some books i bought

i love books, its why i'm gonna need a new book case soon... well i could already do with one now since theres that books under my bed that i have no room for (there oversized and the oversized shelf is full) doesnt help i keep buying more XD

anyway recently i bought dreamscapes:creating magical angel, faery &mermaid worlds with watercolour, dreamscapes myth and magic: creating legendary creatures and charecters in watercolour and Avatar the last airbender: the art of the animated series. really glad i bought these books there fantastic. so lets look at them

dreamscapes: creating magical Angel,faery and mermaid worlds with watercolour.

i have several watercolour books, and often there very similar to each other. a list of techniques maybe teach you how to paint a hay bale and mostly landscape painting... useful but i want to illustrate so sometimes landscape painting isn't alaways helpful. john howes books did help me a lot however i still sometimes feel that i'm stumbling in the dark when it comes to painting white things, gold and other metals...and glowing effects also getting distance so there where plenty of things i still need to work on and if i hadnt read john howe i wouldn't have gotten into backgrounds, i love painting backgrounds there just as fun for me as painting the charecter, so i did take something away from it... i started useing washes because of them too... not that i did it brilliantly at first and i learned alot from trial and error. eventually i started creating pieces that where catching peoples attention... and all of a sudden everything started falling into place... which is awesome... and had stumbled across an artist called Stephanie pui mun law who had some tutorials that are very useful in her blog (i did a blog post about her here

http://wildhaggisis.blogspot.com/2010/02/im-going-to-talk-about-another-awesome.html) and well she had some tutorial books... for a while i debated if i should get them... and well decided to since i love her art work and even if there wernt as useful as i hoped they where they would make nice insperation books... lets just say they havent let me down so far...

i decided to read them in order of relese starting with creating magical angels, faery and mermaid worlds in watercolour. origanally i was skeptical because only 3 subjects seamed to be well limiting... but now the shere amount of detail she goes into is amazing. this books is good for those who are beginners, covering the very basic flat wash. graided wash, super imposing dry brushing and what not to the more advance salt, rubbing alcohol (or nail varnish remover in my case), cling film (plastic wrap) lifting paint and masking fluid. she goes int colour mixing making some briliant suggestions for skin tones, so you needent worry about not been able to buy skin tone paints. at the end of each chapter (except the first chapter as that ones about materials you will need) she brings eveerythng learned in the chapter and does a more complex piece tutorial.

my only complaint is the laytouts as i find it alittle annoying that the text isnt directly next to the corrasponding photo in most cases. with tutorials i prefer the text to wrasp around pictures so i can look from the tutorial picture to the text with ease.

dreamscapes myth and magic creating legendary creatures and characters in watercolour

the second watercolour book covers a more broad rage of subjects. it looks at 13 diffrent topics, for each one she touches upon painting different things. theres a very useful colour chart for painting diffrent skin tones in this one. she also talks about pattened fabric. the first chapter is almost exactly the same as her first tutorial book, but saying that it has to be for those who havent read the first. the layouts are still the same so theres still that issue, however this book is juat as informative as the first one, and i'm still learning new things from it which is good. not as many new things like the first book because many techniques you learn are repeated over and over again, but that strengthens the process. i especially find the different skin tone suggestions in this book to be very useful. hopefully i will branch away from my purple/alzain crimson mixed with lemon yellow or yellow ochre or raw sienna combo.

avatar the last airbender the art of the animated series.

art books are something i like but find very expensive, so i dont have as many as i like. i have the art of the fellowship of the ring, tara mcphersons lonely hearts club, and uzamaki the art of naruto and the book that i'm about to talk about. taras been the only one that doesnt have text talking about the creation process (she has an interview in the back but thats it) and the naruto one not been as inciteful as it could have been (i was dissapointed buy the fact it didnt have any sketches and was mainly the covers of the manga) eventually i would love to buy some more art and art of books, there very insperational to me however if i have enough money to buy either an art book or a tutorial book the tutorial book usually wins.

thank god i had some birthday money to spend thats all i have to say... and i did get this from amazon so i saved some money there. i loved reading this book... it has writing throughout the book talking about the creation, and how it changed over time, thes glimpses at the storyboards, the key animation, the design work, the backgrounds, how the charecter design changed, the origanal concept and how that changed, press art and dvd covers... theres a lot of art. whats good about this book is it doesnt resort to captured screens from the show itself, the backgrounds are charecterless and you can wow over the sheer beauty of them without the charecters stealing the lime light, the facial expressions are often drawings are oftern as sketches to get a feel for the charecter, the scribbly cabbage guy yelling my cabbages is a good example of this, at the beginning of the book they kinda stated the animators have a whole 3 series singing their praises lets look at the artwork done before it even reaches the animation stage and thats exactly what it does. i would love to have seen more of the story boards. defently glad i got it, its going on the most flipped though for insperation shelf with john howe, tara mcpherson, imagine fx, and stephanie pui mun laws books.