Hello guys, welcome back to Not Just Mecha, it s Marco here and today I ll answer one
of the most common questions I get: what books should I read to become a better
painter?
Before being miniature painters we are painters and as painters we can tap into the endless
pool of academic knowledge about painting that s already out there ready for us to grab!
So I m going to show you the current state of my evergrowing painting library and my
favourite books for references and artistic knowledge!
And my bookshelf is literally split in two macro categories: purely visual for inspiration
and references and technical slash information based so less pictures and more words!
When I started writing this ideally short video it became immediately a huge monster,
so I had to cut it into two episodes and you ll get the second part about the academic
titles as bonus content in the next few weeks!
So don t worry, I m not keeping secrets from you guys!
Let s start with Spectrum, which I think it s the perfect first running publication for
a new shelf without a clear and super defined, let's call it art direction.
Every year you get a new tome with the best of the Fantasy and Sci-Fi art of the last
twelve months and a random taste of hundreds of extremely different visions and styles,
so again perfect for when you start discovering and digging into this stuff or if you want
to build a free flowing open ended mental library of cool miscellaneous imagery!
We are currently at number 27 waiting for the new tome to drop around Fall 2023.
Still extremely polyhedric but with a tighter visual identity and all based on classic and
high fantasy concepts, here's my collection of Magic:The Gathering art books that has
quickly become one of my favourite editorial lines because of a few essential key features
First of all, most of this art is character based, that s much more useful for us than
the one you can find in video games art books that usually give you mostly environments
and non contextualised concept art of the characters floating on empty white backgrounds..
It s also thematically organised based on the different planes and their aesthetic so
if you need horror stuff you can go to Innistrad.
Dinosaurs and pirates, Ixalan.
Eldritch creatures, Zendikar!
My personal favourite is Ravnica for its great spread of different carathers and incredibly
different cool sub-themes.
They are also basically colour coded thanks to the visual clues of the colours of mana!
Do you need a positive druid?
White-Green combo aka Selesnya!
Or maybe a devilish druid?
Shift to the Black-Green theme aka Golgari!
Really easy to navigate and to locate the mood and vibe you are looking for.
Last interesting feature: because it s shrunk to fit a tiny card, original Magic:The Gathering
art tends to be relatively small and when you blow it up to this scale you can really
see every single brushstroke in the same way you can do it studying a miniature up close,
so extremely useful for our translation on tiny figures!
And as you can see here a few simple brushstrokes can really deliver a ton of complex information.
When you know better what you like or what you need you can move to monographic art books!
Let s start with a big name that doesn t need introductions: Frazetta, the man that in the
sixties set a bar for fantasy art that nobody is still able to surpass.
His painted production has literally everything: great thoughtful compositions, incredible
cinematic light settings, crazy but always well balanced colour palettes, an overload
of power and energy and a bunch of clear and engaging storytelling.
Always keep Frazetta next to the painting table because you cannot go wrong sitting
on the shoulders of this giant!
And here s an apparently strange jump that hides a similar idea!
I know, referencing Caravaggio in the context of miniature painting may seem a bit pretentious,
but, why not: painting is painting and if I have to learn from someone why not aiming
high!
I m deeply conscious that these kinds of divine skill levels are out of my reach but setting
a high aspirational standard is motivating and wherever I land it will be higher than
studying other people's miniatures.
I keep close to Frazetta, Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell!
Visionary eighties fantasy and sci-fi art painted with oils on canvas with sensual,
warm, suggestive lights, great female characters and grounded, anatomically correct, muscled
bodies as you can expect from two artists that were almost professional bodybuilders!
Brom for me is the artistic avatar of the nineties dark and gothic fantasy and sci-fi
so generationally and aesthetically tied to my soul!
This book gives you in every single page cool characters in powerful frontal views always
staged in, interesting and complex light settings.
Personally I'm in love with Brom s huge spectrum and control of textures and his complex, believable
rendering of every possible material that he uses to produce depth, movement and internal
contrasts.
Paul Bonner is one of the artists that visually shaped the gaming and miniature gaming industry
in the last thirty years; he made a ton of work for Games Workshop, Rackham and the Confrontation
universe, Mutant Chronicles, a bunch of RPGs ! The shots and atmospheres he creates can
easily be movie frames full of storytelling; everything has volume and a real sense of
weight and even the craziest anatomies and designs become grounded in reality under his
brush and his deep understanding of shapes.
Female characters are my painterly weak spot.
Years of work on muscled warriors, crazy monsters and bloodthirsty creatures left me with a
kinetic, nervous take on brushstrokes that doesn t fit extremely well, more delicate
subjects so I m working on lightening my hand.
This Korean artist is unapologetically super horny as, but he renders amazing eyes, make-up
and subtle expressions..
Still, soon I ll probably have to hide this book from my son, lol
Ashely Wood is on the shelves for my cross love for painting, drawing and comics: in
this particular moment he ties in well with my problem with gentle traits because his
ability to sell femininity with a few extremely aggressive brushstrokes, even if complex to
translate on figures, gives me a bit of personal hope!
Plus you get a ton of moody atmospheres and cool painted robots and action scenes!
Almost last but for sure not least, Patrick J. Jones that I had the pleasure to meet in
person a couple of months ago at the World Model Expo!!!
The nicest guy ever, even when assaulted by a crazy fanboy!
Patrick Jones is for me the closest to Frazetta s sensibility with a taste for complex and
crazy environmental light settings that bounce and reverberate on the figures becoming way
more than a storytelling device and more like a whole new character on the page.
If you like a strong relation between a model and its gaming or display base, you can t
go wrong with Patrick's art.
I m going to close strong in chronological order with two books that arrived just a few
days ago!
The BIG Kopinsky by of course the living legend Karl Kopinsky, another guy that in the fantasy
and sci-fi environment worked literally with and for everyone, creating the aesthetic of
games like Warhammer; I always keep close his boxart of the Empire Soldiers I miss painted
boxes soooo much.
You get a good selection of full body characters drawn and coloured with several different
media but the bulk of the book is made by sketches that I find extremely useful for
my investigation of shapes, volumes and how to render them purely with values, so great
to improve my game on sketching and underpaintings techniques
And following the breadcrumbs of Magic: the Gathering art I discovered that one of my
favourite recurring names, aka this guy, I will not even try because I know I ll butcher
the name, has his own monographic book and that he produced also a ton of familiar art
from Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder and dozens of other games.
Other than the style and aesthetic of his art that I really really like as incarnation
of modern commercial fantasy art, I love the fact that he works mostly on physical media,
in a relative small scale and in acrylics making these paintings that share our same
tools, mannerism and visual goals, absolutely perfect for a retro engineering deconstruction
and general study.
Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg of all the cool stuff that you can find out
there and I would love to know about the books you have in your library, so drop your titles
in a comment, both for the community and myself because I m always looking for an excuse
to buy a book!
See you soon with the second half of my collection and the more technical, nerdy side of learning
about painting!