ReadItDaddy's Book(s) of the Week - Week Ending 24th August 2018: "How to Think when you Draw" and "Deluxe Collection Volume III" by Lorenzo Etherington (Lulu / Self Published)

Imagine waking up in the morning at 4 AM and instantly thinking to yourself "What can I draw today?"

Now imagine doing that - but doing it in a way where you're actively thinking about how you can share your incredible artistic knowledge with a whole stack of other people, from amateurs (like us) to professional artists looking to add a few tweaks to their game.

Lorenzo Etherington is a dude with a singularity inside his head, capable of drawing in the most incredible ideas through some mystical gravitational force, and translating them into glorious pieces of art - or awesome mind-expanding tutorials.

We've been following his "How to Think when you Draw" series online and in the pages of the fabulous Phoenix Comic for some time. Lorenzo doesn't just teach you how to draw a squirrel, a girl's hair, or a shattered window pane - he takes you through a thinking process that describes what you're trying to draw or visualise using a set of rules that seem so jaw-droppingly simple that they provide an instant confidence boost. "Can it really be that easy?" you start asking yourself - and as you start to scribble and draw some of the exercise topics, you find that the guy knows exactly what he's talking about.

"How to Think When you Draw" is now a hard-backed book available through Lorenzo's recent kickstarter, self published through Hulu. Giving Lorenzo an entirely free rein to produce a piece of work that draws (yeah we'll use that pun a lot) on the very best of the tutes made available previously, with a good few we hadn't seen before.

The book - as you'd expect - is just utterly fantastic, and for us it was really great to have a lot of the tutorials organised by category and available in one place - in a book that we can fold flat and start drawing from. YASSSSSSSS!!!

Follow some of these and you'll start to think before you lift your pencil or pen to paper! It really does work!

Each tutorial section also comes with a vast array of complimentary source material and drawings to help you get up to speed once you've got the gist of what you want to do. Needless to say both C and I absolutely loved all the figurative stuff, particularly drawing gorgeous Stranski-esque ladies.

In our particular level of the kickstarter, this amazing book also came with "The Deluxe Collection Volume 3" - Another huge slice of Lorenzo's personal art back catalogue. 600 pages in fact, blimey guvnor!

A colossal volume comprising 4 years of awesome artistic creativity from an absolute DUDE!

As we've previously said with the last couple of editions of this mighty behemoth of artistic inspiration, the Deluxe Collection III is chock full of amazing ideas, character art, scenic stuff - heck, you name it and it's in here somewhere. In Lorenzo's trademark "Noir-Punk" style, you'll find everything from Stranski girls to kittens driving mechs, stunning Tiki statues or cute little buildings perfect for shoehorning into your favourite RPGs.

Inspiration wise, it's impossible not to flick through this and soak up some of that artistic genius - in fact in conjunction with "How to Think when you Draw" you'll have more than enough source material here to really get your skills up to scratch.

C was so inspired by these that she dug out all our previous Lorenzo books and is now going through them all again, making little doodles and notes as she goes. I love the fact that I'll be off somewhere else in the house and I'll suddenly hear a squeal of delight, the thumping of feet and her appearing at the door to show me some other new little marvel she's discovered in these.

So there you go, a huge thanks to Lorenzo for those early mornings, for the colossal effort involved in producing such a massive body of work - it is worth it dude, it does pay off and you have definitely inspired us so many times to pick up our art materials and get drawing.

C's best bit: Mech-commander Kittens (I think she still wants a 'how to think when you draw' tute on Kittens, so perhaps for Volume 2?)

Daddy's favourite bit: I get completely lost in the imaginary alt-universe of a world that still riffs on 1930s and 40s movies and film noir with a sometimes sci-fi and modern twist. Just too, too good!

Check out Lorenzo and Robin's awesome blog over at http://theetheringtonbrothers.blogspot.com

"How to think when you draw" and Deluxe Collection Volume III were available via Kickstarter (self purchased, not supplied for review).