Bold Visions: The Digital Painting Bible - by Gary Tonge

Image owned by Gary Tonge and Impact

I have returned and I thirst for the blood of pomegranate juice. I fucking love that stuff.

Today's review is one of great interest to probably many of you looking to get into digital art. After all if you want to do freelance or concept art this would be important to you. Bold Visions: The Digital Painting Bible is written by Gary Tonge and uses his drawings/paintings within the book.



Now the first question: Is it a digital painting bible? I suppose. It gives the basics needed to know how to paint and gives information on certain painting programs. However this book is basically just about using photoshop. It teaches layers, brushes and a host of other powers that photoshop is capable of performing. It even explains how to save your files properly and how to manage them. The book also shows painting processes of some of the artwork Tonge makes, which is always nice to see.

Image owned by Gary Tonge and Impact

The second question for this book is: Does it explain everything so even a computer illiterate can follow along? And the answer to that one is yes. Yes it does. The book uses a series of images and actually points to the images in order to explain what is happening. By each column of text there will be a box of text pointing to what it actually is talking about. This book is really meant for the visual learner which really makes sense if you look at the target audience (namely people like me who have a hard time reading instructions without feeling their mind slowly melt away from boredom, maybe that's why my reviews are so short...).

Image owned by Gary Tonge and Impact

A great pointer about this book is that the artwork in it is amazing. I mean it is really good. I love it. And I'm really jealous of it. This book is a great inspiration to have lying around if you're bored and can't think of a good idea (apparently I didn't look at it when I thought about making this blog).

So to sum this little book up, it basically is meant to teach you the basics. It isn't anything advanced or wordy that will leave you with a giant anime question mark above your head and it certainly isn't a book that gives out any secrets (the only secret to getting good is to practice you lazy ass). You can buy the book to the left of the post in the widget or just simply click here.