Draw Great Characters
CHARACTER BUILDING Illustrator Beverly Johnson helps you to flex your character design muscles in this book packed with creative prompts
Author Beverly Johnson Publisher Search Press Price £13 Web www.searchpress.com Available Now
Artists new to the world of character design can find it difficult to infuse their drawings with personality. Thankfully, this beginner-friendly book by children’s illustrator and character designer Beverly Johnson is here to show you how it’s done with a series of 75 art exercises.
With chapters covering shape language, facial expressions, body language, interactions and more, this book tackles character design from every angle and finds refreshing approaches to the topic. These include a look at how settings communicate character, and thought exercises to keep you on your toes. Even experienced character designers could benefit from the prompts it provides.
Each challenge also shows how Beverly has solved the brief, so you can see the theory in action. Crucially, this isn’t a how-to book on drawing, even though there’s a chapter on drawing techniques oddly relegated to the end of the book. And the trade-off for the amount of challenges is that, at times, their insight can feel cursory – newbies might need a bit more hand-holding to pull off the advice. But if you bear in mind that this book prioritises ideas over drawing methods, you’ll grasp character design better than before.
RATING ★★★★