The following list of books are, without a doubt, a small selection of the most useful books that I, and many successful artists, have read and studied while going through art school and working professionally.
- Art
Fundamentals: Color, Light, Composition, Anatomy, Perspective, and Depth,
Gilles Beloeil
- This book will do a great job providing a "crash course" of explaining the fundamentals to creating dynamic art and design. This is the basic information on art fundamentals you are expected to know before anything else.
- Picture This: How Pictures Work,
Molly Bang
- This book focuses on how composition works on the human brain. It's very short and is not a hard read in the slightest. However, it does a great job covering, what I consider to be, key concepts of design that are used repeatedly by effective designers and storytellers in the industry.
- How to Draw, Scott Robertson
- This is a must buy if you want to know how to draw anything correctly.
- How to Render, Scott Robertson
- This is another must buy if you want to know how to render anything correctly.
- Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth, Andrew Loomis
- Loomis is one of the many masters of figure drawing. I not only go to figure drawing sessions, but I redraw and study the figure drawings of Loomis to better my own understanding. Any Loomis book is helpful, and luckily, he was gracious enough to provide FREE PDF versions of his books online.
- Color and Light: A Guide for a Realist Painter, James Gurney
- This is another must-buy if you want to begin understanding how to effective see and use color and light.
- Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for
Visual Storytellers, Marcos Mateu-Mestre
- If you are interested in being an illustrator, storyboard artist, comic book artist, or any kind of artist that wants to create dynamic and effective compositions, this is a must-buy. This book does a great job in explaining a much more advanced level of composition and how the human brain will perceive the image and narrative.
- Composition of Outdoor Painting, Edgar Payne
- If you want to learn more and get better at creating art related to background environment art, this book is a must buy. A lot of great insight from one of the masters of outdoor painting in regards to composition and art philosophy.
- Alla Prima II, Everything I Know About Painting- and More, Richard Schmid
- This book provides a great perspective on the philosophy and techniques of painting. Schmid is a master of traditional painting and the teachings he provides in this book can easily be applied to enriching digital painting. This book is a limited print, so it may not be the most affordable price. But how much are you willing to pay for a master's lifetime of information on painting?
