My name is Jeff Mellem and this is my blog to share useful books I have read, quality materials that I have used, museums I have visited, and any other art related experiences. I am the author of Sketching People: Life Drawing Basics and How to Draw People: Step-by-Step Lessons for Figures and Poses.
Pogo was a popular American comic strip by cartoonist Walt Kelly that ran from 1948 through 1975. The strip varied from slapstick and whimsy to sharp political and social satire and appealed to both kids and adults. Kelly was a masterful artist and he infused both the characters and their world with vivid personalities through his skillful artwork. Kelly began his art career as an artist for Walt Disney Studios and he worked on Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo before he created Pogo.
The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling is jam-packed with great ideas and solid techniques on sketching nature. John Muir Laws approaches his drawing from a curiosity of the natural world and studies and explores its shapes, colors, and behavior through his journals.
Creativity is the foundation of artistic expression. Before you can create anything you have to generate new and novel ideas about what you want to say and how to go about saying it. Jack Foster’s book How to Get Ideas is an amazing guide to the idea generation process. Creative inspiration isn’t a mystical mystery but a learnable skill.
After this weekend’s surprising stunt by Banksy I thought it was time to take another look at his book: Banksy, Wall and Piece. (If you didn’t hear what happened, Banksy secretly rigged a shredder in the frame of one of his painting and triggered it immediately after it sold at an auction for 1.4 million dollars.) I’ve always been a fan of Banksy and am so lucky that I attended his amazing and memorable Existencilism show in 2002. Banksy, Wall and Piece covers much of his distinctive graffiti stencil work and other art roughly through 2006.
I love Allie Brosh’s webcomic turned book Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened. The book is filled with her personal stories that are as insightful as they are funny. Her purposely crude drawing style matches the uneasiness felt in the stories she tells about her life.
Eliot Goldfinger’s epic anatomy book Human Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form covers all the anatomy an artist should ever need. It’s a very comprehensive book and works better as a reference guide than a book to read through cover to cover.
The Weatherly Guide to Drawing Animals is a great book for learning to sketch animals. It’s not a book that will show you how to do finished illustrations but shows you how to capture their movement in a gesture drawing and how to build a drawing through basic forms. It covers a wide number of animals and gives you techniques that you can apply to animals that aren’t specifically covered in the book.
