How To Draw Cartoons Book Review

Draw cartoons with this book which is exactly what it says on the front cover, an easy step by step guide written and drawn by cartoonist Adam Clay, the book after the short introduction divides itself into six chapters and runs you through the main areas of fun to draw cartoons. The book is great for all ages and anyone serious about picking up on their cartooning skills and finding their own cartoon art style along the way, art learning books like this are fantastic as they inspire any artist with practical drawing exercises and step by step drawing tutorials.

Drawing people is the first chapter and the very idea of creating cartoon faces out of different shapes is the preferred method and it's also quite effective as you can incorporate exaggerated features much more this way, Eyes, mouths,lips noses and hair are quickly examined through some simple drawing tutorials, as are hands and feet and the full body shapes too with a very short couple of pages on creating characters that have expressions.

Animal antics is the cartoon animal chapter in the book as animals are very popular in cartoons and so you are treated to ways to draw various animals from basic shapes again. Once you see how to break things down into easy to follow steps you can pretty much come up with your own cartoon drawing and characters quite easily.

Cats, Dogs, Ducks,Parrots,Snakes, Rabbits and many more animals are walked through in 4 step drawing tutorials. Also there is some mention on using actual real animal photos as reference to use for cartoon drawing and that to me sounds like a plan.

Developing characters is a section which expands on the previous two chapters by dressing your characters more and giving them more character and personality with multiple facial features and varying costume accessories. This chapter is about bringing your characters to life by any means possible.

A recurring character in the art book Mr Underpants gets a make over into a wizard and then a Count Dracula vampire as well as a pirate, a clown, a cowboy and a space hero, it just goes to show you that one character dressed up into different clothing can make several different characters all from the same initial drawing.

Adding movement into your characters is important and that's what this section deals with a lot and this really helps to bring your cartoons to life.

On location is the all important chapter of drawing backgrounds for your cartoons to interact with and it's all about helping to set the scene and amplify the features of the character and fit in with the dress code of the cartoon. It really does make a difference thinking about backgrounds and deciding on what different types of backgrounds fit with each individual cartoon personality.

From dungeons, to Jungles and desert islands to alien planets the choice is endless and your imagination does count when drawing these essential backgrounds.

Comic strips is the main one that I always enjoy, how to place your characters into some form of narrative in the form of a strip comic and with it being cartoons, it doesn't have to be that complicated. This chapter relies heavily on everything you have learning in the previous five chapters and walks you through simple ways on how to layout your cartoon comic strip.

There are some useful things in this chapter such as the special effects and noise words which I often forget about, but they exist in many comic books and also a small page on speech bubbles and thought balloons helps add something to it all too.

Overall, this books was easy to read, not heavy on words and really is an easy guide on drawing cartoons. Inspirational on many levels at around 128 pages it's a great cartoon art learning book.

Consider Ideas To Draw For Kids which is an article I put together to show some video examples of stuff to draw for kids to learn, which you may find interesting.