I was recently sent a copy of the new drawing book by Sachiko Umoto, a Japanese artist who has a whole series of cute Illustration School books that help you practise drawing.
The latest book is called Let’s Draw a Story and shows you how to draw all kinds of different things and how to put them together into a story.
If you’ve ever wanted to draw comics or to make a complete picture with backgrounds and details and movement, this is a great book. It goes through the basics of shapes and colours and patterns through to tougher things like figures and movement and scale. The bunny page here shows how much detail it goes into with different poses and how to use a simple skeleton to help you put everything in the right place.
Each section includes tips on drawing different types of characters, plus pages with lightly drawn or missing areas that you can fill in as practice. It also gives you lots of ideas of how to add your own unique twist on things and by the end of the book, you should be confident in creating your own stories and settings.
Threaded through all the exercises is a full colour illustrated story so you can see the characters in action and how they interact with all the new things you’ve learned.
This is a great book for both total beginners and budding artists who need a bit of help and inspiration in moving on to the next stage. It’s available now for an RRP of $15.99 / £10.99 from publishers Quarto, Amazon or you can order it from your local bookshop.
Marceline is the co-founder and editor of Super Cute Kawaii and the author of The Super Cute Book of Kawaii. She lives by the seaside in Scotland in a flat full of kawaii, creating cute character goods as Asking For Trouble, working on endless craft projects and playing Nintendo.
