Archives: Walter Foster Books

Learn to illustrate and create unique manga art and characters in this fun and engaging step-by-step book written and illustrated by award-winning manga artist Sonia Leong.

Beginning Manga treats aspiring illustrators to a fun, interactive learning experience with a variety of creative prompts, tips, exercises, and engaging step-by-step projects.

Starting with an introduction to tools and materials, you can learn new drawing and inking techniques, as well as how to work with color, thanks to a variety of simple step-by-step projects and prompts designed to spark creativity and inspire you to create unique manga worlds of your own. The easy-to-follow projects focus on character design, facial expressions, popular poses, characters from different genres like science fiction and fantasy, and much more.

Also included are templates and practice pages to assist with developing your craft in addition to brainstorming, sketching, and gathering project inspiration. Create your own manga story using page layout tips and Sonia Leong’s well-crafted script and design instructions.

For even more manga drawing instruction, see Sonia Leong’s second book with Walter Foster, Illustration Studio: Drawing Manga Heroines & Heroes.

Learn everything you need to know to create beautiful floral works of art in oil and acrylic!

This comprehensive book opens with a guide to essential information on the necessary tools and materials for both sketching and painting, including pencils, paints and brushes, palettes, supports, and mediums. In addition to learning about basic drawing and painting techniques and color theory, readers will learn how to create compelling compositions, achieve depth, and render realistic textures. In The Art of Painting Flowersin Oil & Acrylic, several talented and experienced artists guide readers through easy-to-follow lessons covering a variety of floral and plant life, including tulips, dahlias, hibiscus, roses, daisies, freesia, water lilies, bird of paradise, and more. With sections devoted to both mediums, readers will learn everything they need to know to create beautiful floral works of art in oil and acrylic. Along the way, aspiring artists will discover helpful tips and tricks for mixing vibrant colors, working from photographs, working outdoors, and creating volume and dimension.

With more than 40 illustrations to color and enjoy, Manga & Chibis Coloring Book offers a stress-free escape into the world of coloring manga, anime, and cute chibi characters.

This beautiful coloring book features:

  • Quality paper that allows you to color with your choice of colored pencils, crayons, markers, and more
  • More than 40 coloring pages, including manga, anime, and chibi characters and scenes
  • One-sided printing for display purposes and to avoid bleed-through

Have fun coloring:

  • Fantastical creatures, including fairies and mermaids
  • Fun foods such as ice cream, cakes, donuts, hamburgers, and fries
  • Sweet animals, including cats, dogs, squirrels, a parrot, a bear, and a shark

A perfect choice for:

  • Coloring book hobbyists
  • Manga and anime enthusiasts
  • Aspiring manga, chibi, and kawaii artists
  • Manga, comic book, and graphic novel lovers

Manga & Chibis Coloring Book will inspire anime and manga enthusiasts and artists of all ages to color and learn to draw a variety of manga heroes, heroines, and characters.

Learn to draw your favorite cats and kittens, step by step, with Ten Step Drawing: Cats.

The blank page can be daunting, but the fun and approachable books in the Ten-Step Drawing series offer a quick and easy starting point for any doodler, illustrator, or aspiring artist to be creative. Featuring illustrated tutorials for drawing a variety of different animals, flowers, plants, and people, each book in this appealing series breaks down each subject into 10 simple steps. And all you need is a pen or pencil and a piece of paper!

Handy prompts help you learn to draw by encouraging you to express creative individuality, while helpful general drawing tips enable you to try out your drawing skills on other subjects not featured in the book. The projects feature instructions for graphite pencil, ink, and colored pencil, for a well-rounded introduction to drawing.

Learn to draw more than 50 cat breeds, including:

  • Ragdolls
  • American Shorthairs
  • Persians
  • Siamese
  • Sphynx
  • Maine Coons
  • And many more!

The perfect reference for your first steps as an aspiring artist, Ten Step Drawing: Cats is sure to give you the courage to break out a pencil and paper and draw to your heart’s content! 

Also from the Ten-Step Drawing series, learn to draw even more subjects in 10 simple steps with:Animals, Flowers, Nature, People, Everyday Things (September 2021), Manga (September 2021), and Dogs (October 2021).

With a wealth of illustrated graphite portrait references and step-by-step pencil lessons, The Art of Drawing Poses for Beginners will help you master drawing realistic human figures in a range of different positions.

This helpful 128-page guide reveals the process of drawing the human figure as it pertains to anatomy, proportions, volume, mass, gesture, movement, and expression. From there, discover how these characteristics come together using light, shape, line, and form to accurately depict the human figure in a variety of everyday poses. Step-by-step drawing instructions and techniques demonstrate how to capture realistic poses as they differ from one person to the next across a range of human characteristics.

In section 1 of this book, learn the tools, materials, and techniques used in drawing before diving into the basics of portraiture and human anatomy. In section 2, practice a variety of basic stationary poses before moving on to the dynamic poses in section 3. Section 4 covers expressive portraits and conveying mood and facial expressions. Finally, with lots of examples, section 5 covers many of the artistic compositions you can use when drawing people.

Packed with helpful illustrated references, hundreds of tips, and loads of expert instruction, The Art of Drawing Poses for Beginners is the perfect resource for artists of all skill levels—and one that will be referred to over and over again.

Walter Foster Publishing’s Collector’s Series offers a broad range of projects across a variety of mediums and genres, such as drawing, oil, acrylic, watercolor, cartooning, calligraphy, and others. Suitable for beginning to intermediate artists, each book features in-depth instruction about how to work with the tools of the trade, master techniques, and use newfound skills in practical application via step-by-step projects.

Learn to draw your favorite dog breeds, step by step, with Ten Step Drawing: Dogs.

The blank page can be daunting, but the fun and approachable books in the Ten-Step Drawing series offer a quick and easy starting point for any doodler, illustrator, or aspiring artist to be creative. Featuring illustrated tutorials for drawing a variety of different animals, flowers, plants, and people, each book in this appealing series breaks down each subject into 10 simple steps. And all you need is a pen or pencil and a piece of paper!

Handy prompts help you learn to draw by encouraging you to express creative individuality, while helpful general drawing tips enable you to try out your drawing skills on other subjects not featured in the book. The projects feature instructions for graphite pencil, ink, and colored pencil, for a well-rounded introduction to drawing.

Learn to draw more than 50 dog breeds, including:

  • Labrador Retrievers
  • Golden Retrievers
  • French Bulldogs
  • Pugs
  • Poodles
  • Chihuahuas
  • Great Danes
  • And many more!

The perfect reference for your first steps as an aspiring artist, Ten Step Drawing: Dogs is sure to give you the courage to break out a pencil and paper and draw to your heart’s content! 

Also from the Ten-Step Drawing series, learn to draw even more subjects in 10 simple steps with:Animals, Flowers, Nature, People, Everyday Things (September 2021), Manga (September 2021), and Cats (October 2021).

Learn to make adorable items from polymer clay! Easy-to-follow techniques and step-by-step projects lead the way.

The Art Makers series is designed for beginning artists and arts-and-crafts enthusiasts who are interested in experiencing fun, hands-on mediums, including polymer clay, embroidery, and papier-mache. Art Makers: Make Cute Stuff with Polymer Clay is the ideal follow-up book to Art Makers: Polymer Clay for Beginners.

In this inviting, visually appealing book, you can learn to make adorable, whimsical crafts with polymer clay. Author Shelley Kommers, an experienced art instructor and a professional artist, takes you through the complete steps of learning to work with polymer clay, from the tools and materials you will need to techniques, such as molding, mixing colors, and baking. The projects are simple to follow and include adorable, whimsical subject matter, such as:

  • plant pots
  • a cloud mobile
  • finger puppets
  • a trinket box
  • a hanging sloth
  • and much more!

This book is perfect for artists of all skill levels, from beginners to more advanced artists looking to improve their clay-making skills or learn a new technique. With colorful, full-page art, quirky subject matter, and expert instructions, anyone can learn to work with polymer clay in no time. Best of all, the tools and materials are affordable and accessible, so you won’t need to buy a bunch of stuff to get started.

If you're looking for a craft to make creative use of the extra time you have at home, polymer clay is the perfect choice. Get started right away making adorable, on-trend art with Art Makers: Make Cute Stuff with Polymer Clay.

Learn to paint your favorite everyday items using watercolor, gouache, ink, pastel, and more.

From food and kitchen tools to clothing, gardening supplies, home decor, cosmetics, and more, Paint Every Little Thing will show you how to see the beauty in the everyday—and how to capture it with paint as well!

Start by learning about the supplies you will need with the help of the tools and materials section; then peruse the painting and mixed-media techniques, which include layering, blending, glazing, and more. You’ll also learn how to mix colors.
 
Once you’ve learned the basics, it’s time to dive into the creative prompts and step-by-step painting projects. Covering fun, appealing subjects, these include:
 

  • Food (your favorite foods, ingredients, restaurant items, and more)
  • Kitchen tools (what you cook with!)
  • Clothing
  • Random things from around the house
  • Outside items (gardening tools, plants, and so on)
  • And much more!


Throughout the book, find beautiful, original artwork. The creative prompts will inspire you to create art of your own with more open-ended suggestions, while the step-by-step projects feature complete instructions for painting in professional artist Kristine Lombardi’s trademark loose, beautiful style.

The Inspired Artist series invites art hobbyists and casual art enthusiasts to have fun learning basic art concepts, relaxing into the creative process to make art in a playful, contemporary style. Following closely after the successful first book in the series—Draw Every Little Thing—Paint Every Little Thing is the ideal resource for artists of all skill levels looking for a creative outlet in their everyday lives.

Also available from the series: Block Print for Beginners and Watercolor Painting at Home.

From Walter Foster Publishing’s popular Realistic series, which features step-by-step instructions for drawing amazingly lifelike artwork in the dynamic colored pencil medium, comes Realistic Animals in Colored Pencil.

Whether you are an aspiring or established artist, you can learn to draw your favorite animals with incredible detail and photorealism. This follow-up to Realistic Portraits in Colored Pencil and Realistic Still Life in Colored Pencil is authored and illustrated by an accomplished colored pencil artist with numerous art awards to her name.

The artwork looks complex, but it’s possible to replicate with the help of the thorough section on colored pencil techniques that opens the book. Learn how to create various effects, including:

  • shading
  • blending
  • layering
  • burnishing
  • and more!

The following pages cover animal textures, such as fur, hair, eyes, tongues, and more, and how to create them. The step-by-step projects are awe-inspiring in their realism and feature popular animal subjects like dogs, cats, horses, birds, exotic animals, and more. Laid out in a way that’s easy to follow and understand, the projects are approachable and appealing for any skill level.

Whether you simply wish to gawk at amazingly photorealistic art or create your own animal portraits, Realistic Animals in Colored Pencil is the perfect resource.

Featuring illustrated tutorials for drawing 60 different familiar objects, Ten-Step Drawing: Everyday Things breaks down each subject into ten simple steps. All you need to get started is a pen or pencil and a piece of paper!

With Ten-Step Drawing: Everyday Things, learn to create an array of ordinary and familiar subjects, step by easy step. From teapots, flowers, and plants to bicycles, trees, and more, beginning artists will delight in the varied selection of subjects; as well as how easy it is to recreate them in ten simple drawing steps. Handy prompts help encourage artistic individuality and include helpful tips for drawing your own subjects and scenes. Approachable text and step-by-step drawings make learning to draw fun and easy, and the portable format allows for spontaneous drawing wherever you may be.

Designed especially for aspiring illustrators, doodlers, and art hobbyists, the fun and approachable books in the Ten-Step Drawing series encourage new artists to get acquainted with the basic principles of drawing so they can learn to create art with confidence. Ten-Step Drawing: Everyday Things is sure to encourage even the most reluctant artist to break out a sketchbook and doodle to their heart’s content. So grab a pencil and start drawing!

Also available in the Ten-Step Drawing series: Flowers, Animals, Nature, People, and Manga.