The Walter Foster "Learn to Draw Disney" Books

Regular ReadItDaddyers will know that for years I've been scribbling away in the vague pretence of being artistic. 3 years at art college aside, I'm still pretty hopeless when it comes to drawing anything specific so love any tutorials or books that show you the process broken down and simplified.

The Walter Foster "Disney Magic Art / Learn to Draw" series of books are legendary stateside so it was quite something to find a bunch of them tucked away in the various merchandise shops on our recent trip to Disneyland Paris (more of which will be coming up on my wife's excellent travel blog, CanIWalkMummy). Prices for these vary from "That's crazy cheap" to "Oh my god, HOW MUCH?" but at just under 7 Euros a pop, I grabbed three.

1) Learn to Draw: Disney Princesses
2) Learn to Draw: Tangled
3) Learn to Draw: Toy Story

The books (by various artists and authors including the excellent Heather Knowles a legendary DeviantArtist) strip down the process of drawing famous Disney characters to the bare bones, giving budding artists some inspiration on how to draw the characters in various poses themselves.

The Disney Princesses book is the toughest to work through, they are extremely difficult to get absolutely spot on even when the instructions are followed to the letter. Again the Rapunzel book is similarly tough but the Toy Story book is the best of the bunch (probably because most of the Toy Story characters are fairly easy to draw anyway). Each character starts off as a bunch of gestural construction strokes and basic shapes, then gradually you pencil in the features, the detail and then top the whole thing off with colour and shading.

If you've any interest in drawing Disney characters (or have an extremely artistic 4 year old daughter who demands the very best quality from your scribblings!) then these are worth grabbing. They are available through Amazon though be warned, most of the books are under 20 pages long so if you think a pound a page is good value for the Disney Princess book, you won't mind some of the exorbitant charges resellers are laying on these.

Charlotte's best bit: Learning to draw Snow White and Belle

Daddy's favourite bit: Drawing Jessie from Toy Story

Rating - 4 out of 5 stars