I’ve written before about my admiration for the classic instructional books by the early to mid 20th century American illustrator Andrew Loomis.

In particular I’ve enthusiastically reviewed two of the superb new editions from Titan Books of his too long out of print classics, Figure Drawing for All it’s Worth and Drawing the Head and Hands (links to my reviews).

My recommendation for the relevance for these volumes from the 1940′s and 1950′s to contemporary artists comes under two principles: “What’s old is new” (or fashionably retro) and “Some things are timeless.”

The latter, of course, is the primary qualification for Loomis’ teachings; they go to the heart of figure drawing, and in his signature work, Creative Illustration, he also goes to the heart of composition, line, tone, narrative imagery and creative idea generation.

The book, published in 1947, was aimed at professional illustrators; and while some of the advice about the nature of the business may be dated, some is not, and the principles of composing and creating illustrations in various media are essential and timeless.

Some may find Loomis’ style “old fashioned” — others, myself included, find it both timeless and wonderfully retro, as fresh as when he was working.

There is plenty of it to be seen in Creative Illustration. Loomis has packed it with instructional drawings, layout diagrams, sketches, process sequences, paintings and illustrations in diverse media. It’s a visual treat as well as a treasure of art instruction.

He even goes into his admiration for the work of the great American illustrator Howard Pyle, including some tone studies he made of Pyle’s works (above, 7th down).

Once again, Titan Books has gone beyond a respectful reproduction and brought us a beautiful edition of this classic work, from the facsimile cream-colored paper to the color reproductions to the crisp black and white and tone illustrations.

The images above are rough scans from an old edition and don’t by any means do the current volume justice. So far I’ve been unable to convince Titan to provide more in the way of previews. In lieu of that, see the reviews that include previews on Parka Blogs (including a video flip-through), Parka Blogs Flickr stream, Boing Boing and Wings Art.

Creative Illustration is a 300 page tome bursting at the seams with essentials of image creation and Andrew Loomis’ beautiful work, sage advice and straightforward instruction.

The link between movies and comics is a strong one. Even without the obvious bridge of their wonderful merging in animation, they share numerous qualities.

Both are visual storytelling mediums, and share a common concern with establishing shots, close-ups, framing a scene, conveying the spatial relationship of characters one to the other and other elements of essential visual continuity from scene to scene.

Both involve the element of time and of visual compositions that change over time.

Both have a “director’s” viewpoint, and the impact of choices of lighting, contrast and visual mood cannot be understated in the effectiveness with which a story is told.

Storyboards, which are used to plan movies, television and animation, are in essence a from of comics.

It’s not surprising then that there is crossover between the two fields; a number of comics artists and writers have moved into the fields of film and television and visual development artists have ventured into comics.

Marcos Mateu-Mestre, who I have profiled previously, has moved back and forth — he started as a comics artist for newspapers in his native Spain, moved into production design for animation and is currently a visual development artist working at Dreamworks.

In his excellent book, Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers, which I reviewed here, he applied his expertise in both fields to create a superb framework for narrative illustration.

In his new book, Trail of Steel – 1441 A.D., Mateu-Mestre places those skills in the service of a graphic story about mercenary soldiers in 15th century Spain. The artist provided me with a review copy.

The storytelling, as you would expect, is dramatically cinematic, conveyed in Mateu-Mestre’s wonderfully fluid drawing style. He has an uncanny ability to combine precision draftsmanship and free, energetic rendering. I’ve spoken before about the delight I take in his drawing style.

The real highlight for me, however, is his mastery of tone. To say that the drawings are in black and white and grays is to miss the point. Here is a story told in both subtle and dramatic value contrasts that would not have been as effective if rendered any other way.

Mateu-Mestre uses value here in much the way skilled film directors use black and white film in many classic movies, creating a mood and atmosphere that would actually be difficult to achieve in color. These are images in which color would be a distraction and actually lessen the impact.

He has posted some images from the book on his blog in which he plays with the application of subtle colors to some of the pages (images above, second from bottom). As much as I like them as images and interesting experiments, I much prefer the panels as presented in the book.

Even though this is a story, students of comics (and visual storytelling in general) could consider Trail of Steel effective as a continuation of the lessons in Framed Ink — a textbook use of cinematic comics storytelling and the application of light and dark in narrative illustration.

The book is appended with a few notes on process, preliminary drawings and thumbnail page layouts. It is available as both a European style hardcover album (the best format for comics, IMHO) and a trade paperback.

You can find more mentions of the book on Mateu-Mestre’s blog, along with more of his visual development work, including some beautiful tone and color images from his work on Puss In Boots.

Like the 1930′s Hollywood cliché of the civilized explorers wowing the backward and worshipful natives with the “magic” of a cigarette lighter held aloft at a dramatic moment, there has long been an assignment of magic to the ability to draw and paint realistically in our culture.

This comes from the notion that the ability to draw, and the other artistic skills that are built on that foundation, is reserved for those who have somehow been endowed at birth with “talent”, a magical cigarette lighter if ever there was one.

While not wanting to take away the special reverence that those who can draw or paint sometimes receive from the majority who “can’t draw a straight line” (since I’ve found that personally enjoyable at various points in my life, particularly as a teenager), I’m a firm believer that “talent” is a tarnished concept, and drawing is a skill, like playing a musical instrument, skiing, archery, flying a plane or performing surgery, that is acquired through hard work and diligent practice.

In fact, talent, that knack that makes acquiring a particular skill appear to come more easily, can be a hinderance as much as a help. After the initial boost, it can convince those that have it to be complacent and lazy, leaving them in a turtle and hare situation in which their hardworking counterparts quickly surpass them.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is book by Betty Edwards that embodies the idea of drawing as a teachable skill. It focuses in particular on the most fundamental problem facing adults who are learning to draw — learning to see; specifically learning to see what is actually in front of them, as opposed to what their brain is telling them they recognize and should in essence draw a symbol for, e.g. an almond shape to represent an eye, which actually has a much more complex and interesting shape.

Edward’s book has been something of a phenomenon since its release in 1979. It became a bestseller and is one of the most popular drawing instruction books of all time. In it she puts forth a course of study based on exercises that encourage a shift in perception.

She bases her rationale on the assumption that there are two fundamental modes of human perception, that one of them is much better for drawing and related tasks than the other (which is better at the kind of rational linear thinking more valued in our culture), and that these modes are physically based in the two halves of our interestingly bisected brains.

Edwards puts a lot of effort into establishing the science for this, particularly in the subsequent revised editions of the book. I think the science for this idea is in question. However, the assignment of these states to physical parts of the brain, while central to her title, is to my mind unimportant to the underlying premise — that culturing a particular mode of thinking and perception is key to acquiring the skill of drawing.

Her course utilizes a series of exercises that encourage that shift, confusing the usually dominant “left brain” or rational/linear mode into submission and allowing the “right brain” to come out and play, pencil in hand.

Many of the exercises in her course were based on long proven drawing instruction techniques, such as pure contour drawing, sighting, the use of a viewfinder and drawing negative spaces instead of positive shapes; others were novel, like drawing from upside-down images; but the book as a whole was different from other drawing instruction books when it debuted in that it was obviously and overtly aimed at those are were in the “99%”, those without the magic of “talent”.

As such, I have long recommended Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain to anyone who says “I wish I could draw.”, as well as to artists who feel they need to rekindle their drawing fire, as the exercises can be particularly revealing to those who haven’t been in a dedicated course of study for some time.

Edwards has revised the book over several editions, including a fairly major revision titled The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, the latest version of which is the recently released 4th edition.

In this revision she has to some extent addressed my major criticism of the book, that it stops short at teaching seeing/drawing, and misses the other half of drawing — the nuances of line, tone, rendering, edges, value and other elements that elevate drawing to an art. It’s as if you found a remarkable course on how to speak a language, but that course stops short with forming coherent phrases and neglects how to speak in a natural or convincing way.

The before and after instruction drawings of students of her course, which have always been striking and a compelling argument for the strength of the book, also have a kind of flat and bland appearance, lacking those elements that we associate with sophisticated drawing.

She has added additional master drawings to this edition of the book, and places more emphasis on qualities of rendering than in previous editions, but I still recommend supplementing the use of the book with a “phase II” study of more advanced drawing concepts and more traditional drawing texts.

In the revised edition she also reorganizes the material a bit and attempts to codify the seeing/drawing shift into more a more specific subset of concepts.

She also places more emphasis on the perceptual shift involved in drawing as a key to creativity enhancement. This is actually her central theme; the book is subtitled “A course in enhancing creativity and artistic confidence”, but I find this aspect less compelling than the more specifically drawing related content. Your milage may vary.

There is a website for the book and related materials. Unfortunately it has not seen a major update in years, has a kind of stuck in the 90′s look to it, is poorly organized and does a terrible job, if at all, of explaining the book or the concepts it embodies. The site seems focused on convincing those who have already purchased the book to buy Edward’s other titles, workbooks, workshops and a pointless “portfolio” of prepackaged drawing supplies.

There is a sample chapter, but you would do better to look at the Amazon.com “Look Inside” feature for various editions (some of which have a more extensive preview than others).

Unfortunately, I am reviewing from a pre-publication uncorrected proof, and I don’t know how well it represents the final edition of the book. If the printing is the same, I have to say that the publisher has followed the recent self-destructive tendencies of the U.S. publishing industry as a whole and gone with cheaper, thinner paper and a poorer overall production quality to squeeze a few more pennies out of each copy (other reviews I’ve seen back this up).

Regardless of the sad state of American publishing, this remains a valuable book, in several of its editions, for both non-artists and artists alike — codifying the drawing-as-seeing skills that are so fundamental, and easily overlooked, in our pursuit of the magic of drawing.

For more, see my previous post on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Comic Crits are book reviews done by artist John Bonner in the form of one page comic strips.

The reviews are often (though certainly not always) of books in the science fiction or fantasy genres, such as Neal Stephenson’s Reamde (above top), and The year’s Best Science Fiction 28, edited by Gardner Dozois (above, bottom).

The reviews can be read either on Bonner’s Comic Crits blog, or on the Tor.com site, which is where I encountered them.

On researching John Bonner, who I had assumed was an illustrator and cartoonist, I learned he is a painter. I’ll make his paintings the subject of a separate post.

in the 1940′s well known illustrator and art instructor Andrew Loomis wrote a series of drawing books that have become standards in the field of art instruction, prized by generations of illustrators, comic book artists, concept artists, character designers and others, particularly those who must “invent” the human form without constant recourse to a model.

Ironically, these tremendously valuable and influential texts were long out of print, leaving artists to discover them by word of mouth and prowl used bookstores, and later the internet, hoping used copies would turn up for a reasonable price. Copies of them in good condition would often sell for $250.00 to $300.00, sometimes more.

We all scratched our heads, wondering why these obviously popular books hadn’t been reprinted, until this summer, when Titan books finally reprinted the most prominent title, Figure Drawing for all it’s Worth (see my review here).

Much to the delight of myself and countless other artists, Titan did a superb job, bringing to life the character and appearance of the book in a facsimile hardback edition that actually surpassed the printing quality of the original.

The edition has been a tremendous success, and Titan has followed up with what is considered the second most important and sought after title in the series, Drawing the Head and Hands, and they provided me with a review copy.

As I expected, Titan has once again done Loomis justice with a superb job of reproducing the book. I can say without hesitation that the original book and its content are of tremendous value, and the beautiful reproduction makes it a joy to follow the instruction.

Here, Loomis expands on demonstrating how to draw the human figure in correct proportion by constructing it from a knowledge of its basic forms, and goes into the details of the head and hands with subtle, yet clear and strong drawings and diagrams.

In addition to building his approach on the fundamentals of human anatomy, he gives construction methods based on the underlying geometry, allowing you to turn and move the head and hands in your mind and position them in space when drawing. By marking off spatial divisions related to the major features, Loomis guides the reader through an understanding their basic proportions, and how those of the face in particular can vary from individual to individual.

He also demonstrates the correct proportions of the face relative to the head (solving one of the most common problems of those learning to draw people — making the face too large), and shows how to construct the head not only from different angles, but in perspective.

The book goes into better detail than I have seen anywhere else on understanding the change in proportions that the human face and head undergo as we move from infancy through childhood into adulthood.

His section on hands brings similar focus to the proportions of the various parts of the hand, an understanding of the hand’s underlying geometry, and the distinction between the hands of the young and old, male and female.

In case I haven’t gotten it across, I can’t recommend these books highly enough for those learning to draw the human form without reference to a model. For those who are drawing from a model, you might be surprised how much a study of the Loomis construction methods can inform your drawings with an underlying strength and dimensionality.

Priced at under $40.00 US, the book is a bargain. Don’t allow yourself be put off by the fashions and hair styles in the drawings, which reveal the book’s origins in the 1940′s (I rather like them myself); the drawings and instruction are as relevant as if the book had been written today.

In addition, I think the drawings are beautiful, and the book serves as an art book as well as an instructional text.

The great news is the series has been so successful that Titan is extending it; the next title, Successful Drawing, is due to be released in May of next year.

For more, see my review from earlier this year of Figure Drawing for All it’s Worth.

[Important note: with the exception of the cover image, the sample pages above, with which I've tried to give you a taste of the content, are taken from poor scans of the previous editions and do not do justice to the quality of the images in the new book. Those, in fact, are superbly printed on a lightly off-white paper, bringing out the beautifully subtle quality of the drawings.]

Originally released 20 years ago, Dinotopia: A Land apart from Time was the first of artist/author James Gurney’s acclaimed and popular illustrated adventure story books placed in the same mythical land.

Presented as an adventurer’s sketchbook, which the author has “found”, the story resonates with some of the sense of wonder and discovery to be found in classic 19th Century adventure stories.

The original edition has been out of print for some time. Dover books has released a new 20th Anniversary edition, with images digitally scanned from the original transparencies and 32 new pages of material, including sketches, photos and unused plates and a discussion by Gurney of the creation of the original book.

Those in the U.S. can order signed copies directly from the author.

Here is Gurney’s post about the new edition on his blog, Gurney Journey.

As I mentioned in my post from last year, They Draw and Cook is a site on which illustrated recipes (or recipes as illustrations) are posted on a regular basis.

Created either by artists who cook or cooks who draw (for whatever difference that may be), the recipes are a far cry from your old style scribbles on an index card or new style entires in a database, illustrating the food and its preparation with style and often humor.

The site’s creators and editors, Nate Padavick and Salli Swindell have collected over 100 of the recipe/illustrations and published them in a new book, They Draw and Cook: 107 Recipes Illustrated by Artists from Around the World (Amazon link here).

In addition to the brief preview on the website and the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon, there is also a promotional video for the book, as well an unofficial flip-through video here.

It wasn’t until I saw the latter that I understood the layout of the interior pages, in which the oblong formated illustrated recipes are presented as big double-page spreads.

The They Draw and Cook website has lost some of its original blog format simplicity, and now offers numerous features and sections. Past recipes are offered in themed collections and the “Most Recently Added Recipes” section serves the function of the old blog-based site.

I’ve written before about Flesk Publications, a small specialty art book publisher that concentrates on presenting illustrators and comics artists. Among the artists are many that I’ve featured here on Lines and Colors.

Flesk has published a book called Flesk Prime in which five artists are highlighted in the same volume. Four are artists who have been featured in previous dedicated books: William Stout, Petar Meseldžija, Mark Schultz and Gary Gianni (links to my posts); one, Craig Elliott, is the subject of an upcoming title.

The book serves both as an introduction to those artists and as a kind of sampler and introduction to the Flesk line of books — in that the artists exemplify the kind of terrific and often underappreciated talent Flesk spotlights, and the book’s beautiful production values are consistent with the publisher’s consistently high standards.

Flesk Prime also serves as an art book on its own, a beautiful selection of work from five talented illustrators and comics artists. For those like me who already have many of the books in the Flesk line, the features and images are not redundant, each showcasing work that has not appeared in the publisher’s other volumes on these artists.

Unfortunately, the previews of the book on the Flesk site, while they do give you an idea of the book’s appearance, don’t show the artwork itself to best advantage and don’t do the book justice (though the images certainly look better there than in the limited space I have to show them above). If you’re not familiar with these artists, you would do better to look through the site for the individual volumes on them for better examples of their work.

Flesk Prime is available through the Flesk Publications store.