Character Costume Figure Drawing Book Review by ChristineMM

Title: Character Costume Figure Drawing Step by Step Drawing Methods for Theatre Costume Designers, SECOND EDITION


Author: Tan Huaixiang
Publication: Focal Press 2010

My Rating: 5 stars out of 5: I Love It

Summary Statement: Lots of Info on How to Draw in One Book Intended for Theatre Costume Designers

This second edition expands on the original book by Huaixiang. As the author explains this book is intended to be one comprehensive manual for budding and experienced theatre costume designers to teach them to draw the human figure in character with their costumes.

This book differs from regular art instruction figure drawing books because it provides anatomical information to help the costume designer draw all different kinds of bodies, different ages and even bodies at different historical periods. Regular drawing books that focus on stick thin modern-day type bodies do not suffice for the theatre costume designer. The reader is also instructed on how to capture the personality of the character being depicted.

The first 160 pages are about drawing the human figure and the costume. Adding detail to the clothing, shading and coloring techniques and the background encompasses another 50 pages or so. There are about 100 pages showing the author’s drawings for specific productions that teach by example.

This book also has a lot of information to help the designer take their imagined concepts and translate them onto paper in visual drawings so that those who see the presented ideas will hopefully clearly see their vision.

This over 330 page book provides a lot of information for the theatre costume designer.

My personal interest in this book is that I’ve been slowly teaching myself to draw. I homeschool my children and have been helping them learn to draw (at their request) and they’ve been teaching themselves directly from books as well. I thought this may help them with their desire to draw various characters. For us I think the most useful aspects (since we are not theatre people) is the detailed information on drawing the human figure of different shapes and sizes, the great tips on drawing the face and hands and the ideas about how to capture an idea about a person in one’s mind and translating it onto paper.

What I also like about this book is unlike general drawing books the reader who wants or needs to draw people can jump right in drawing people instead of going through exercises like starting off drawing an egg with a shadow, drawing a still life, and so forth. If one wants and needs to draw people, why not get just dive in and learn the essentials of drawing by drawing what they want! CHARACTER COSTUME FIGURE DRAWING not only lets you do that but instructs you each step of the way.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the Amazon.com Vine program. I was not under obligation to blog this review. I was not paid to write this review nor was I encouraged to issue a positive review. For more disclosure information see the link at the top of my blog’s sidebar.