Girls, girls, girls, and more girls; one of the most popular and well-treated forms in manga is the female form. With a wider variety of clothing than male figures and the universal love of the female form, women make the perfect models for learning how to draw. It also doesn't help that a lot of manga is liked by guys
How to Draw Manga: More about Pretty Gals is a supplement book than an instructional. There is advanced lessons on body shading, which re-caps lessons learned in books such as
How to Draw Manga: Female Manga Characters. From there, the rest of the books work with various types of clothing and textures, from sheer underwear to heavy rubber. The concept behind each form of clothing is broken down into three other types of fabric that are related by technique. Accessories such as earrings and jewelry, makeup and shoes are all covered. When dealing with the body figure itself, the book goes over the differences between adolescent and adult women, showing each side-by side and pointing out such differences as overall body shape. Lastly are a few pages on posing and getting female characters to look their best.
How to Draw Manga: More About Pretty Gals is useful even past its subject matter. Even though this deals strictly with the female form, the array of clothing options and how to express a variety of fabrics is priceless for any artist. Such techniques can be extrapolated to any body form. Also the level of detail in information is admirable in getting event he finest touches down of applying makeup, pantyhose or clothing. The section on makeup reads as if out of a how-to article in a girl's fashion magazine. Each concept is easy to replicate and understand, with a very large example to see how it looks close-up. However, there are some "fanservice" moments, not as just simple nudity, but some of the lingerie sections and examples of finished work to have a slight soft-core quality. However, these pages are very few, and balanced out with a book so large they are worth only a mention for parents concerned with such things.
This book is a good addition if you are expanding on your range of textures and need extra help in working out fine clothing details. However, this book does require knowing a bit of how to draw already, this is more of an advanced catalog than for absolute novices. If you do have the basics under your belt, but are a bit stuck on the finer lines of character design,
How To draw Manga: More About Pretty Gals is a good addition to your collection.
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