Draw Some Awesome Drawing tips & ideas for budding artists

'I get asked these questions all the time . . . so I decided to make a book crammed full of my best advice to help you Draw Some Awesome.'

International award-winning illustrator Donovan Bixley takes you from simple line drawings and inspiring ideas, to draw character design, drawing exercises, composition and more!

How can you get started drawing? International award-winning illustrator Donovan Bixley brings his unique style to teaching kids (and grown-ups!) to draw.

In a book that spans levels of skill, Donovan takes his readers through:

• warm-up exercises
• mark making
• sketchbooks
• imagination exercises
• inspirational shapes
• drawing animals
• faces
• character creation
• detail
• copying
• perspective
• shading
• shadows
• composition
• making an illustration
• drawing a unicorn!

Of course, he does it with humour as well as skill. This book is full of tips and tricks for budding artists of all levels to come back again and again.

I've illustrated more than 120 books, published in 31 countries, translated into 19 languages, and I have been awarded as both a writer and illustrator, and also as a book designer. My most recent award is for my junior fiction series Flying Furballs (Upstart Press 2016). Book 1 Dogfight, won the 2018 Tatoulu children's choice award in France. In 2017 I was the recipient of the New Zealand Arts Foundation Mallinson Rendel Laureate Award, for lifetime achievement as an illustrator. I am a two time recipient of the International Youth Library's White Raven Award (listing the top 200 children's books in the world) for: Fuzzy Doodle (written by Melinda Szymanik, published by Scholastic NZ) in 2017, and my innovative hybrid part-novel, part-comic Monkey Boy (Scholastic NZ), in 2015. Monkey Boy also won the top prize for junior fiction at the 2015 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. My illustrated biography Much Ado About Shakespeare won the Russell Clark Illustration Award for best illustration at the 2016 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

I enjoy working across a broad range of books, from my illustrated biographies Faithfully Mozart (Upstart 2018) and Much Ado About Shakespare (Upstart 2016), to my best-selling pre-school books The Wheels on the Bus (Hodder Moa 2010) and The Looky Book (Hodder Moa 2012). In 2014 my work on The Three Bears Sort Of (written by Yvonne Morrison, published by Scholastic 2013), won the Overall Children's Choice at the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, taking a staggering 2/3 of the 15,000 votes. Three Bears Sort Of also won the Children's Choice at the 2014 West Australian Young Readers Book Awards. Other notable books include my wordless picture book The Weather Machine (Hachette 2013), and one of my personal favourites was illustrating Margaret Mahy's Dashing Dog (Harper Collins 2013). I am co-creator of the hit international series Dinosaur Rescue (with Kyle Mewburn, published by Scholastic 2012-2015) which has been a number one bestseller as far away as Norway.