Books - Creating Creatures of Fantasy
Whew! I haven't logged in forever. I'll have to catch up on my f-list tomorrow, I just wanted to post this before I have to return it to the library. I happened to spot this book while I was zooming around the stacks. It's called Creating Creatures of Fantasy and Imagination b Claudia Nice. Personally I do not like her style, although her drawings are nice and I found myself really inspired by her ideas. Her illustrations are mostly watercolours, with a few acrylic and pencil drawings thrown in. She gives some colour formulas with some of them as well.
An ordinary reference photo of a grumpy man or pretty girl becomes an ogre or a fairy under her brush. She gives a lot of suggestions for making these transformations that seem so obvious (yet not :-)) such as chipping nails, adding hair, looking to nature for patterns, etc. A horse's head makes a fine reference for a graceful dragon as does a green sea turtle for a mermaid's fins. Nice really put a lot of thought and effort in presenting so many fantasy beings - it was also nice to get a glimpse into her imagination.
An ordinary reference photo of a grumpy man or pretty girl becomes an ogre or a fairy under her brush. She gives a lot of suggestions for making these transformations that seem so obvious (yet not :-)) such as chipping nails, adding hair, looking to nature for patterns, etc. A horse's head makes a fine reference for a graceful dragon as does a green sea turtle for a mermaid's fins. Nice really put a lot of thought and effort in presenting so many fantasy beings - it was also nice to get a glimpse into her imagination.