Art Books

This page compiles links to art books on anime and video game art, perspective and figure drawing books, and reference art books.

Manga: Artbooks and Art Collection: Despite the name, this Internet Archive catalogue includes non-anime themed artbooks as well, though it includes plenty of artbooks for anime, manga, and video games. A gold mine, especially really niche or retro anime or games.
Color and Light by James Gurney: Although I am linking the eBook resource which probably is a copyright violation, I actually own a physical copy of this book. James Gurney hosts a wonderful blog and his YouTube videos are really relaxing. This book made me aware of some aspects of light and colour I was not aware of prior to reading it, like reflected light and how a lot of reflected light outdoors is blue because of the sky.

How to Draw by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling: Like Color and Light, this book is one I physically own. I even asked the vendor at one stage if the book was legally available as an eBook, but it isn't. This is one of the major limitations of many artbooks I find. Anyway, How To Draw taught me how to wrap my brain around perspective and get started drawing environments. I highly recommend this book, it's huge. I still refer to it often and one day I will muster the courage to follow their instructions to draw a car in perspective.
How to Render by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling: I own a physical copy of this one too. It expands on the content in the first book by focusing on drawing more complex volumes in perspective, complex lighting situations, and drawing textures/rendering volumes so they look three-dimensional and convincing. Like How to Draw, this is a large book but information dense.
Perspective for Comic Book Artists by David Chelsea: This perspective book is much more about narrative storytelling done in comics, and includes perspectives for both Western and Japanese comics. It is presented like a comic itself, so it is fun to read.

Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton: This is a case of me using this eBook version so much that I ended up purchasing a physical copy. It helped me learn anatomy because I find it really simplifies the shapes into basic volumes like cubes. Drawing the hips and torso as a rectangular volume really helped me improve my drawings and I still am learning from this book years later. It is not the most anatomically correct but if you are struggling to get started with learning anatomy I highly recommend it.
Figure Drawing for All It's Worth by Andrew Loomis: If you need help learning how to draw figures then this book will help. It helped me learn the proportions of the human body and some basic perspective.
Anatomy for the Artist by Jeno Barcsay: I got this one for $7 at Lifeline Bookfest. I find it an immensely helpful supplement with additional details not in the Hampton book.

On The Just Shaping of Letters by Albrecht Dürer: An old treatise on drawing roman letters with serifs. I remember studying the letter C in this for re-creating the Castlevania C.

Pixel Glade