Book Review: Pose Drawing Sparkbook: Put Life into Your Drawings

Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, Cedric Hohnstadt has managed to get his Pose Drawing SparkBook out. Cedric has sent me a copy to show you what's it's all about.

This is actually a 250-page spiral-bound book of pose drawing ideas plus empty drawing pages for you to draw on. There are 32 pages of instructions and tips on what makes for a successful pose. The goal is to show and not tell, make each character feel real by body language and facial expression. So that your audience at one glance can know what your character is doing or feeling.

The instructions are spread out in separate areas of the book, in between the groups of drawing pages. At the bottom of each drawing page, you get a scenario, an idea, that you must draw out for practice.

Right at the back of the book are lists of words for props, phrases, moods and situations that you can mix and match to create your own scenarios. 400 words total. After mixing, that's going to give you lots of things to draw.

The book does not teach you how to create a character, so you'll need to be able to construct basic characters to get the best out of the book.

I'll recommend this to anyone who wants to draw lively believable characters, such as comic artists, animators, storyboard artists etc. If you find it difficult to come up with ideas for scenarios for your own characters, this would be a great book to get.

In addition to the spiral-bound version, there are also ebook versions just in case you want save on shipping or use your own paper. They are available at www.cedricstudio.com/sparkbook. The expanded ebook version has added 200 items to the word lists behind.

The book is also available on Amazon.com.

Get the book at www.cedricstudio.com/sparkbook and Amazon.com