This is my definitive list of ten of the best art books you must have, or at least you must check for sure. From number Ten to number One I will guide you through some of the most inspiring and amazing books you can find on the market. No matter if you are a professional artist, a beginner or just an art fan. I’m sure you will find at least a couple of books in this list that will make your head spin of joy 🙂 .

Let’s start with the list:

10. Out of the forest.. The art of Paul Bonner

This book is a classic for every fan of the fantasy gender. Publish in 2007 by Titan Books, this volume collects over 150 pieces of Paul Bonner’s art. Mostly pieces from his period working for Fasa Corporation, Riotminds and Rackham ( which are my favorites of the book ). Also you will find some early pieces done for Games Workshop.

This books shows the evolution of Paul’s art on his more than 20 years of work as a pro artists. I will highlight the refinement of his style coming from the Mutant Chronicles period, heavily influenced by the 90’s style of illustration with lots of contrast and color saturation, to the more recent pieces done for the defunct editorial Rackham, which are more balanced and quite spectacular.

His dwarfs and orcs designs are simply awesome and you can see how they influenced great artist like Wei Wang and the rest of artist from Blizzard.

On the negative side I will only say that some of Paul’s artwork tends to the “horror vacui” with lots of details everywhere that some times doesn’t allow the composition to breath.

Never the less a great book and a great artist.

Here you have the link to the book :

Out of The Forest…

9. How to Render: the fundamentals of light, shadow and reflectivity

The main author of this book is probably one of the most renowned concept artist now a days. Scott Robertson is the master of the vehicle design. His work is heavily influenced by his product design background, presenting clean lines and polished surfaces. His work can be seen in blockbusters like Minority Report. Also in products from brands like Nike, Raleigh Bicycles , Fiat and Mattel Toys.

Co-written with Thomas Bertling this book is divided into two major sections: the first explains the physics of light and shadow. One will learn how to construct proper shadows in perspective and how to apply the correct values to those surfaces. The second section focuses on the physics of reflectivity and how to render a wide range of materials utilizing this knowledge. The book contains also links to free online rendering tutorials that can be accessed via the URL list or through the H2Re app.

I didn’t download the app but I was able to check some of the tutorials on You Tube related to the content of the book. I think this book is great because it gives you a good understanding about how light works over different surfaces and how materials behave depending in their own reflectivity.

This book is part of a series of books called “How to draw ” , but I can’t give you any opinion about the rest because I didn’t check them yet.

Here you have the link to the book:

Link

8. Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

The first part of this 2 books series, called “Imaginative Realism” didn’t impress that much. I think because maybe the style, or maybe the type of work James Gurney does is not of my taste. Also the first book was more focus on how to make your mind work in order to not copy reality and instead of that how to transform it. And this was something I already knew because of my background.

Nevertheless, somebody recommend me this one. My friend pointed this book was more focus on how to create a painting in terms of proper composition, color combination and accurate values. In my opinion James Gurney nailed this one.

The book has awesome tips and tricks on how make your paintings more appealing to the viewer. How to placed the light sources better in order to accent the drama of the scene, how to structure your compositions to create a clean focus of attention and how to manipulate your values to achieve more depth and balance in your paintings. All this artistic observation is done from a rational and sometimes almost scientific approach.

This is a read I really recommend, specially for those who are interested in create illustrations with lots of characters, interesting light effects and well balanced values.

Here is the link to the book:

Color and Lifgt: A guide…

7. Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists

I bought this book years ago and it was and still is a great tool for visualization. Often I use it for give me an idea about what to draw, when I’m lacking ideas. I just open the book and start to check expressions and going through the pages the ideas start to spark on my mind. Most of time I’m not drawing a particular face from the book but instead of that I’m using it as a loose reference for a character I’m creating. This books gives you a better understanding on how the skin, muscles and bones of the face behave. Through methodical observation and analysis of all this images, this book will help you to give live to your characters making them way more believable.

Here you have the link to the book :

Facial Expresions: A Visual…

6. Last Man Standing: Killbook of a Bounty Hunter

Honestly I don’t own this book. Last year I went to a workshop with Dan Luvisi and he was showing the book to the people there after his talk. The size of the book is impressive. The illustrations inside are really cool and for what I could read the way the history is narrated is super cool too. Is a scrapbook-style character bible and prologue book for the series.

The main hero is called Gabriel, and the whole set up looks like a perfect script for a movie. In fact the book was optioned by Paramount who bought the rights , but the project went dead. After more than 2 years of fighting , Luvisi got back the rights. I don,t know if any studio is interested or not on making this film at this point, but it will be really cool to see Gabriel’s adventures on the big screen.

If you wanna enjoy a good read and stare mesmerize to some of the coolest sci-fi artwork out there, this is your book.

Here you have the link:

Last Man Standing: Killbook of…

5. The Art of Dishonored 2

The first time I saw this book was in pdf format. Some colleague sent me a link to a pdf file. I felt in love immediately with it. Honestly, I never played the game, but I heard very good things about it. My friend sent me this book knowing I would love it, because I really like the art of Sergey Kolesov aka¨Peleng¨. I couldn´t help my self and after 2 min. checking the book I bought it right away on Amazon. But this book is not only about Kolesov´s art. In this book you will find some of the finest concept art done by awesome artist. With Kolesov´s character designs and illustrations I will highlight the work of Cédric Peyravernay who also contributed to the game with awesome characters and illustrations and Piotr Jablonski who contributed to the game with fantastic illustrations, environments and action scenes. Any of the artwork of one of this artist would deserve a book by itself.

Before finishing this book review I want tomention the rest of concept artist involved in Dishonored 2. They did a fantastic work designing weapons, tools , environments and all sorts of assets for the game. Their quality and attention to detail is some next level sh%&t!!! 🙂

Here is the book’s link:

The art of Dishonored 2

4. The art of District 9: Weta Workshop

This book shows you the insights of the creation process of one of those Science Fiction film jewels every fan of the gender loves. Totally unexpected, this low budget film with an unknown cast, became a blockbuster hit, putting his director name, Neil Blomkamp, in everybody´s mouth. But once you know which studio was in charge of the artistic side of the film, District 9´s success becomes less mysterious and more evident. Weta Workshop , the New Zealand´s based studio famous for their work in the Lord of the Rings saga, was in charge of the concept designs, the creation of vehicles, weapons and other props with some of the special effects displayed on the film.

The book shows you the complete design process, from the earlier designs, including the rejected ones, until the final art. Special mention to the weapon design, really innovative, using colors like white and orange for some of the alien rifles. The aliens itself, very insect like, look great too. But the cherry on top is the Alien Mech that appears on the cover of the book. The moment I saw this cool robot armor, I had the same feeling of amazement I had when I was a kid an I saw for the first time the Cargo Power Loader from Aliens.

The book is a must have for those who salivate uncontrollably every time they see a cool weapon or a cool robot design. Simply fantastic.

Here is the link to the book:

The art of District 9

3. Creative Illustration by Andrew Loomis

2. Degenesis: Rebirt Edition by Sixmorevodka

1. Sketchbook vol.1 & vol.2 by Karl Kopinski

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