The Little Book of Drawing Dragons & Fantasy Characters: More than 50 tips and techniques for drawing fantastical fairies, dragons, mythological beasts, and more (The Little Book of ...)

by Michael Dobrzycki, Bob Berry, Cynthia Knox, and Meredith Dillman

Featuring drawing lessons, step-by-step projects, and open practice pages, The Little Book of Drawing Dragons & Fantasy Characters teaches beginning artists how to draw dragons, fairies, mythological beasts, and more.
 
Step-by-step projects, creative exercises, interactive prompts, and helpful tips and techniques bring this popular drawing subject to life and invite creativity and personalization. Drawing techniques, such as value, shading, and creating texture and perspective, are included to help artists of all skill levels learn to draw accurately. Learn to draw fur, scales, wings, tails, and how to put them all together to create your own unique fantasy characters and artwork.

More than 15 step-by-step projects include:

• Western Dragon
• Eastern Dragon
• Water Dragon
• Hydra
• Centaur
• Fairy
• Minotaur
• Griffin
• Unicorn
• And more!

In the popular, established The Little Book of... series from Walter Foster Publishing, artists and art hobbyists alike delight in learning a variety of fun, approachable, relevant, and interesting art topics in a portable format boasting a fresh, contemporary, and interactive design. Open practice pages, creative exercises, and art prompts encourage interactivity for immediate results while teaching beginners the fundamentals of the featured medium in a fun, engaging way.

Also available from the series:The Little Book of Sketching, The Little Book of Lettering & Word Design, The Little Book of Manga Drawing, The Little Book of Cartooning & Illustration, and The Little Book of Rock Painting.

• ISBN13: 9781633228061
• Publish Date: 3 September 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Walter Foster Publishing
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 128
• Language: English

Reviews

[Quirky Cat]

I received a copy of The Little Book of Drawing Dragons & Fantasy Characters through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The Little Book of Drawing Dragons & Fantasy Characters is a collection of guides to help artists of all different experience levels dive into a world they love so much: the world of fantasy. If you take a moment to look at the cover of this book, you’ll get a good idea for the art style and guides that can be found within these pages.
This book contains within it fifteen unique step-by-step guides, covering all sorts of creatures of legend and lore. This book includes instructions for all types of dragons, hydras, centaurs, fairies, and so much more. I was extremely impressed with the variety included here.
The guides themselves are quite helpful, and are admittedly striking to look at as well. I personally really enjoyed the artistic style shown, which is always a nice confidence boost when trying to find a good guide to learn from.

For more reviews check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Little Book of Drawing Dragons & Fantasy Characters is a tutorial book aimed at artists of all levels of experience. Released 3rd Sept by Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 128 pages and available in paperback format.

The book follows a logical, easy progression. The general introduction covers tools and materials, along with a short treatment of breaking subjects down into geometric shapes and refining them, adding details, shading and texture. It separates the drawing process into technical elements which can be studied and mastered by any student with practice.

The next couple of chapters are full of tutorials for dragons (western and eastern), wyverns, wyrms, centaurs, fairies, and 8 more.

The fourth and final section gives a short tutorial with projects for adding color with markers, colored pencils, and watercolors. There is a small amount of filler in the page content with 'practice pages' scattered throughout, but there is a lot of good instructional content here. I found a lot of useful information and added a couple of sketches to my sketchbook based on the siu riu (Japanese water dragon).

This would make a super gift with a set of pencils or drawing materials for learning realistic anatomy based graphic fantasy art.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes