Customer Reviews

DragonArt Fantasy Characters: How to Draw Fantastic Beings and Incredible Creatures

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

DragonArt Fantasy Characters follows the steps of the previous book from J. Peffer, DragonArt. This is a great book for an aspiring artist to learn how to draw fantasy characters. It provide easy to follow instruction and shows Peffer's inspiring art.

This book is divided into five sections: a preface and four parts. The preface contains a tutorial about how to draw people. It briefly covers all the basics: shapes and shading, penciling and inking, coloring, human body, face, facial expressions, hair, hands and feet.

There are step-by-step tutorials on how to draw fantasy beings in part 1, 2, and 3. Part 1 contains 6 classic fantasy creatures: a fairy, a sprite, an elf, a goblin, a dwarf, and an orc. Part 2 contains 6 mythological creatures: a mermaid, a centaur, a faun, an angel, and a kitsune. And part 3 contains 4 night creatures: a banshee, vampire, a werewolf, and a demon.

Part 4 is about fashion. It shows a limited collection of clothes, accessories and weapons for male and female characters of various professions: warrior, ranger, rogue, mage, cleric, samurai, noble, and peasant.

The step-by-step tutorials are very useful, but this book works the best for me as a source of inspiration. J. Peffer's artistic style is refreshing and extremely contagious.

The bad thing about this book is that it's only 128 pages long. Overall, I think this is great book for anyone who wants to learn how to draw fantasy characters.

Other books by J. Peffer:
DragonArt
DragonArt Evolution: How to Draw Everything Dragon

I bought the first neondragon book just because I liked the artwork on her website, and while I loved all the monsters, I have always struggled with drawing people. I'm so glad that she came out with this book, it has helped a lot, and even despite that, the graphics are awesome just to look at! I HIGHLY recommend this and everything else she has come out with. Keep up the good work Jess!

Jessica Peffer has come out with the most useful art books that i know of that relate to fantasy. I am a VErY big fan of her work and i recommend this book to every and anybody who is interested in drawing fantasy stuff. GO JESS!!!!

This is an excellent resource for artists of fantastical races. It has info for everything and fun little comments throughout the entire book. Wonderfully drawn, coloured, and simple to use, I highly recommend this book to other artists, as a guide on how to make their own wonderful creations.

I got this for my son for Christmas and he loves it. Gonna have to get the other books in the series! :0)

I received this book a few days ago, and I'm still studying it along with other books I've bought. From what I've seen, it seems like a book with some good techniques at the very least, and is decent enough for a beginner like myself, although it seems slightly advanced. I'll probably be able to pick up the techniques easily enough with some trial and error though. The only downside I see with this book is some of the drawings were not what I had hoped for. The somewhat manga style drawings aren't bad at all, but they seem to drag down some of the characters and make them look childish, especially the demon and vampire. The werewolf is good but I was expecting more of a half man half wolf character. It's a little of a disappointment too because these are the creatures I wanted to draw the most. With that said, I stand by my rating and it still seems like a decent book to learn the basics, and other books can help to supplement.

Got it early and very happy with the instructions and the way she gives you tutorials to help you and encourages you to practice and do it until you get what you want. I will be getting all her books. This is outstanding. The other books are DragonArt and DragonArt Evolution.

Gave this to my daughter for Christmas. She absolutely loves it and has drawn some great things with the book's help. There are funny asides which keeps her interested and helps her retain the things she has learned. My daughter lives and breathes Lord of the Rings by Tolkien and this title helps her fulfill her quest to put characters into pictures.

Excellent material, step by step instructions for each ellaborate drawing, maybe the only draw back is that this book is not for beginners, and I bought it for my son.
I am an experienced artist, but because I'm fairly unexperienced in figurative art it is pretty difficult even for me to achieve the same results the book shows.
Well, maybe I'll be the one using it instead of my 13 year old.

First of all the person who marked 3 stars totally wrong about Nudity. I have this book went through it entirely only one creature has no clothing and it is a fairy that is on the back of the cover you can view it for yourself it is not even truly human it is a sprite bug like creature which is green and dark green.

Now for the rest of the book it is helpful in many places teaching the basics of figure sizes there were other books I ended up buying because this one has many downsizes first it is fantasy art so there are only two humans in it which do have cloths BTW like gym cloths. Anyways, it is helpful in quick cartoon style of drawings which is useful when you first start out drawing. A few notes of excellent besides simplistic style it gets your drawings going quickly. The author's best parts of the book are the break down of hands, feet and hair styles. I sketch often and feet always were hard for me but the author neglected the most common feet position facing you head on. The braided hair break down I never seen that done any art book it is great example wish there were more hair styles. I am not big into these other creatures just humanoid (elf,humans) so it was only a few pages of material for me. The cartoons reminded me of same style of cartoons on Christian network of course without Jesus.