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Crevist — Advice: Quick Art Book Buying
Published: 2010-12-05 04:37:03 +0000 UTC; Views: 3180; Favourites: 58; Downloads: 76
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Online Sources for buying art books:Amazon.com
Chapters.ca (canada)
-Amazon.com is pretty good for deals as well as when you buy sets of them. Also having sales once in a while including used books if you don't want to pay full price.
-also if you buy a certain amount of books over a certain price range you get the shipping for free.
-usually get your books within the next 3-4 days sometimes sooner with amazon
Scribd? what is that?
[link]
-it is a document-sharing website which allows users to post documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page using its iPaper format.
-In other words a social publishing site, where people share original writings and documents.
-there are books you can buy from there as well and provide a preview of so many pages you then can download to your iphone or Amazon kindle.
*Send me a note if you want to see some of the list of books both animation and art you wish to see that I have collected*
Which books should I buy? price vs quality
When you go to either a book store of a used book store and you find a art book you think you can learn from think about a few things.
Does it have exactly what it intends on delivering?
Is there step by step instructions on it you can learn from?
Does it contain helpful steps or just jumps straight to the finished piece?(The "infomercial effect" showing the before and after of something without the in-between steps)
depending on the individual you might learn just fine from non-step by step Learning to draw books but its nice to see the steps as you go through each exercise.
Things to look for and not to look for in a How to learn Art book avoiding having regrets of buying
Positives
(+) step by step instructions.
(+) informative & tries to go the extra mile in helping you learn.
(+) provides a CD of examples and stock images to learn from.
Negatives
(-)too technical with little to no examples
(-) too many of the authors works and not enough learning
(-)descriptions of how to do something without providing steps
(-)includes no drawing lesson but contains just a artists or artists works
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Comments: 7
Thank you sooo much for making this!
I always have a tough time finding a good art book at places like Chapters because I spend to much time reading each book... I usually end up spending an +1hrs there because of it.
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np
its a good source 
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I actually find step by step instructions are usually bad, because they just show you and don't explain anything. The best books are where they explain the theory behind it so you understand the principles, rather than just learn how to copy.
So when I'm leafing through an art book, I'll look for:
* Does it break down what it's trying to show/explain? For example, does it break the object down into shapes? (E.g. Bridgman: [link] )
* Does it show the underlying anatomy (muscles, bones) and how it works so you know WHY something is the way it is, and can work out how to draw it in different ways?
* Does it show the proportions? Does it give tricks for remembering how long or far away something should be? (E.g. Jack Hamm gives multiple ways to remember/work out facial proportions -- eyes are spaced one eye's width apart. Or e.g. Loomis: [link] )
* Does it skip the boring pages of "here's what art materials you can use!"? (A pencil and paper is fine. Don't worry so much about what you use! It might be fun and enjoyable to get new pens, but just remember it won't make you a better artist.)
To get started, here are some super awesome books:
The Loomis Collection: [link]
-- Loomis is known as the king of how to draw books. He's quite technical, but very good. Best of all: they're all FREE to download online!
Bridgman and others: [link]
-- This link contains some of the the best books, including Bridgman (at the bottom), Loomis and others. Free. ^^
Force: Dynamic Life Drawing: [link]
-- Really nice for explaining how to add life and interesting dynamic poses to your drawings.
The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression: [link]
-- Man, there is sooo much to learn about the eye. (Featured here: [link] ) This book is great not just for adding expression, but for really understanding the face and having subtlety in the most sensitive area of your drawing.
Anything by Jack Hamm
-- What can I say? I'm a Hamm fan. Lots and lots of examples with brief but very useful text. Just flip through one of his books on Amazon's Look Inside [link] and see what I mean.
And really, there are so many more I want to recommend, depending on what you want to draw (Disney is fantastic study material for anyone interested in cartooning, plus there are lots of how to draw books that focus on animals -- most of which are the 'draw 50 animals' kind which aren't that good, but there are some gems).
If anyone wants to know about something more specific, feel free to ask and I can try to point you in the right direction.
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you make some pretty good points
I got the dvd video's of Structure of man which goes from start to finish on anatomy and they are pretty good since you can draw along with the video and gives tips on remembering the area's of the body.
those are some pretty good books I had most of them on da for people to check out(both art and animation books) and few months later they removed them due to their copy right laws. Took me about 40hours to find them through Scribd to find the art books and another 30 for the animation.
if you would like I can send you those books and you can add those to your own research
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