My 7 Favorite Art Books
As artists / designers, we all have art books that we love, admire, and learn so much from. Here is a list of my 7 favorite art books. (Art books defined as books about art and/or books about creating art.)
The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair
This book is great for those who love color (obviously) and for those who also perhaps have a short attention span. This book reads like a compilation of magazine or newspaper columns, because that’s what it is. This book discusses the very interesting histories of and social contexts of 75 shades of colors, each no more than 4 pages for each color. Each entry is short and sweet, enough to grab your attention, but not too much that you get burnt out. I highly recommend this book!
In Progress by Jessica Hische
Jessica Hische is one of my favorite artists of all time. Her lettering is always so amazing. This book provides a look into her process, from pencil to vector. It’s incredible to see into this process, it’s so inspiring. She also provides examples of her process applied to some real-world projects. It’s also great to see all of the graphical technical jargon I’ve learned in use, illustrated as well, which is essential to successfully explaining concepts such as these. Definitely check out this book!
The Art of Cuphead by Studio MDHR
Cuphead is such an incredible video game! This game is designed in a rubber hose style of animation, a style of cartoons utilized in the 1920’s and some into the 30’s. With that, the art of this game is so accurate to the rubber hose style, it evokes that nostalgia feeling. In this book, the two brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer share their process, including sketches and ideation practices. They do this going through “the supporting cast,” and each of the game’s villains from each section of the game. They even discuss all of the backgrounds too. This book is great for learning about conceptualizing and ideation as well as video game production.
Animalogic Art Book
There’s a channel on YouTube called Animalogic that shares content on nature and animals. They make really great videos, and a lot of their videos are accompanied by these neat black-and-white drawings of whatever animal they were talking about in that video. A lot of these drawings were compiled into an art book. Similarly, there is another channel they run called Animalogic by Design that features these drawings. I really love these drawings, because they truly are like a study of the form of the animals, and I in terms of art, I find form fascinating. For some good “learning drawing by copying” material, take a look at this book.
Draw Your Day by Samantha Dion Baker
This book is great for starting and keeping a sketch journal or an art journal. It’s like art therapy in a way. It’s not only great to see an explanation of how and why to keep an art journal, but also to see some examples from the artist and learn from them. This book is full of tips, ideas and most of all, encouragement to draw your day. I really connect with it since the artist worked in graphic design at one point, so I can see that design influence in her drawings. This truly is an encouraging and inspiring book.
Draw Something Dumb from Drawfee
This is from the YouTube channel Drawfee, where a group of artists draw based on fun prompts. From that, they created this awesome book of fun drawing prompts for the fans to do. It’s a great way to practice drawing and your creativity skills, no matter your skill level. There are blank pages that can be used for your drawings, or you can draw them in your own notebook / sketchbook, but whatever you do, it’s sure to be fun and an excellent conversation-starter.
Women in Art by Rachel Ignotofsky
This book is another great pick for those who also perhaps have a short attention span. Each female artist highlighted in this book has only one page written about them, so the text is very easy to digest. In addition, the illustrations in this book are amazing as well. It’s another excellent example of exceptional art and design exhibited in a book. Check out this book to not only appreciate and learn from its design, but also to learn about some inspiring female artists.
Bonus Pick - Made By James by James Martin
This book is great for logo designers. He takes you through his process, which is really helpful. This book is also full of great and encouraging advice. I think my favorite piece of advice in it is that drawings don’t have to be “good.” That’s nonsense. Drawing is a way to formulate ideas, and it should be seen as a way of creating, rather than art. I’m always “afraid to sketch,” but knowing that it’s just a tool in my arsenal as a designer brings me some comfort that my sketching and drawings don’t have to be “perfect,” it’s a way to let go and explore. Definitively check this book out if you’re a creative professional. It’s a great read, and there are plenty of visuals to illustrate the points he makes.
Honorable Mentions
These books I still want to talk about and discuss, but I wanted them to be kept separate from the main books, so with that, here are some honorable mention art books.
Harry Potter - The Wand Collection
This is a really cool book. It’s super unique how it’s laid out in the shape of the wands, and it’s a lot of really neat and interesting information for how they made these wand props for the films.
Meggs’ History of Graphic Design
This was the textbook for my history of graphic design class I took. I know it can be difficult to read a textbook, so that’s why this book is in the honorable mentions, but there’s a lot of good information in it; there’s lots to learn from in it.
The World History of Animation by Stephen Cavalier
This is another book like an encyclopedia or textbook, but again, there’s lots of great information in it. Even if you don’t read it you can still look up the works of animation the book references and watch them; a lot can be learned from just watching animation.
Design
A note on design: all of these books I’ve mentioned here are absolutely gorgeously designed! I really appreciate that as an artistic person, so if you want some examples of very different but nicely designed book content, these books are useful in that regard as well.