How to Draw books that are worth their salt.

[WhiteFox]

Being generous, 98% of "How To Draw" Books are entirely crap. you know the ones I'm talking about, making you follow steps like, "Draw some circles. Add details." that don't actually teach you anything. Or the sterile anime books that are padded with inanity. But there are gems out there.

I've got a few. Jack Hamm's Cartooning the Head and Figure is really, really, dated (1960-something) but it actually tells you more than one way to draw features, as opposed to animes pretty sterile look. We're talking about 200 ways to cartoon a nose. I kid you not, it has literally hundreds of illustrations. It also goes into depth on things like the anatomy of a facial expression. I found it very useful. On the downside, it's very, very dated. If you want to see what cartooning was like before anime whitewashed everything, though, this is your book.

Anatomy for the Artist: The Dynamics of Human Form is probably the only book on anatomy I will ever need. It's 98% illustrations, and is much more digestable than, say, medical reference. It shows every part of the skeleton and muscles from multiple angles and poses, and has a section of "See through" Figures.

I've also got The Fundamentals of Figure Drawing, by Barrington Barber. It covers a lot of fundamentals of life drawing, has a decent section on anatomy, cloth, lighting, perspective, etc.

As for actual anime, I've got a few books by Christopher Hart. Mecha Mania and Manga Mania. The weren't as bad as most how to books I've seen on the subject.

Anyway... If anyone else has books they've found useful, I'd like to hear about it. If you've read any of the books I've mentioned above, lemme know what you think of 'em. I'm looking for a decent book for artists on designing architecture, too.

(Most of these books do contain nudity, BTW.)

[superluser]

Being generous, 98% of "How To Draw" Books are entirely crap. you know the ones I'm talking about, making you follow steps like, "Draw some circles. Add details."

I know a guy who's writing a book about how to draw an elephant.  It's 400 pages long and includes discussions about things like which recreational drugs to use.

Not to take it off-topic, but...

I'm looking for a decent book for artists on designing architecture, too.

I would strongly suggest looking at Gropius:

The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius
(with an introduction by Frank Pick of the London Underground)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is also big, but his designs are rather...ugly.  Or at least boring.

[Jigsaw Forte]

I left my definitive list at my parents', bleh.

"How to Draw Cutting-Edge Comics" is another good one of Hart's, though.