The Field Guide to Drawing & Sketching Animals || Tim Pond

This is, I think, the best book on drawing animals I’ve seen. The sheer breadth of the coverage and the amount of detail that Tim goes into is breathtaking. More than that, though, it remains at all times completely accessible and you’re never left feeling bewildered by the amount of information on every page.

The ability to do this comes from confidence and, as you can see from the results, Tim is completely at home with his subject and his materials. For what is avowedly a book about drawing, there’s a lot of colour, much of it in the form of washes. As I write, I have to keep reminding myself that this is a drawing, not a painting, book although there is a convincing argument for treating it as the latter. One of the things I particularly like is that Tim doesn’t bother with backgrounds, except for the occasional prop of a bit of vegetation. Too many artists opt either for a complete jungle or a nondescript cyclorama that makes the subject look like an exhibit in a menagerie. Tim’s creatures exist for themselves and in their own right. They leap off the page and they’re all the better for that.

Drawing (or painting) animals is a complex subject. There’s structure, form and behaviour as well as that elephant in the corner, anatomy. Tim has a neat way of dealing with that: shading. I’ve seen this done before and, frankly, it often just adds to the confusion. Tim uses a lot more colours than is usual and it just works. Even I can understand it and, more to the point, I believe I can. Another of his tricks is what he calls Wizards and Gizmos, little shortcuts to getting shapes and proportions right that allow you to build solid foundations for your subject that will pay dividends later. These are more than clever tricks for their own sake and are very handy ways of dealing with some of the more technical aspects of the subject.

There’s masses to get your teeth into here, from techniques to almost every living thing you can think of, from crustaceans to ungulates. This is a book that will keep you engaged – even engrossed – for a very long time and which delivers everything it promises as well as a lot more.

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