Fantastic Realms!: Draw Fantasy Characters, Creatures and Settings

I recieved this book very fast from the seller. It is a very nice drawing book. It came in fantastic condition. Thanks Nancy

. "Just like adventurers getting ready to go on a quest, artists must prepare themselves before setting out to create fantasy worlds and creatures." (V.Shane, pp15). How odd it seems that the very first lesson in this book is to `Begin with Seeing,' yet without awareness of the world around you, how can you create a world within or without, the one in which you live? This truly is an amazing creative book. For example, get a spray bottle out of the kitchen and study it until you see a creature emerge from the contours of the bottle. If you have trouble seeing something different, squint, or turn your head to the side, because you will be able to see a wild animal that is dangerous or a creature that is gentle, or battle raiment for your hero or villain. Something is there waiting for you to find it, much like stereographs. This is the power of fantasy art. The book will take you through the basics of fantasy drawing, the tools you will need and additional supplies that come in handy. You will see sketching & shading techniques known as hatching, crosshairs, contour lines, and others. Darker lines make deeper the shadows. If you want a sword gleam, keep it light while all around it is muted and darker. By following the exercises in this book, you will create heroes and villains, dragons of many shapes and spirit, motion and stillness. There is a new world in this book and it is here for you. It is so exciting to know that you can combine the knowledge you gain from all of the books on drawing to create cover art or coming books.

If you like to draw and enjoy fantasy, then V. Shane's FANTASTIC REALMS: DRAW FANTASY CHARACTERS, CREATURES AND SETTINGS is for you. Packed with both step-by-step inlay illustrations of close-ups for drawing hands, inking approaches, and capturing action and color drawings of full finished products, FANTASTIC REALMS offers everything from coloring keys and notes on texturing and shading to using variety and bar sweeps to give an atmosphere to movement. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

There's really a lot to appreciate about this book, and there was useful info right off the bat. Of course the first 20 minutes I spent looking at all the pretty pictures, espcially the ones that seperate the chapters. The biggest difference between this book and others is the "tone" (if there is such a thing) that the information is presented in. Some How-to's are all stupid and jokey and others read like a thesis on grass growing. This is informal and smart, enjoyable to read. So far, I've used the 'drawing a straight line without a a ruler, shadows and textures on rocks and rubble and flowing robes. Don't get me wrong, I was confident in tackling these things on my own, but after reading Fantastic Relams, I was able to create these items more dyanamically than before. Also, digging the templates for practice and the coloring keys throughout the book.

I love this book. More often than not, when you go to purchase a drawing book, you see so many books that basically tell you the same things over and over again. This book does what so many other books I've looked at don't. It shows me how to draw not only fantasy figures, but castles, and creatures. Fantastic Realms: Draw Fantasy Characters, Creatures And Settings provides me with solid techniques for shading armor, or weapons and clothing. I'm really happy to have this book a part of my collection. If you are as interested in drawing fantastic scenes as I am, then this is a book you won't want to pass up!