to remember information, was invaluable to me.

As I trained teachers in my drawing methods across the U.S. and Canada, they reported improved student learning and retention. They suggested integrating the method into other subjects, such as drawing parts of a flower during a science lesson, which led to increased comprehension and retention.

I applied Margullies' Mind Mapping system to conference information and shared it with my drawing students, who successfully used the technique for homework and school subjects.

A child and his crayon bring a world to life. I can’t think of a better example of the power of the imagination. I was a slow reader throughout elementary school. I preferred books with lots of pictures instead of a lot of words. So, it’s no surprise that I fell in love with Harold and his purple crayon. This book inspired me to create drawings of my own… and eventually just as Johnson does in this classic picture book, I began to combine my drawings with words. I began telling stories.