How to Draw Fantasy Females: Create Sexy Cyberpunks, Seductive Supergirls, And Raunchy All-action Heroines

by Chris Patmore

Graphic artists who open this scintillating tutorial discover the beauty secrets of cartoon bombshells, then learn how to give them active roles in stories. Step-by-step illustrations show female anatomy and proportion, ways to render poses and body shapes, and methods to exaggerate or simplify female shapes for special effects. Artists learn to create convincing drawings of seductive supergirls, action heroines, sexy cyberpunks, feisty Manga babes, and other types. Instruction includes methods for drawing facial features, head-turning hairstyles, and fantasy wardrobes with eye-popping metal bikinis and skin-tight jumpsuits. A historical overview of females in animation and comics covers styles from Betty Boop to Tank Girl. The author explains the importance of storytelling in art and discusses ways to develop story concepts before starting to draw. Chapters that follow focus on choosing art equipment (pencils, papers, brushes, inks, paints, and pixels), selecting appropriate drawing styles to match characters' personalities, rendering different feminine types, from goddess to the girl next door, and more.The book concludes with a brief survey of the business of commercial art, with advice on how and where to sell finished work, how to draw characters to order, and how artists can protect their rights. More than 200 flamboyant, full-color illustrations.

Genres: Art

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some parts of it are helpful, but the pervasive objectification of female characters is really...sad. Not only that, it's also lazy character design. Some are worse than others and others are actually pretty good, but most rely on being sexy as their main design element.

I really like the layout of the pages. There's some useful things at the beginning of the book before the character design starts and the variety in styles is nice for a change, although I would have wished for the quality to have been of a higher standard throughout the book. That's really all nice things I have to say about that.

On to the how to part. There's actually...surprisingly little of it. It's mostly just full illustrations and some worked out sketches, but barely anything about the actual process that goes into creating characters. There's some background information, but not nearly enough to justify it as a guidebook. Nothing on how to draw the female figure, the various shapes it can have, how to construct a face, etc.

It's mostly an inspiration book for drawing characters in skimpy outfits. There's barely any variety in body types or ethnicities. The only designs I actually liked were the characters illustrated by Nic Brennan.

[Jess Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

To learn how to draw (in a general sense), I've found John Ruskin's The elements of drawing to be the BEST drawing how-to book. It's a tedious book (and he states so himself right at the start), but if you persist, it will really allow you to develop the fundamental skills for drawing (good eye for detail, correct shading, etc).

That being said, I enjoyed and own a copy of "How to Draw Fantasy Females." I have done more writing than drawing, throughout my life (I am currently 24; started drawing when I was around 16/17). I actually liked that this book gave a good range of the different archetypes in the fantasy/"speculative" genre. I do not have the time to personally catalog every single species that I come across, so I find this very useful to refer to, should I run out of inspiration/ideas along the way (I write urban fantasy material, and sometimes draw the book covers for my work / I mostly draw people/portraits too, when I have time to catch up on some drawing).

While this book might not tell you specifically how to draw something (via the whole process from stick figures, for every example in the book), I find the details accompanying the drawings very helpful and insightful. One line caught my attention, "Ideally, the final inked image should be effective as it is, before any color is applied to the drawing in Photoshop" (Pg 59). I have spend a few years working only with pens/pencils (not colouring), because I wanted to have a good understanding of the basics of drawing. I guess it's a very long-winded but old school way of doing things, lol.

I think the best way to really learn how to draw is to just do it, and keep practicing. I started off by just copying whatever I wanted, and improved along the way (I only drew faces at first, recently have progressed to full body lengths). I have fiddled around with Photoshop a lot in the past, so for the absolute beginner, this book might be a bit difficult to follow. My style of artwork has been starting off traditionally with pen or pencil, then coloring digitally, which is what a lot of the examples here are about too, so in that sense, this book was/is a really good fit for my personal artwork style. I will be spending a lot of time reading this book from cover to cover, and trying out the tips and advice.

[Liên Hoa Phạm · Rating 2 out of 5]

.... ugly drawings :(( some, not all, i'm sorry :(( i didn't read,... If i did, i might found something help but still

[Annie Feng · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got this book from the library and hated it. Nope. The anatomy bits were somewhat useful, but You can generally get that from any life drawing book. Generally the art was poor (even by 2006 standards), characters are weirdly hypersexualized, and focused on stereotypes instead of trying to inspire artists to think outside the box. All those characters are forgettable, and a majority of them were uninspiring.