MyExcess: How To Draw Pin Up Girls by David Gordon

David Gordon
MyExcess
Comic Album format ( 20.98 wide x 29.69 cms)
Black & white
100 pages
£9.99

David Gordon has rightly been called “the British Manara”!  He is a veteran of pin-up art and has worked for Eros Comic (Maeve) and the future release Darke Child.  Dave mainly concentrates on his own line of books under the MyExcess imprint.

In this book Dave discusses the type of drawing implements he uses to get “the look” that is associated with his work as well as a few guidelines.  Now, Dave draws attractive looking women and to many young artists the female form is difficult to draw and I know more than a few who have asked me over the years how to get faces right on their female characters.  Well, I’m 54 this year and I’ve been studying faces and figures for about 40+ years. Not a lot of newbies want to wait that long!

In this book Dave looks at how to draw the female face as well as figure.  This includes how to draw women wearing various types of shoe –a lot of inexperienced artists make BIG mistakes by putting female characters in very high heels but positioning the feet wrongly.  Another thing that creates a few problems are hands. Most artists have a kind of “abbreviated” way of drawing these which works if you are drawing a comic strip, however, if you want to draw Good Girl or pin-up art you need to get this right.

Body shape, various stages in drawing a pin up and much more is covered in this book and to show what he does, Dave has included a gallery of black and white pin ups which, again, newbies can learn from.

Obviously, this is a book you need to be over 16 to buy –but I just cannot understand why line illustrations of naked females have to be categorised as “mature” especially if it involves a guide on how to draw them: maybe that’s why some comic artists today are lousy when it comes to drawing female characters (some of which look like women’s heads placed on men’s bodies!

You can order the book via Dave’s MyExcess online store and I do recommend it.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/dave-gordon/how-to-draw-pin-up-girls/paperback/product-20107136.html
And see more of his art (colour and b&w) on his DeviantArt page:
http://filthyweedog.deviantart.com/gallery/
Yes, he DOES take commissions!