Your Favourite Art Books From 2008 Contest Results

Thanks to everyone for participating in the 2008 favourite art books contest. The response is not bad. Maybe I'll hold another one for 2009.

The winner for this contest/lucky draw is yash gupta. Congratulations, you've won yourself a $20 Amazon voucher!

Below are the other entries from other readers who left their comments. I've provided links back to the readers' websites, and the books are linked to Amazon.

There are lots of books I've not seen before. Thanks for the recommendations!

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Nicole

1. Shadowline, the Iain McCaig artbook. It has some of the nicest printing I've seen in a while, and as I'm particularly fond of his sketches, it's definitely one of my favorites. Link: Iain McCaig homepage

2. Art of Paul Bonner. Lots of art, very high quality prints, and plenty of stuff I hadn't seen before. Link: Paul Bonner homepage

3. Mark Schultz, Various Drawings 3 - I really like seeing the process work in these, and I think this one's the best of the bunch. Mark Schultz doesn't get nearly as much attention as he merits, IMO. Link: wikipedia page for Mark Schultz.

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Francis Vallejo

1. N.C. Wyeth: Catalogue Raisonn: BEAUTIFUL repros over 700 pages. A staggering amount of his work is reproduced. Finally a fitting book for this legendary and influential artist. Great photos of his studio. A good balance of smaller thumbnails and full page spreads. Good literature as well. Link: wikipedia page for N.C.Wyeth.

2.VICTOR PROUVÉ (1858-1943): Terrific book on the often overlooked French artist. With a hint of Toulouse Lautrec and Sargent, along with scupltures, Prouve is a great inspiration.

3. JC Leyendecker by Laurence S. Cutler et.al:
Again one of the greatest illustrators to live receives a gorgeous book with great reproductions of all his covers from Colliers to the SE Post. It's a good year for Golden Age Illustrators. Now we just need a Mead Schaeffer book!!!

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dugbuddy

1. Fables Covers: The Art of James Jean. With preliminary sketches included for the works it is a wonderful capturing of one of the hottest illustrators recently. Link: James Jean homepage

2. Classical Painting Atelier: by Juliette Aristides. A detailed look into the return of realism in figurative painting. This book is flat out wonderful, a great read, and print wise has great color. Her drawing book companion from 2006 is also a must for any artist.

3. Spectrum 15: Consistently good printing, wonderful imagery, and where else do you ever get to see an collection of talent of this caliper? Link: Spectrum homepage

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Otto

1. Art of Kung Fu Panda: What can I say? This is one of the best "art of" books out there. It's up there with The Art of Mulan and The Art and Making of Monster House (also my favorites). Nicolas Marlet is brilliant too!

2. The Totoro Forest Project: Sadly, I do not own the book, but from seeing pictures of the book and all of the artwork on the site, I can already tell that it's an amazing book. All for a good cause too! They're in the talks of a second printing, so I'm prepared to pounce on that! I might just break and get the 1st printing (goes for $200!!).

3. Art of the Modern Movie Poster: International Postwar Style and Design: A monstrous book with movie posters from around the world. There are more than 1,500 images in it. A great book for illustrators, designers, and movie buffs alike.

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Lemon

1. The Art of Kung Fu Panda
The art book of the year.

2. Street Fighter Tribute
I love Street Figther and Udon.So this album had to be second.

3. The art of Walle
Great movie and great art book.

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Vinod Rams

1. Shadowline: The art of Iain McCaig
Been waiting for it forever. It's great to see some of his non-Star Wars stuff, like the Princess of Mars concepts. I love the personality and sensitivity in his sketches.

2. The Art of Paul Bonner:
The level of detail in his art is amazing and it’s great to finally have a huge collection in one book! The book is big and chunky too!

3. Blade of the Immortal Illustration collection
Another book I’ve been waiting to come out for years! It has a good mix of his old and new covers as well as the amazing grayscale chapter heads.

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Peter S

1. "Walt Disney Animation Studio Archive: Story." A wonderful collection of storyboards, showing not just just how pencils drawing depict and diagram movement, but how pencil marks can themselves seems to move.

2. "Willie & Joe: The WWII Years." Watch Bill Mauldin develop as an artist in wartime, with cartoon linework steadily transformed into slumping, slouching, muddy, inky masterpieces.

3. "Alexander Calder: The Paris Years 1926-1933." The catalog captures the playfulness of Calder, whose uses wire and metal like a kind of drawing in the air.

Three runners-up: Lynda Barry, "What It Is" (a wonderful comic/diary/sketchbook/writing workshop/collage); Kramer's Ergot 7. (comic artists working at tabloid size, like the Sunday funnies of the early 20th century; Hiroshige, "The Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaido" (like floating).

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inkdestroyedmybrush

1- watching the watchmen - an exhaustive look at Gibbon's work on a true classic of the genre. anyone who wants to be a comic artist should be held and down and forced to look at the amount of work needed to do 12 issues.

2- retroactive - darwyn cooke a neat coffee table book by someone whose style can actually stand up to the enlargement of the pieces!

3 - the art of herge vol 1 - a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of a master - the foremost practicioner of the belgian "clean line" technique

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Sanndra SF

1. Kungfu panda - Amazing artbook,saw this book review from a magazine, then found this book in KINOKUNIYA. From character design to environment setting, this book give quality information and really worth to have it.

2. The art of Sparth, Structura - I am a big fan of sci-fi art. i can't wait to see the book after i ordered it from Amazon. The author,Nicolas Bouvier is a very creative person. I like all his works.

3. HellBoy Library Destruction Devil V.1 - For me it is super good book, the book in hardcover, full color printing,high quality paper. The art works is great and fantastic.

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nysv

1. Okami official complete works
The book has beautiful artwork in one of my favorite mediums - watercolor & ink. I haven't even played the game, but the art in this book is just stunning and there's nearly 300 pages of it. The US version was finally released last summer, I recommend picking this one up ASAP.

2. Iain Mccaig's Shadowline
Ok, I don't actually have this yet (on order), however I've really liked Mccaig's linework since I first saw it in the SW Episode I artbook. There's something nice in his character drawings, expecting more of the same goodness in this book.

3. An Illustrated Life
I haven't bought other 2008 released artbooks this year, so my third pick is something I don't personally have.
Anyway, this book looks interesting and it's quite cheap. Although it doesn't have pro quality art the content still looks intriguing, kind of like what's in the Postsecret-book or a collection of flickr posts of sketchbook pages. There's a preview video on the youtube for this

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yash gupta

1. Kungfu Panda
Awesome character designs. Love how they've managed to play with the big round body of Po.

2. Art of wall-E
Explores everything from robots to aliens to fat blobby humans. bonus:Eve is designed in collaboration with apple product designer.

3. Art of Bolt
Ordered it on amazon.ca will be getting it soon. Love character designs of Rhino. And the book does not contain too many movie stills is a plus.

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Andre Kishimoto

1. The Art of Kung Fu Panda
Lots of character designs. The setting of the movie is beautiful and the book is superb (loved the dragon pressed in the front hardcover)

2. The Art of Halo 3
After beating the game, seeing the (art)work behind the masterpiece is something I really enjoyed.

3. Udon's Street Fighter Tribute
Udon kick a**, and the fact that this book contains hundreds of incredible works from around the globe is just great. You can notice various styles and influences here.

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Here's my list of top ten art books for 2008. All links are to my book reviews.

• The Art of Kung Fu Panda
• Street Fighter Tribute
• The Sumi and The Water: Vagabond Illustration Collection
• The Art and Making of Star Wars Force Unleashed
• Fables Covers: The Art of James Jean Vol. 1
• The Art of Iron Man
• Structura: The Art of Sparth
• Mechanika
• Trick 'r Treat: Tales of Mayhem, Mystery & Mischief

linesandcolors has also compiled a useful list of list of art books. The lists includes a variety of art books across different genres, styles and mediums.

That's all.

Thanks everyone for participating!