Dragonart Ultimate Gallery book review

Dragonart ultimate gallery review

 

As opposed to her other books that are based around art instruction this one is a showcase of artwork by J “Neondragon” Peffer.

It is well presented and produces with a hard cover and printed on good quality paper. Unfortunately  this is where the good points end. I personally do not feel that Peffer’s work deserves such a showcase for it. The main reason for this is the colouring technique as it appears that everthing has been coloured digitally. I am quite a fan of digitally produced art and do despair when it is used to create the flat, layered effect that Peffer seems to employ on every piece featured. To me, this technique gives digital art a bad name. Also there is no usefulness with this book as far as I am concerned, I would not refer back to it for anything whereas her Dragonart collector’s edition was full of great tips and tutorials.

On a plus side a lot of the images are accompanied by comments from the artist stating techniques, processes and inspiration involved in the piece.

My dislike for this book is mainly due to personal taste so fans of the artist or this flat digital aesthetic may find entertainment and inspiration here. For me the Dragonart collectors edition is far superior as I find her techniques and processes are much better than her actual finished pieces.

Dragon art collectors edition - book review

This book begins as most art instruction books do- with the basics. The basics in this book, however, are different to the standard ones that seem apparent in most instruction books. It covers topics like using different colour groups, applying overlaps in perspective and drawing braided hair, all of which were refreshing to me.

After this the book remains in familiar territory and part 1 is comprised of several step by step tutorials of how to draw fairy tale based creatures such as sprites and elves. These are interspersed with feature demos on fairy wings, dwarf beards and orc tusks. Parts 2 and 3 follow suit with more tutorials based on other fantasy realms. These are followed by part 4- fashion central, an informative section demonstrating how to draw clothing and accessories to adorn your creatures with.

It isn’t until part 5 on page 113 (fantastic dragons), that we see a dragon and with the book being titled Dragonart I did feel slightly misled. The tutorials are varied and thorough though, breaking a dragon down into its separate component parts to ensure the reader gets to grips with every aspect of a dragons anatomy. This section ends with several step by step full body demonstrations of dragons.

Part 6 continues on the dragon theme and concentrates on unique details to add to your dragon drawing to really make it you own. Details like spiralled horns, types of scales and tail ends were particular stand outs for me. This section is sadly ended rather abruptly and with it the theme of dragons as we come to part 7 and other fantasy creatures. This section takes us through to the end of the book.

Overall I enjoyed the contents of this book but did find that with not even half of the books contents being dedicated to the dragon genre the use of dragon in the title a bit of a miss sell. Don’t be put off by this though because I did find the drawing tutorials in this book to be some of the best and most simple to follow that I have seen in a book of this type for a long while.