Learning to draw fantasy art is a fun learning process, particularly as it involves using your imagination and in doing so you can create fantastic creations that are unique and original.

The fantasy illustrators technique book is designed as an introduction into the world of fantasy art drawing with simple overviews of the steps and processes for drawing fantasy art and the great thing about this book is that it is easy to follow and written by a professional fantasy artist Gary A Lippincott who has been a professional fantasy painter and illustrator for the past 20 years or more and his art has been featured heavily on novels by J R R Tolkien, Tanith Lee, Charles De Lint and many others as well as in magazines, calendars and graphic novels.

The first chapter takes you on a quick tour of the tools that any artist needs such as paper, pencils, paints such as water colour, Gauche and acrylics with a small overview of working in digital with your art. Furthermore, there are some practical tips and advice from this fantasy artist about setting up your workspace which is very useful even though it is common sense about additional lighting and having good storage space, it is still useful to know these things.

The second chapter is more of the visualizing chapter which takes into account the importance of sketching and fast sketching to achieve concepts and designs that really are what you are looking for.

Also where to find inspiration for imaginative fantasy art with the ideas and influences of other media to create art from your imagination. Also the basics of character studies and the foundations of facial features and body stature are explored to give you a grounding in the way a fantasy artist works to visualize their fantasy art - I found this chapter to be very useful!

The third chapter is more of taking what you learnt through the visualization chapter and making your characters more dynamic with the use of geometric shapes adding movement and also the depth and perspective that you can achieve with your artwork.

This chapter fits very nice with the previous chapter and expands upon the themes more with the addition of imaginary beasts.

The fourth chapter builds on techniques to make your art grow with the design and layout and adding the paint with highlights and shadows. Also explored is the relation of tone and colour and the all important colours for skin tones which all fantasy artists must learn..(I am!)

Chapter five is a gallery of great fantasy art examples that fit the theme of the book nicely, inspiring you further to create your own works of art, plus a small section that I felt needed expanding upon, all about professional development as a fantasy artists and how to approach companies with your work.

And at the back of the book there is a resources section which details books for further reading and other websites to visit that will provide more fantasy art resources and advice.

This was a great book, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and following some of the examples and advice.