Hey, guys! This episode is about highlights from the previous Art Side of Life interviews. Bea Blue, Wouter Tulp, Cyarine and Felipe Machado share their favorite art books and other books.
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Watch full interviews here
- Bea Blue https://artsideoflife.com/beatrice-blue/
- Wouter Tulp https://artsideoflife.com/wouter-tulp/
- Cyarine https://artsideoflife.com/cyarine-laura-brouwers/
- Felipe Machado https://artsideoflife.com/felipe-machado/
Click here to check all mentioned books and resources
Featured artwork by Wouter Tulp, used with permission
Other articles in the Art Books series:
- Best Pose Reference Websites, Apps, and Books in 2023
- Best Drawing Books in 2023
- Best Art History Books in 2023
- Best Color Theory Books in 2023
Episode Transcript
Announcer
Creative, artistic, happy! That’s you. There are endless possibilities for living a creative life. So let’s inspire each other. Art Side of Life interviews with Iva.
Iva Mikles
Hey guys, and welcome to another episode of Art Side of Life. I’m Iva and this is another compilation video from various interviews. And in this episode we will talk about favorite art books. So if you’re wondering maybe which art books you should check out or other books you should just get as an artist, this video is for you. And before we get to the interview, I would like to thank AstroPad for sponsoring this video because with Astro pad, you can use your iPad Pro as virulence graphics tablet for your Mac. And I especially enjoyed with Photoshop or Illustrator, because I already created so many brushes, like texture brushes for brushes, and if you already have them, why not to use it on iPad Pro, right. So if you want to check out Astro pad as well, you can get 10% discount for studio licenses. And you can just go to artsideoflife.com/astro pad and get 10% discount with the discount code art side. Yeah.
Iva Mikles
And can you also recommend that some books maybe you like or would you learn from?
Beatrice Blue
Yeah, I mean, or any book can
Iva Mikles
be also life book if you like that, like a story or something? No,
Beatrice Blue
yeah, I’m such a fan of storybooks. I love short stories. And I try to read one story at least a day. Because that keeps me keeps the magic. So I’m such a fan of Peter Pan of the book, mainly. I love it like the way he writes and everything is just absolutely great. And Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite writers. I love Ocean at the End of the Lane and all these short stories, I have all of them and I reread them and reread them they’re just great. And I love poetry. So much I love reading all this be poets and what Gary Snyder for example, and his trips to the mountains and see how he saw like nature and stuff. I love, love Dickens of, I don’t know all all stories that have magic, but also some kind of values in them. And, and then in terms of art age. I love all these animation books that they do from the movies because I like seeing the processes and everything. also illustrated books I love because they you see one person’s journey along one book, and I’m such a fan of Benji Davis lately. He’s great. And a huge sailor so much I don’t know so many. And also going back to the stories, I love going to different parts of the world and then trying to get like local stories. Like I got, I got this from my last trip to Nepal, I found this in like a little bookstore is like tales from Nepal. And it’s like about demons and like their, their their thoughts and their stories where they had in the past. And I really love that because that that gives you such a fresh view as some workers. For someone that’s the main thing that they’ve always heard of. But for you, it’s like so different. So
Iva Mikles
yeah, like refreshing and like different legends. And oh, that sounds great.
Beatrice Blue
So yeah, I love that. And that’s one of the things that I would love to have a big collection of like, go places and get each tales from everywhere. And like, so. Yeah,
Iva Mikles
perfect. Yeah. Or you can write your own like story. Travel and then they people tell us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Beatrice Blue
I do that. So sometimes.
Iva Mikles
Do you maybe also have like a favorite book you give as a present to your like creative friends or you know something?
Wouter Tulp
Well, yeah, well, I have a couple of books here that I can just quickly go over because I think they’re all really cool. Perfect. But so many,
Iva Mikles
like, big file.
Wouter Tulp
Yes. Well, I just show a couple of them. I think this one is really cool. It’s not even directly related to art. It’s called The Art of Learning. But I think you know Besides just the technical part of drawing, as a freelancer or also, you know, just as an artist, you, you go through a mental process as well. And I think this is really a great book that deals with the process of learning. So that’s really cool. The Talent Code I like that. It’s really because if you read it,
Iva Mikles
no, no, this one no, but the learning, okay, yes.
Wouter Tulp
Cool. Yeah. This one is about you know, as artists, you I often God, why you’re so talented and, and people were by what I could never do that I can’t draw. And this book really says the opposite. You know, it’s, it’s, well, greatness isn’t born, it’s grown. That’s the subtitle of the book. And it really has some great points, I think about, you know, the myth of talent. And that, you know, it’s so much about just putting in the work, because, you know, there may be a difference in, you know, the abilities we have, but you will never know until you put in all the hours and effort, how far you you can get so well that’s, that’s interesting, too. This one I love. This is dream worlds. It has some great information on production design for animation. This one is really great for painters, alla prima is really a great book. This one is really cool. The animators survival kit, probably well known by anyone who deals with animation. This one is great about movie of all this is film directing, but it’s really interesting. It’s a little technical, maybe but you know just as an introduction to filmmaking really.
Iva Mikles
By shoot right, yeah,
Wouter Tulp
shot shot by shot. Yeah. So Steven Katz, this is a nice book. Vivian Maier, it’s, there’s a documentary about her, which is really cool. It’s she took these photos and nobody even knew about her. And they just after she died, they found all these photos, but they are really, really amazing. It’s a beautiful storytelling compositions. It’s really inspiring. Well, I can’t I have to show this one. Of course, John Singer Sargent, for everyone loves painting. Well, there’s just too much while this one may be drawn to life. Yes,
Iva Mikles
it also one of my favorites. Really cool for you know,
Wouter Tulp
gestural drawing. Those are notes by Walt Stanchfield. And well, no, I have much more. But those are really, really interesting books.
Iva Mikles
Perfect. We can put it also in the show notes. So everyone in the audience can check it out. And yeah, I have some new books to add to my list as well. So cool. Cool. So you have some I don’t have so. Let’s get right. Perfect. Perfect. Definitely. Yeah, because it’s always nice to like, read more. And yeah, just Yeah, find out more tools and how we can progress. So when you mentioned books, do you have like favorite books you would give as a gift to people or something maybe to learn from as well.
Cyarine
I have a few favorite books, I used to be a very big fan of the Artemis Fowl series, such as someone will probably hear it as I used to be if I ever want to reread those books again, Harry Potter series also like the classic fantasy self, but my all time favorite has been in cards. The in card series is so good and the way that it really encapsulates my childhood for me, because it was an escape from the real world. And the book is literally about escaping from the real world in a lot of ways. So, um, yeah, I don’t know, that’s kind of like, something that I think back about when I’m like, Okay, what, what kind of artists do I want to be? What kind of stories would I want to tell with my artwork? Because I don’t know, for some reason I, I always think that I have to tell a story someday, even though I’m not a story artists that I’m just like, a concept artist that does pretty stuff. I think back about that sort of stuff. And I’m like, Okay, if I wanted to do something that was meaningful, I will probably be that because it’s such a big impact on me and my childhood. I was younger. Yeah.
Iva Mikles
Because I mean, as you said, also, you always think about stories when you’re creating your characters anyway, kind of why they’re wearing their outfits. They’re they pose or whatever.
Felipe Machado
Yeah , yeah, you have to draw. And
Iva Mikles
we talked about the some book references before the recording if you can mention some of your favorite, either art, or, like life books you like.
Felipe Machado
No. And I noticed on your on your interviews that the witch which I think it’s pretty, pretty cool for the entire community to know about references. So I did my homework and I have my top five here. This is number number of one problem, you know, this
Iva Mikles
book. Yeah. And I think actually, a lot of guests are mentioning exactly this book. So this is like one of the top favorites of everyone seems like,
Felipe Machado
yeah, no, it’s this. This thing is magical. Thank you, James gurney. And color and light. It’s the best in general for painting and illustration and art in general. This is like the Bible, the starting and the end. There’s not a day that I don’t go into this book, finding an answer for a question that I might have. And so this will be like the first one. I don’t know if you know this one figure in trying to sign an invention by Michael Hampton.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, I know it but I don’t have this one yet.
Felipe Machado
Okay, talking about anatomy. This is the best one there.
Iva Mikles
Oh, perfect. Yeah, I hit the drone to life, which is kind of similar approach similar.
Felipe Machado
Yeah, similar. What I like about this book is the way it’s structured in terms of the analysis of the human body, and how it simplifies, and sensitizes. The, the idea of shapes and balance and proportions, but also something that’s some of the anatomy books, from a few years back, I think didn’t have which is the notion of dynamics from the very start
Iva Mikles
of the company, the action line and the competition. Everything number two.
Felipe Machado
So this is number three framed ink by Marco Matos monster.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, exactly. Perfect for comic books or any other layout. Yeah.
Felipe Machado
And I don’t I know my top five, it’s probably general top five. It doesn’t matter.
Iva Mikles
Great. Yeah. This book I also love.
Felipe Machado
Yeah, composition wise is the best and also being practical and elegant
Iva Mikles
about composition. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So frame
Felipe Machado
number. Yeah. Number four would be drawing animals by Joe quaterly. Perfect. I saw his class on CDA and terms of composition, very similar to two. Two to the other book, The second book I mentioned about anatomy, but I love create a creature design. And if you have basic knowledge about animal anatomy, you have everything you need for creature design. So this would be number four. And number five is this one that I’ve had recently, designing creatures and characters.
Iva Mikles
Oh, perfect. I don’t have this one. And
Felipe Machado
I think he came out this year. And it’s this book is amazing, because it’s a full one workshop. And it will have like, it has like this, this guide. And it will give you like three words as you do the the assignments. And you can be like super disciplined about the assignments, or do it like halfway and there’ll be like it did okay, next time, you can do better the structure of the book super crazy, but but if you’re into concept art and world building, really good.
Iva Mikles
So we will put all the links in the show notes on the website and that this interview so yeah, everyone in the audience can find it. But thank you so much for sharing. It’s really great to have this like overview of like the favorite books because then people can choose like, Okay, do I like this book? Or do I want to improve in this area?
Felipe Machado
Right now. It’s, it’s the the important thing.
Iva Mikles
So that was it, guys, thank you so much for listening and sticking around until the end. And if you’re interested in some of the things we talked about, I will put these links in the description so you can check it out. And if you want to watch some of the YouTube videos, you can just head over to artsideoflife.com/youtube or just go directly to YouTube. And you can just let me know what you think in the comments. And if you would spare five minutes, I would really love if you can drive review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen or get to your podcast. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much again for being here and talk to you guys in the next episode. Bye.
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Hi, I am Iva (rhymes with “viva”). I am a full-time self-taught artist behind Art Side of Life® and a Top Teacher on Skillshare. I have 15 years of experience in the creative field as a concept designer, illustrator, art director, and now freelance artist, content creator, and art instructor. My goal is to help you get your creative groove on with Procreate and make awesome art through practical classes, tutorials, Procreate brushes, and guides on art tools, supplies and resources. About me »
