The Artist’s Guide to Drawing Animals || J C Amberlyn

There’s a delightful simplicity to this, both in the style of the illustrations and the presentation. Throughout, it’s very easy to follow and even the finished drawings are not too complicated. If you want a beginner’s guide that doesn’t leave you feeling left behind before the final hurdle, then this is it.

The author covers just about every type of animal there is, furred, feathered and even reptilian. There are nice, straightforward guides to shapes and proportions as well as specific features: eyes, legs, beaks, feet, tails and so on. The words are few and very concise, confining themselves just to telling you what you’re looking at. Though whether I really needed to be told that, “a baby sheep is called a lamb”, I somehow doubt. That’s a quibble, but there’s another. I’m not totally sure about the modelling of some of the finished pictures. I don’t think it’s fatal flaw, because this is not a staring-you-in-the-face flaw and, anyway, I can forgive it because the rest of the book is so good, but it’s there.

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