Graffiti School: A Student Guide With Teacher’s Manual by Chris Ganter

Acknowledging in his introduction that the graffiti scene is split into two groups:  illegal sprayers and legal sprayers, and noting that the legal sprayers need experience and ideas to create the detailed pieces worthy of a legal wall, author Chris Ganter has written the missing “how-to” book for the less experienced writer.  With the care of a teacher, Ganter covers graffiti’s relationship to society, its history, the hip-hop context, terminology, and related media before jumping into directions for designing graffiti.  These chapters are separated out into a) designing and b) dealing with spray paint.  The last chapter of the book is devoted to teachers, suggesting approaches to planning a graffiti unit and including a sample lesson plan, exercises, and corresponding “solutions.”  Back matter contains a smattering of sample alphabets (for more of these, see Walde’s Graffiti Alphabets), a European-oriented timeline of graffiti’s evolution beginning in 1970, a glossary, a bibliography for further reading, photo credits and an index.  Strongly recommended for independent use, as well as art educators.  Highly popular with Passages students at Belmont.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Ganter, Chris.  Graffiti School: A Student Guide with Teacher’s Manual.  New York: Thames & Hudson, 2013.  Print.

Stan Lee's How to Draw Comics by Stan Lee

Know how to draw? Tired of the same old tips? Well, you’re in luck! Unlike other drawing books out there, Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics doesn’t drill the same old basic skills. In fact, there are only a few dedicated pages to teaching the reader how to draw characters from scratch. Instead, this book takes a more advanced approach by discussing points of view, lighting, shading, custom creating and many more areas of drawing that have made Marvel characters so recognizable and their comics so exciting to read. Because the book spends the majority of the time addressing more advanced techniques, the information might go over the heads of newer artists. This book is recommended for those artists who are ready for a level or two up from trace-and-draw style books. -- Claudio Leon

Kids Draw Anime by Christopher Hart

Sometimes the library gets readers excited about reading. Sometimes the library gets non-readers excited about reading. And sometimes the library helps non-readers tolerate being in a reading space -- while they maintain that they do not want to read -- by providing them with drawing books. Those drawing books can help with reading. In the case of Kids Draw Anime, we have a drawing book that sneakily offers its readers some help decoding manga through its instructional “adding expressions” section on page 15. I recommend this book to readers looking for a how-to drawing book, and teachers who may be pioneering instruction with manga and need a visual reference for how to read anime expressions.

Hart, Christopher. Kids Draw Anime. New York: Watson-Guphill Publications, 2002.