Art Book Review: How To Draw And Sell Comic Strips

 Yet another book I bought over 10 years ago and have had in my possession reading from cover to cover and that is How to draw comic strips to sell and it's a useful book in that it tells you what you need to know and leaves out the fluff of some of the other books that claim to help you with the same thing.

The book comes in 3 parts and 12 separate chapters which the first part covers the area of an introduction as to why the book was written and put together and then a history of comics and also comics all over the world help to explain about comic books in general and sets things up nicely for the meaty part of the book, part 2 is where the magic of the book takes over and if you're interested in wanting to learn how to draw a comic book from scratch then lets look at what part 2 of the book covers....

The equipment - It's not just pencils and paper you need to consider buying for your comic bookwork, you have to think of other areas of page creation such as lettering and inking, so you will need brushes and inks as well as process white for cleaning up any ink smudges so they don't show on the finished artwork, a basic toolbox is needed for art markers and stencils and more and more now computers are becoming used in comic book art, so get used to them.

The basic elements - Basic elements such as perspective and figures in motion help to pull the visual story forward and that's when this section gives you an overview of the elements that help make up the story idea and how it will fit for the end result.

The Story - The obvious reasons why when drawing a comic book a story is needed first and that a script will help shape a comic book into a well received one if the story is good, so there is help here with an example script you could go through and try to draw to practise your comic book drawing.

The breakdown - A breakdown is just another term for page draft and this is the first layout you would ever do before starting to pencil the pages properly and you see a few examples in this section which over some good ground with comic book layouts.

Pencilling - The actual process of pencilling becomes a personal one and can be broken down into separate ways of working for any artist and so more tips follow for pencilling a comic book, pencilling is the stage that fits easily between the time that you or someone else inks your work and is an important stage to master and draw your comic book pages to the correct proportions.

Inking - Inking is explained in this part and the right inks and pens and brushes to use as well as techniques to consider when inking the pencil art of your comic pages, I liked this part alot, because I am an inking freak!!

Lettering - How to letter your pages, what to do and how to achieve it, invaluable if you want to learn how and do most of the comic book chores yourself, very useful if you are self publishing your own comic books.

Part 3 is the other essential part which goes through how to present your work and approach editors with your work with a view to selling your work, so portfolio tips are covered here and how to send samples by mail, also in the final part of the book there is a small section on starting your own magazine, which is the self publishing route and now online there are some fantastic resources to go that way of getting your comic book published and that's with publish on demand, something I've been looking at quite recently with one of my graphic novel efforts.

All in all this is a fantastic book that tells you everything you need to know about creating a comic book, it's up to you now to get on with it!