The Art of Comic Book Drawing by Maury Aaseng, Bob Berry, Jim Campbell, Dana Muise, Joe Oesterle

The Art of Comic Book Drawing

by Maury Aaseng, Bob Berry, Jim Campbell, Dana Muise, and Joe Oesterle

Wham! Pow! Bam! Kaboom! Learn everything you need to make your own comic books, superheroes, and story lines with The Art of Comic Book Drawing.

Featuring step-by-step tutorials, helpful tips, and dozens of drawing and illustration techniques, aspiring cartoonists, graphic illustrators, and comic book artists will discover all of the basics, from creating characters to mastering features and expressions to bringing it all together with unique and interesting story lines.

This helpful guide also includes practice pages to help put your newfound skills to immediate use. Learn all the drawing tips and techniques you need to create your very own comic book, including:
  • Drawing basics
  • Inking techniques
  • Creating characters
  • Drawing bodies in motion
  • Designing characters
  • Creating battle scenes
  • Adding speech
  • Developing a story segment
Veteran comic book artists teach you to draw basic cartoon characters, superheroes, villains, and more using simple, step-by-step drawing lessons. Once you get the hang of illustrating your favorite characters, you’ll learn to draw action scenes, set up panels, add speech bubbles, and even learn the basics of cartoon and comic book word treatments.

With approachable exercises, interactive pages, and action-packed projects to guide you, The Art of Comic Book Drawing will help you find inspiration, learn how to create a story, and most importantly, develop the characters that will make your story come to life. So, grab a pencil and paper, and learn to create your own comic books, step by easy step!

Reviewed by annieb123 on

4 of 5 stars

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Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Art of Comic Book Drawing is a tutorial and style guide to comic and storyboard layout. Due out 10th March 2020 from Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 128 pages and will be available in paperback format. At least some of the material is re-formatted and recompiled from several earlier publications 2006-2014.

The layout follows the familiar Walter Foster tutorial format. An introduction covers tools and supplies, digital illustration, drawing and inking techniques, followed by a short and easily accessible general drawing tutorial and an introduction to texture and perspective. The book is aimed at character driven graphic storytelling, so a fair bit of the content concentrates on building characters, storytelling through perspective and movement, villains, battles, adding word balloons and lettering.

Each of the chapters includes several start to finish tutorials illustrating the concepts and techniques from the chapter. There are interactive blank panel pages for the reader/artist to try out the preceding lesson.

This is a basic book but full of good technique and will provide some useful takeaways for the majority of readers/artists. This entire series is worthwhile and will be a valuable addition to the artist's home library. This would make a welcome gift for a young person who wants to learn some comic drawing techniques.

Four stars.

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

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 29 February, 2020: Finished reading
  • 29 February, 2020: Reviewed