Sunday, October 07, 2012

More Loomis

Andrew Loomis' 1947 instruction book Creative Illustration has been reprinted.  One in a series of instruction books by Loomis, a Chicago-based commercial illustrator of the 20th century, this book might be described as his magnum opus.  It's the first of his books to deal with colour and composition.

Sections include line, tone, colour, and creating ideas.  It is by far the thickest of Loomis's books and before this reprinting, copies sold for over $100.

Titan Books will reprint Fun With a Pencil next April, Loomis's most basic how to draw book.  All that will remain, should Titan continue, will be Three Dimensional Drawing, an expanded version of Successful Drawing which they have already reprinted, and The Eye of the Painter and the Elements of Beauty, a book published after Loomis's death.  Used copies of that start at $141.

6 comments:

Eric Noble said...

herI'm looking forward to this. I've gotten each reprint that Titan Books has put out, and I plan to get the rest. The lessons in those books are an invaluable resource to artists of all stripes.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Seeing that "Fun with a Pencil" will see a reprint next year, I bet that will devalue a copy I've already worked my way through!

SCOTT CAPLE said...

now I can finally put my original copy , which i picked up a the sheridan college bookstore in 1976, for 10 bucks, in a glass case.
There is so much stuff around now that it is hard to describe what it was like to discover it in those days.

Tom Findley said...

Learn to draw like him and you'll never get work. Why? A very dated style. Never mind that the book's kind of useless anyway - you don't need a book to learn this stuff.

Mark Mayerson said...

Styles date. Drawing principles don't. And why ignore knowledge just because it is found in a book?

Kara said...

Andrew Loomis is a good introduction to a lot of principals and things people would never think about when they start drawing...however, I don't think his advice is very good. Too many people just blindly copy him and it's really obvious in the concept art community, where 'studies' have somehow become slang for tracing other artists work in some bizarre way of improving. I have met so many people who have 'studied' Loomis' work for years yet they have never absorbed any of the messages or advice. Maybe it's the way he's written it, maybe it's just people being impatient and ignorant.

Then again, I'm not a fan of the old academic art styles and learning so that's probably my biases showing through.