Yokai Bestiary: How to Draw Eerie and Enchanting Japanese Ghouls and Monsters

‘Yokai Bestiary: How to Draw Eerie and Enchanting Japanese Ghouls and Monsters’ is a fun how-to-draw book where you can practice drawing 35 yokai while learning about Japanese folklore from which these creatures arise. The book is designed for beginners and intermediate artists; each chapter starts with easier to tackle yokai and then builds with each subsequent yokai culminating with the most challenging yokai at the end of each chapter. Throughout the book I share with you tips on drawing, techniques, and what to focus on during each stage of the drawing process.

The content for this book started as a series of library programs I created when a friend and librarian asked if I was interested in teaching kids to draw online during the pandemic lockdown and then in person after the pandemic ended. Teaching library programs is a fun opportunity to encourage young artists in their pursuit of drawing and to allows me to share my passion for Japanese culture and folklore with the students. In each class I guide the students through drawing two to three new yokai and teach about the Japanese folklore behind each yokai. The drawing instructions I created for these programs became the core of this book.

I first learned to draw using how-to-draw books like this. I still have a fondness for the how-to-draw books of my youth, like the ‘Draw 50’ series by Lee J. Ames and Disney’s ‘Learning to Draw’ series from the 90’s. I keep copies of these books in my studio for nostalgia. So, when the opportunity arose for me to create a how-to-draw book that focused on my passion for yokai I was ecstatic.

I hope this book helps and encourages new and developing artists like the how-to-draw books of my youth fed into my love of drawing.