Being the nerd/geek that I am, over the years I’ve acquired a decent collection of manga drawing books, so this one caught my attention. It’s written in a relaxed, fun, chatty manner, and the author has a sense of humor which always makes a how-to book more enjoyable.

The instruction and tips are approachable, and the book gets you started with an outline of basic viewing angles of people’s faces for the reader to finish drawing in the features of. It also gives suggestions for ways to continue the drawing, while encouraging the reader to come up with ideas themselves. Focusing on drawing people and expressing emotions, it actually gives more instruction than you expect from the title – it’s geared toward learning actual techniques rather than only the doodles the title suggests.

Along with the sections detailing people, there’s also a cute animal section as well, which I couldn’t resist trying out.

Later on, there’s a section that has mazes for the reader to complete drawing, which gets them started on putting actual scenes together.  It gradually becomes more advanced as the book goes on, guiding the reader to create complete scenes themselves, first by giving the reader a basic setup in an existing scene, then by presenting different crafts that the reader can create to use the stile of drawing on, from stationary and bookmarks to graphic novel covers.

This is a fun book that would be great for upper elementary and older, both for casual projects and those interested in the manga drawing style. It’s publishing date is June 21, 2016.

Disclaimer: I was given a digital advanced copy of this book from publishers registered with NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.