LESSON FIVE

Some of us struggle to decipher whether a particular resource will meet our needs at our current level of skill. Skill levels include First Timer, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and I am including Resource/Reference as a description for certain sources that may or may not provide learning materials beyond images. This may help you understand what type of resource is most effective for your current abilities. Below you will see a guide that can help you decide if a certain resource is appropriate for your skill level. 

How Focused is the Resource? This isn’t a perfect gauge but lets consider the number of topics a resource may cover. You might take a book like Sketch Every Day by Simone Grunewald - a really great First Timer book - and see that it discusses a wide variety of topics relevant to artists. To better illustrate my point, I suggest you look up Sketch Every Day and look at its table of contents.

This book is about 200 pages long and covers topics like general art advice, art fundamentals, and character design - so how in depth could it possibly be? Using this information you could conclude that it was designed for people who are just starting out so they can get a basic, but well rounded, introduction into those topics.

What do the Examples Look Like? When learning to draw, books will often provide examples that are meant to copied by the reader. By looking at those examples we can usually get a sense of what level of student the book is aimed at.  For example, in the book Drawing Basics and Video Game Art by Chris Solarski - a really great book for Beginners - on page 91 he discusses the pelvis and the examples to be copied are simple box-like structures. Due to its simplistic quality you can assume this book is geared towards beginner artists.

Does the Resource Have a Glossary? Books that are more information heavy often contain a Glossary so you can quickly look up the meaning of a word you don’t already know. Books like Imaginative Realism by James Gurney or How to Draw by Scott Robertson have Glossaries which indicate that there is a lot of language you may be unfamiliar with, but does show that they intend to guide you through the process of learning what those words mean. This tells us that the book is intended for Intermediate artists ready to learn the ins and outs of that topic.  

Does the Resource Have an Index? An index is similar to a Glossary, but instead of listing the definition of the word it simply lists where in the book you’ll be able to find that specific topic. In books like Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu-Mestre - a book aimed at Advanced artists - you’ll only find an index at the back of the book which indicates to the reader that this book already expects you to have a basic understanding of the subject being discussed and is intended to build on that foundation. From this we can work out that this book is actually intended for Advanced artists.

Are There Words, or Just Drawings? As mentioned in the Difficulty Scale, resources intended as a source for reference don’t usually provide a lot of context to what is being presented. Be it to better improve your knowledge, like the Morpho series by Michele Lauricella which is, for the most part, an anatomical reference, or using a source like the Masters of Anatomy books for posing your characters.