BOOKS I READ IN JULY
July was not the best reading month. Any time I sat down to read, I felt tired or I couldn't concentrate. I was enjoying the book that I had started to read and I wanted to read it. However, whenever I was reading, I was itching to get back to drawing. My mind would not concentrate on the book and instead was thinking of different methods to draw what I saw in my mind's eye. Most of July was spent drawing or taking an art course. I can almost feel the beginning tingles of a reading slump. I did read some art books. They count. They totally count. Goodreads scans the ISBN code at the back.
This book was an absolute delight to read. I knew that the majority of this book would focus on the visual development of the landscapes. I was right but I loved seeing how all of the characters went through their own transformation in their design process. I felt so inspired by the vibrant colours that the designers used in the clothing, in the landscape, and how everything melded together to create such a visually stunning movie.
THE ART OF 'FROZEN' - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
With the release of Frozen 2 on Disney+, I fell back down that rabbit hole of my obsession with Frozen. I had 'The Art of Frozen 2', so why didn't I have the original one? I rectified that quickly and devoured this book as soon as it arrived. I loved every single page in this one, just like with the art book for the second movie. The artwork within the covers is simply stunning. Brittney Lee's work, in particular, is so inspiring. Blue is my favourite colour and it is a colour that is heavily prevalent in Frozen (for obvious reasons), so the aesthetic here was very pleasing. Seriously, I love these 'Art of' books. It is fascinating to see how the design process changes for the characters. Elsa, originally, had short, spiky, black hair instead of her infamous platinum blonde braid. It just goes to show that the first draft isn't necessarily the only draft.
There wasn't a lot of exposition in this book. It doesn't go into a great deal of detail. The introduction is the main bulk of the word count. This book is essentially a visual essay on how the designers went about designing dragon characters for each movie, how those designs changed from movie to movie to fit the role. It shows how different Mushu the dragon (not lizard) is different from Maleficent's dragon form and from Elliot in Pete's Dragon. It was fascinating to see how the artists used different shapes to signify different types of dragons and how they really stretched that fantastical aspect.
THE ART OF 'TANGLED' - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This is the art book that every artist I follow has in their art book collection. It has been on my wishlist for as long as I've known about it (so, roughly a year, give or take a month) and so when I was paid in July, I decided to treat myself. Finally. I can see why this is a firm favourite among artists. It is visually stunning and beyond inspiring. I love every single one of the pieces of artwork in this book. Glen Keane's sketches of the characters, in particular, are so inspiring. He makes everything look so effortless. I loved reading about the story of how 'Tangled' came to be. 'Tangled' was Disney's first completely computer-animated feature movie. (It was also the movie that I went to see on my first date with my ex-boyfriend. We loved Disney.) The paintings of the characters are spectacular, without a doubt, but what I found very inspiring were the paintings of the streets of Corona (the Kingdom in 'Tangled). They make me want to get into landscape painting. Let's learn to walk before we run, hmm?
DRAWN TO LIFE: 20 GOLDEN YEARS OF DISNEY MASTER CLASSES - ⭐⭐⭐
A Disney art book that only gets 3 stars? Yes, I know. That's a shock but here's why; it was very dense. It was a looooot of telling rather than showing. The other art books that I have read in the page are 150-170 pages, tops. This was a massive 400 pages. When I read this, I had just finished Aaron Blaise's online course in anatomy and character design. A lot of those same lessons were in the first 20 pages of this book. I thought that this was great, it'll cement what I had learnt in those videos. Those first lot of pages were handwritten notes from Walt Stanchfield and so were in bullet-point style with a little doodle for demonstrative purposes. That was pretty much where my attention span got to because the next 350+ pages were full of text with the same sketches mostly repeated over and over again. I didn't feel as if I was learning anything new or absorbing the lessons in an effective way, that's why my rating is lower than the other art books. Would I reach for this book for inspiration? No. Would I reach for this book for any technical advice? No. Well, maybe the first section.
There you have it. Those are the handful of books that I managed to reach in July. I can see the end of my reading slump. Hopefully by the time that this post has gone live, I will have actually read a novel.
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