How To Draw Your Own Graphic Novel Book Review

Drawing your own graphic novel is fun especially when you are creating all of the characters and the story yourself, and these days there are lots of books and help you can find to inspire you on your graphic novel creation journey and one book in particular is called How To Draw Your Own Graphic Novel by Frank Lee. The book itself seems like it's aimed at young children, but within the pages there are cluse that this is not the case as anyone at any age can find something useful within the pages of this art instructional drawing book.

After a tiny one page introduction of what the book is about (The cluse is in the title!) there are 4 quick mini chapters which focus on Drawing Tools - This is the standard beginners piece that's usually in every how to draw book imaginable and it lists the pencils and pens and any other tools an artist will need to start drawing some cool graphic novel stuff. Next is Figures - Which gives you a rough guide to sketching out figures from scratch using the classic way of beginning building block shapes which make up your figures. Faces - You can learn quickly how to draw faces here with a fast introduction into face sketching. Perspective - is a short two page look at drawing in prespective, but I do recommend another book for learning in depth about drawing many different points of perspective for drawing comic books.

After these mini chapters there are six main chapters which show you how to draw and create the varying elements of a graphic novel. Starting with....

Chapter 1: Creating Heroes

Every graphic novel needs lead characters or heroes and this is where you can learn to draw male and female heroes to include in your book. There are a few good examples from warrior to superhero to become inspired to sketch. The female superhero and the male Cyborg character are perfect examples to get your creative inspiration going.

Chapter 2: Creating Villains

What story wouldn't be complete without the arch nemesis of the heroes, the ying and the yang go together well and the bad guys always seem the best to draw from an artists point of view.

Chapter 3: Dynamic Figure Drawing

This chapter expands on the mini chapter Figures near the beginning of the book and it really touches on drawing your figures more dynamically. This chapter helps to incorporate everything you may have learned about drawing figures previously and helps you to draw more convincing and stylized versions of characters leaping through the air and in certain action poses.

Chapter 4: Pencilling A Comic Book Page

From panel to panel action and composition to drawing the flow of a comic book story and as usual there are ideas and examples to follow along and sketch out to practice. Also close ups and wide shots to capture the action of your story are still covered throughout this chapter very well and the idea is to practice drawing sequential story ideas.

Chapter 5: Inking And Coloring

The inking and the coloring stages are an important aspect of bringing your graphic novel stories to life with more added clarity and depth in the art and it also helps if you have an understanding of the ink pens you use and what coloring pens or pencils you may use and the effects you can achieve.

Chapter 6: The Cover

The cover is the most important element of your graphic novel to entice people to buy your book and it teases the reader of the story content within. A good cover is essential to make people want to buy your Graphic Novel and make them excited to want to read it. The art has to be good, but also interesting visually so that it appeals to a target market with a good strong title and colors to stand out wherever the book is promoted, whether that's on a comic book shelf or online at Amazon.

This book I found to be a brilliant book that would appeal to those who are seriously considering creating their own comic book or Graphic Novel and the ideas presented within the book are great to learn from the examples which you can study.