Book Review: A Book of Drawings by Ian McQue

By the time Ian McQue (blog | Twitter) told me about his artbook A Book of Drawings by Ian McQue, the first edition had already sold out.

Good news is, second printing is coming in and you can get them at his online store. There are some pretty awesome posters for sale there as well.

The book's a 64-page paperback and includes with a signed original drawing. It cost £20 plus shipping. It ships from UK and overseas shipping is a bit pricey but you won't get the book anywhere else.

Ian McQue is a concept artist who has worked on Grand Theft Auto titles, and has his work appear in books such the Spectrum series of artbooks, Sketching from the Imagination, Digital Painting Techniques Volume 4, Design Studio Press books BLAST and Nuthin' But Mech.

This book is more like a sketchbook. The artworks are black and white, looks as if they are drawn with technical pens. It features character designs, floating ships and robots, vehicles and other interesting stuff.

I really like his designs for floating ships that look rather worn as if they have been in use for decades. There are pages with these mechanical ships alone, sometimes piloted, or on other pages, these ships are anchored, so to speak, to the towns below.

The bold and sketchy style really adds character and texture to whatever that's drawn. As a whole, when you flip through the book, it feels as if they exist in the same whole because of the style.

The town designs are also quite delightful. They are a bit whimsical, almost laid back, but you can be sure they are populated even though you can't see any people because of all the details such as water cans on the roof, signboards, flaps covering the windows, potted plants, etc. There are lots of details to look at.

There's also quite a sizeable coverage on character designs, mostly soldiers of some sort and other characters.

It's a wonderful sketchbook.

My only complaint is the book should have been 10 times thicker, like 640 pages. Can't get enough of the art.

I don't know of any other artbooks Ian McQue has released but this is the one to get.

The book is available at https://ianmcque.bigcartel.com/

While stocks lasts. The first edition went out of stock pretty quickly.