For my money, Terada Katsuya’s Rakugaking is the best art book money can buy. 1000 pages of sketches from one of the most talented artists alive today. The book is gargantuan, and chock full of ornate complex illustrations that are guaranteed to spark your imagination. The man thinks in the most amazing shapes and textures. His ability to dance between sci-fi, fantasy, super heroes, and sentai shows how versatile his art chops are. I usually wish most manga artists would work on a variety of projects instead of just beating a single project to death over forty volumes, but I would love to see Katsuya work on a prolonged project.
Monkey King is fantastic, and he does dabble in sequentials from time to time in various publications (Rakuda Ga Warau, Manga Fever, Flat) but it would be interesting to see how the harsh manga publishing schedule would affect his style. To be fair, he probably draws more than a mangaka operating under the harshest of conditions.
Be sure to check out his tumblr as well.
Hands down, for my money Terada Katsuya is one of the greatest artists alive. I added Katsuya as a friend on Facebook awhile back, and it just hit me the other day that for as often as he posts art, there’s probably some awesome pictures in his photo albums.
So below are a few pictures I hadn’t seen before, along with some illustrations from the “Terra’s Black Marker” exhibit. Now get drawing!