Russ Thorne

I loved a lot of the art in this book, but the thing that drove me crazy was the art they were talking about was never on the page they were talking about it on. So they talked about Frazetta and specifically mentioned his pieces by name, but they were no where in the book. They talked about collectible card game art, but never showed any of it. Even if the art they were talking about was in the book it was always "as seen on page X" and then you had to go back and find that page.

I think show more the thing I liked the most was the artist sidebars where they described their techniques. A lot of it was like that "how to draw an owl" meme where they draw a couple circles and then the next step is to "draw the owl". It's pretty crazy thinking of some of the skill with software some of these artists have. Photoshop is so huge you could probably create a curriculum of 3 or 4 college semesters and still not understand how it all works. show less

I loved all the pictures in here. It helped me picture what some of my characters might look like. However, I wished it would have gone deeper into the mythology of mermaids. It touched briefly on how the myths of mermaids originated in different cultures, but I was hoping it would go more in depth. It's a fun light read, and it may spark an idea or two for a new mermaid story, but if you're wanting more research on mermaids this isn't the book for that.

Incredible artwork and I loved the books layout and feel. A lot of lesser knowns - and of course well knowns - are covered, but it doesn't get too in-depth into them. It covers pretty much everything, even zombie walks, but kind of feels all over the place with the timeline of events. Recommended for zombie fans. I am curious about the artwork described from old paintings and will have to look them up since, for some reason, the book didn't include them. Maybe a rights issue?