Ten-Step Drawing: Manga

This is a great book for anyone who wants to learn how to draw manga, beginners or more experienced artists, anyone could pick this up and have a go, I say this as someone who only doodles for joy and hasn’t done much art since school. It’s right and well presented, easy to follow, really encourages you to pick up a pen and have a go. That’s the best recommendation I can give to be honest, any book that makes you want to try something is a success. It’s really colour and draws you in too. Highly recommended to everyone who loves manga or drawing, or both, this will have you creating great characters of your own in no time. Maybe creating the next Rumiko Takahashi or Hiromu Arakawa.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Ten-Step Drawing: Manga is a tutorial and style guide for manga by Chie Kutsuwada. Due out 7th Sept 2021 from Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 128 pages and will be available in paperback format.

The book includes 30 tutorials for animals and characters arranged thematically by style and features: facial features, manga faces, chibi style, manga bodies, whole body poses, characters, and animals. As shown on the cover, each tutorial includes 10 steps with each refinement numbered sequentially and shown from start to finish. I liked that this guide shows several different styles and includes both "straight" manga style and ultra cute chibi style drawings. This is mostly aimed at beginning to early-intermediate artists and will provide a lot of good practice sessions.

This would make a good choice for public or school library acquisition, home use, or gift giving (perhaps bundled with some basic drawing supplies). I would also recommend this book to babysitters, grandparents, parents, and basically anyone who spends a fair bit of time with small kids in order to up their 'draw with me' game.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. This was great and really inspires the reader to give manga drawing a try. Fun, helpful and easy to follow. Highly recommend to anyone interested in art or drawing.

I really enjoy drawing but I am not that good at it, so I was excited to be able to review this drawing book. Ten-Step Drawing Manga by Chie Kutsuwada was a great drawing book. I liked the format of the book and I felt as if I could follow the instructions easily. The drawings were definitely not for beginners but I was able to draw some manga eyes. The faces were definitely harder and I am still working up the nerve to try to draw them.
However I think that this is a great drawing book, it starts off with the features of the face and then it shows you how to draw faces, and then you get to graduate to drawing the whole body. This drawing book even shows you how to draw different poses with different outfits, and animals. Overall, I would recommend this book if you enjoy drawing and you want to strengthen your skills in drawing people.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book which I received from the publisher through Netgalley. All views expressed are only my honest opinion, a positive review was not required.

I have always wanted to learn to draw but have never been successful. This book was very easy to under and made it easy to learn with step by step instruction. I have even taught my eleven year old daughter a few of these techniques!

Not only for Manga
Manga creator and illustrator Chie Kutsuwada is presenting her book "Ten-Step Drawing: Manga. Learn to draw 30 manga characters." It is one of the "Ten-Step Drawing..." series published by Quarto Publishing group – Walter Foster that covers topics such as nature, people, flowers, animals, ... After the introduction the book contains seven chapters: 1) Facial Features, 2) Manga Faces, 3) Chibi Style, 4) Manga Body, 5) Whole Body Poses, 6) Characters, and 7) Animals. Kutsuwada shows how triangles, e .g., can be used as a basis for eyes and noses or circles can be used as a starting point for a head. She is also using circles as a starting point for the human body.
I really like that the step-by-step instructions often also advise the reader "to use further circles or other shape outlines as guides for placing heads and limbs. This will enable you to get the proportions of your characters right" (p. 6). Kutsuwada has also included notes that will help artists further with their drawings. In my opinion, Kutsuwada's approach for the manga drawings can also be used for characters that are not "manga-style characters". In reality the drawings for the animals can be used without adjustement. The book is not only for aspiring manga illustrators, it can be also useful for other artists. I can recommend it for those who want to learn to or improve their drawing skills. Nevertheless, it is important to note that there are no step-by-step instructions for the coloring but it shows which colors were used.
The complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley free of charge. I was under no obligation to offer a positive review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
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