Customer Reviews

How to Draw: The Best of Basic Training, Vol. 1

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As far as being a condensed version of many years of experience from over a dozen artists in the field, I found this book to be a very good first step for those who wish to try their hands at being a comic book artist. I found several lessons in the book, especially the negative space portion of it by J.G. Jones helpful in getting my artistic juices flowing again. I think that for the beginner, this is a good book and an easy read. Well thought out in manner and design, does not substitute for actual time practicing, but it gives you a base to start. 4 stars for this book.

I've been waiting for Wizard to put this out for over ten years, and boy have they delivered!

This book has articles from past Wizard: The Guide to Comics magazines detailing how to draw from some of the best in the business, now and then.

The only downside this book has however is the lack of DC character illustrations, due to their "Protection of Intellectual Properties", but, with this hefty guide, you'll be able to figure out how to draw your favorite Justice Leaguers in no time anyway.

And for any fans that have read these before, you'll notice a few changes from the past articles, so hang on to those back issues.

This book contains lessons from: Jim Lee, Michael Turner, George Pérez, Joe Kubert, Adam Hughes, Greg Land, Frank Cho, Joe Linsner, Greg Horn, Walt Simonson, Doug Mahnke, Darick Robertson, Gary Frank, Sean Chen, Dale Keown, Bart Sears, Pat Lee, Art Adams, Jim Califiore, Phil Jimenez, Matt Haley, Tom Raney, Kevin Maguire and many, many more!

This book was took some of the best articles and advise on drawing,writing, and inking from Wizard magazine and placed them in one neat volume. It was a great idea. It sold very well. Too well! Because the masterminds at Wizard decided to make several sequels to this book. The only problem is that they aren't sequels there the same book! Broken down in various chapters. Oh they have added a new chapter here and there. However, many of the same article and advise are cut and pasted in the follow-up books. Then they go about making this book go out of print. So if you find this book buy it! Don't waste your time buying the other books with repeat info. Or spending more for them when it was originally all in one volume.

This isn't a bad intro to drawing book, and the information within is worthy of the price. This is the first book in the series of 5 (I think 5). It's not the best drawing book either. It's not how to draw by the writers of WIZARD magazine per-se - It's from the comic book artists that contributed to the magazines how to draw articles. Like: Michael Turner, Adam Hughes, Greg Horn, Jim Lee, and so on. Most of the information is valuable, and some of the techniques shown (at least one) I have adopted. They also give you lists of their favorite, and what they believe are the best drawing books that got them where they are today. That alone I believe would be very helpful, and could save a person a lot of money. And I would know, I have plenty of useless/worthless drawing books. This is definitely a good get you started guide. But, it's not the first, and last book you'll ever need on drawing. There is no such book. The only thing I've ever seen that is close to that is Brenda Hoddinott's - The Complete Idiot's Guide to Drawing People. (not drawing for dummies by the same writer) The Idiots guide was fuller, and better.

I get this book 'coz the original articles were really cool, I mean, you can get actually hot-tips from "real" comic book creators, and after years and years of waiting for wizard to finally collect the articles, the comic book magazine, changed most of them to FIT with a deal with marvel, so many of the most good articles were left out and the few that made it, were changed to ONLY show marvel characters!, this situation caused the book look crappy!!!, I don't know if wizard plans to put another compilation with the articles that did not made it in this volumen, but if this is true I hope this time they RESPECT the originals and do not try to change them just because any stupid deal with an editorial; this book is just another one like many others about the drawing subject.

The size of the book is great, coming in at around 250 pages. Though not all sections are strong there is enough to warrent the book. The Maguire (especially his expressions)section was useful,as was the Kubert section, though I have a few of his books as well. The Dale Keown work reproduced nicely and I was inspired by just art and dedication. Phil Jimenez concentrated on backgrounds, an area that is often overlooked. Art Adams of course did an immpecably great job on textures. Simonson on lettering was interesting as it was John Workman who did most of the lettering for him. Eduardo Risso also did a fantastic job. of course these are just my opinions and you should give the book a try yourself. I also recommend the David Chelsea book on perspective, and Draw the Line, by Emilio Soltero on figure drawing and sequential art, and the Jack Hamn books.


The 2pg Quesada intro was not really needed and the last page of art essentials was not really useful either. the Lindser and Robertson's section on feet were really not needed, though it was nice to look at Lindser's art. I expected a lot more from the Jim Lee section. Though my rating is not the highest I think most artists will gain something useful from the book. My criticism is mostly directed at the editors and not the artists, as there was so much to chose from, like that great piece by Brent Anderson that was left out.

I got this book a few years back from a comic store for verrrry cheap. Little did I know it would end up being worth so much! I guess it's gone out of print? Either way, it contains a lot of really good insight for aspiring comic artists. A+

You find a lot of useful stuff in this book. And yes there are differnt characters that are not Marvel in the book. The cover speaks for itself. Even for the intermediate artist looking for inspiration this book has a lot to offer. Like the section on backrounds and how to draw women. I know a lot of comic artist's tend to make there women to muscular, but this shows how to do it right.

I've done a little bit of comic book illustration in the past, and I feel this book helped me some. It was also generally just a cool book to have. Collected from a few year's worth of Wizard Magazine's informative articles....This volume is a great thing to have if you want to be a comic book artist, just have fun drawing comic book-type art, or just have an appreciation for the comic-art process. It has a large variety of articles on how to draw comic books in the style of today's popular artists written by the popular artists themselves. Each of the many contributing authors/artists of the book has a different level of ability to teach so some sections are taught with more expertise than others but all of your basic information is definitely there in one way or another. I feel this book is much more helpful than the classic "How to draw comics the Marvel way".

P.S. When using books like this it is (and I'm sure this book's contributors mostly would agree) it's good to keep in mind You can't really learn how to draw anatomy only from looking at and interpreting the drawings of others. You must draw from life.

This is a great book, i use to love reading Wizard's Drawing section. I know some of you folks use to save every issue to have all of them (the drawing sections). But now they are are in one easy book.

Brings back to good days..sniff