Making Faces book review

Making faces, by 8fish

This book is done slightly different to other instruction books I have read because it has been created by and contributed to by an art collective known as 8fish. This means that there are 6 different artists giving their input into one theme which results in many unique techniques and insights into the genre of drawing expressions for comics and cartoons.

It begins as most of these types of books do:- with basic lessons on materials and equipment, drawing and sketching and inking and shading to name a few. It also offers some interesting techniques for drawing mouths, eyes and noses.

Section 2 covers scenarios, (like Billy finds a flower). Each scenario has several demonstrations covering various expressions that may come about for the given scenario. For instance in demo 1 Billy is happy, demo 2 joyful, demo 3 about to sneeze. Each scenario is made up of step by step process along with other variations on the theme created by some of the other 8fish artists.

Altogether there are nine of these scenarios which cover a broad range of situations and emotions, and these make up the majority of the content of the book.

Section 3 is all about storytelling and more importantly how to make your artwork more interesting and exciting. It covers framing your image and body language. This is followed by a series of step by step demos including a zombie fighting a cave girl, noir interrogation, western standoff and a battle scene.

The book concludes with a gallery of work by the 8fish artists which illustrates the quality of their work.

This is the best book I have read when it comes to drawing faces and expressions. Even though it does have a strong comic book slant to it, a lot of the lessons can easily be applied to more realistic work or book illustration. I highly recommend it.