Shojo Fashion- Manga art school

Shojo fashion- Manga art school   Irene Flores   Book review

I am not really a fan of the Manga look, apart from a couple of exceptions, but this book interested me with its approach to drawing clothing. In my own illustrations clothing is something that I find tricky to draw realistically but this book is one of the best guides to doing so that I have seen.

The first section of the book features drawing bodies, heads and faces- all in the manga style- so to be honest I wasn’t really interested in this section. However I had a read through and the step by step tutorials seemed to be very informative and covered quite a bit of ground including facial expressions.

The following section on drawing clothes was what I was most interested in and it didn’t disappoint. It began with looking at different types of fabric and materials and explained the best way to draw them. As the section progressed it went into further detail on as many different types of clothing as I could think of including skirts, sweaters, shirts, jeans and coats. These were interspersed with mini tutorials on things like drawing ruffled skirts and quilted fabric. As well as the extensive range of clothing there were also lessons on drawing many different kinds of accessories.

The back end of the book gives you a few double page spreads of different types of manga characters and what to outfit them in giving you a chance to put all the previous lessons learned into practice. The final section demonstrates how to set a scene for your characters to live in and covers perspective and adding props.

Overall a very good book and not necessarily limited to fans of the Manga genre



Monster Friday

Pink blobby guy

Sketch dragons book review

Book review- sketch dragons

This is another book from Impact publishing’s “Sketch” series. So to follow the concept it comprises of a couple of pages of tutorials followed by some blank paper to practice them on. Because of this set up I have the same problems with this book as I did the Sketch funny faces book and that is the fact that I would rather have a book of drawing tutorials and a separate sketch book.

Sketch Dragons is a well presented hardback book with good quality drawing paper but unfortunately for me the content just isn’t up to scratch. The book is missing basic dragon drawing tutorials and the absence of this means that any beginner would really struggle when it came to drawing the body shape and pose in the later more advanced tutorials. I showed this book to some year 11 pupils who attend my art club and all of them had the same problem with it.

That being said there are some good points, in particularly the guides to drawing different types of dragon horns and the guide to drawing scales.  Unfortunately  that is all the book has to offer and on that basis there are far better ‘How to’ books available when it comes to drawing dragons.