A small list of recommended books for those of you who desire to pursue the creation of sequential graphic storytelling. Some of these are the books that got me started and some are books I still refer back to today. I have all but 2 of these in my home library. Enjoy!
Dynamic Anatomy: Burne Hogarth was one of the founders of the School of Visual Arts in NYC. His series of drawing books are among my favorite and most used. I would say much of my ability to draw figures from scratch comes from the basics I learned in these books. When I was younger I would copy whole sections of this book into sketchpads over and over. This repetitive motion gave me a good understanding of how bodies move and work, along with how 3D shapes come into play when drawing. This book is a real winner, even if all you do is copy the images over and over. You can’t go wrong here!
Dynamic Figure Drawing: Another gem. By the same author, this book focuses more on movement and whole whole body in motion. This in combination with the anatomy book are a great tool for someone trying to learn to do comics or illustration. Again my process was simply copying the images in here over and over till I felt I had learned something. If you have difficulty drawing figures, drawing multiple characters in one page, or making your characters move well, this is a great book to use. Get it and copy every image! I guarantee you will feel a bump in your figure drawing level!
Human Anatomy for Artists:Â You may wonder why I had so many anatomy books. The only reason I read and drew from so many of these was becasue anatomy was my weakest point. I was constantly trying to improve in this area and bought any book that looked like it could help. This was a book I picked up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during my senior year of high school. What a good purchase. This is for the guy or gal who wants to know how everything in the human body works and looks. This book is gigantic and filled with drawings of all the bones and muscles on a male and female body. I have probably drawn almost 90% of the illustrations in this in sketchpads over my adult life. Very challenging and detailed, this book is awesome for those of us who want a deeper understanding of how the human body works and what is in each spot you draw.
How to draw comics the Marvel Way: This one is obvious. I’m pretty certain anyone who starts doing comics for any reason has read this book. I will still recommend it! The techniques are solid, the advice helpful, the processes still influence what I do. It’s simple, direct and well written; has tons of examples and pictures and will get you moving on your way to laying out your own pages. I especially recommend this to anyone who has never drawn comics before. This book is a good starting point. I want to point out, the book does not focus so much on style as it does technique and process. Your style is always a personal choice, but how you make your pages is something you may want to research. Breaking the rules means learning them first!
Comics and Sequential Art: One of the two I do not own! I sadly have never read this one. My wife, however HAS, and learned how to do comics from this alone. Will Eisner’s comic works are amazing, so I would assume no less about his instructional books. I plan to take my own advice here and purchase a copy of this for my library!
DC Comics Guide to Penciling: Written by School of Visual Arts instructor Klaus Janson, this one is a really great source of info for the guy or gal who has read the basics many times and has a decent grasp on their own drawing style. This book will help you with telling a story in the most clear and effective way. I would recommend if you plan to start doing your own stories or publishing your own books, you read this over. This guy shaped manyof the practices I use for my own stories and helped me overcome many of the hurdles I had early on in my comics.
DC Comics Guide to Inking:Â Read this one after or along with the penciling book! Another book that focuses on the storytelling and communication aspects of comics, this time with inking. This is also a hugely helpful book that I recommend you read. I always find something new in here.
How to Draw Manga, Compiling Characters: Another basics book. Focuses on creating characters for manga and the techniques used for making a page. This is a very cool book, lots of well made illustrations and instructional diagrams. My favorite part though, is the section focusing on materials for drawing. This book has an unusually good list of art items for doing manga, with pictures and name brands. This is a great book if you want to do manga, and are just starting out.
Drawing Words, Writing Pictures: Matt Madden and Jessica Able team up here to create this awesome resource that shows anyone how to start up their comic making dream. Covers so much, picking out a single section is hard but, my personal favorite part is the section on scanning and prepping work for print. Up to the point where I read this book, I had never been able to do do my comic page print layouts in a reasonable time. This books showed me how to do it without killing myself. For that reason alone I say buy this book, but there’s lots of other great stuff in here too.
