My latest tutorial book The Artist's Guide to Drawing Manga is now available for humans to buy.

It primarily covers basic to intermediate techniques for creating manga style characters and artworks. I'd been wanting to create a new replacement to my first book The Art of Drawing Manga, and managed to revamp every aspect of it. The written content was doubled, the artwork quality increased, the tutorials and examples more relevant and the book's layout upgraded. The Artist's Guide book was designed to compliment Digital Manga- a book which details the digital process in more detail.

Why do I need another how to draw book?

Every artist has a different take on how they create art work and every teacher has a different approach to breaking it down and explaining how it's done. I hope that aspiring manga fans can read through the book, gaining new insights, inspiration and understanding of how it's done. Or at least, how it can be done. If you've never picked up a how-to-draw book before, I'd recommend checking out the Artist's Guide. I want to help people become awesome artists and I'm happy for anyone to email me about the book's contents if they need extra help or explanation :)

Instead of learning manga, shouldn't I be learning fundamentals to improve?

The book's ultimate aim isn't to force students to replicate stylized versions of people. It's main aim it to ask students to consider things like: using guide lines, basic shapes to plan proportions, how to break down complicated images into easier to understand sections, to sketch before refining details, to think about how to visually communicate by adjusting a character's pose, expressions, actions, clothing and also hone in on what makes the anime style so special and unique.

Yes, spend time life drawing and studying the real world. Learn to draw all sorts of things- not just manga, but if you want a book to motivate you to try out some artistic ideas in a style you appreciate, or even if you just want to draw a few manga characters for fun, consider the Artist's guide to be your manga-flavoured medicine.

Why should I buy your book and not just use online tutorials?

I have a lot of faith in the book... I know what I'm talking about, having created manga inspired artwork for years for dozens of clients. Check out my portfolio- I'm teaching readers how to achieve a similar vibrant and professional look to their artwork. I'm no stranger to creating 'how to draw manga' books- I have refined my process of communicating my knowledge over the last decade and put together a package which will advance one's ability much quicker than if they were to try pulling tutorials from various sources online.

Art still takes a ton of time and practice to get better, but if my 1000s of hours of instructional book-writing experience can bring a reader's skills up a notch or two for a reasonable price, I'd like to think that's worth it.

Online tutorials can be a bit hit and miss. I spent days researching what's already online. And while there is some excellent stuff, it can be hard to find and there's also a lot of confusing, poorly written instruction out there. All these tutorials are scattered across the web in various locations while The Artist's guide to Drawing Manga houses 124 pages of info in one place. - That info has consistency. It's written by the same author, so you know you wont be getting confused by trying to follow different ways of doing things from different teachers.

Even if you read a lot of tutorials and have other art books, there's always room for another. I'd be very surprised if a reader didn't learn at least one new, useful technique from the book. If that one technique saves hours of time and trial and error, isn't that worth paying for?

And if you've read it already, let me know what you think in the comments below :)

I have created a book!

My Photoshop tutorial book Digital Manga is currently available in the Shop.

It primarily covers Photoshop CS6 and CC, although most if it can be applied to earlier versions such as CS5 and CS4. I'd imagine a large chink of it could technically be applied and translated to other software such as Paint Tool Sai or Clip Studio Paint.

It details every little trick I've learned and implemented over the last dozen years of producing digital artwork by demonstrating a practical use on character art.

It's something I'm proud of and hope it can be as useful to aspiring digital artists and my other how-to-draw books have been for manga enthusiasts.

"Why Photoshop? It's such expensive software compared to alternatives"

Beginners might opt for cheaper software as their digital tool to start, and I wouldn't blame them. Something like Sai is great! I like it for inking and I've seen incredible results achieved with it.

Although alternative software tends to have limits, and it's hard to argue a case against Photoshop's power and versatility.

It's a tool students will eventually need to get to grips with once they go to Uni and Adobe programs are set up on their university or college computers. Then after graduating, you'll find most in-house film, animation and game studios are still favouring PS for 2D art creation.

If you want to be a professional and aren't taking advantage of PS's blending modes, Plug-ins and brushes, you could be doing your artwork a disservice or making things harder on yourself in the long run.

Also, once you get to grips with PS, learning other software in the Adobe family becomes a little easier. Illustrator, InDesign or even Dreamweaver share a similar interface and are designed to be cross-compatible. Learning PS for my manga art later allowed me to get employed as a full time web and graphic designer for several years. Other art or comic design software wont easily allow that kind of transition.

Why should I buy your book and not a different digital art guide or just find online tutorials?

1. I have a lot of faith in my book, Photoshop skills and breadth of knowledge. I'm experienced and confident with what I'm talking about. I've been using Photoshop since Version 4 back in the late 90s and experienced close to a dozen versions of the software. Don't take my word for it- check out my portfolio. The colour work is smooth, clean, detailed and expertly rendered. I'm teaching readers how to achieve a similar deep, vibrant and professional look to their artwork.

2. The book covers the latest version of Photoshop- books published several years ago may cover out of date software. I've tried to make Digital Manga backwards and forwards (as much as is possible) compatible.

3. Digital Manga's tutorials covers a lot, and in-depth. The aim is to bring a novice up to a similar level to myself as quickly as possible. Art still takes a ton of time and practice to get better, but if I can bring a reader's colouring and rendering skills up a notch or two for a reasonable price, I'd like to think that's worth it.

4. Online tutorials can be a bit hit and miss. Before writing Digital Manga, I spent a long time researching what's already online. While there is some excellent stuff out there, it can be hard to find everything a beginner might need. There's also a lot of confusing, poorly written instruction to contend with. Where as I'm able to draw upon my years of teaching experience from tthe previous how-to book's I've had published in order to deliver detailed, yet concise information.

5. Online tutorials are scattered across the web in various locations while Digital Manga houses 160 pages of info in one place. - That info has consistency. It's written by the same author, so you know you wont be getting confused by trying to follow different terminology or a different way of doing things from a variety of different teachers. With digital art, there are multiple ways to achieve the same result so I'd say be consistent and get the basics down before exploring other methods.

6. Even if you read a lot of tutorials and have other art books, there's always room for another. One should never stop learning. And I'd be very surprised if a reader didn't learn at least one new, useful technique from the book.

7. Line art and assets contained in the book can be downloaded for readers to practice on and follow the rendering tutorials Step-by-Step.

8. I want you to become better! I'm happy to offer assistance with any aspect covered in the book, so feel free to email me if you're having difficulty with something and I'll do my best to assist.

And if you've read it, let me know what you think in the comments below.