How to Paint and Draw Animals
David Astin
Intercontinental Book Productions
Nonfiction, Art
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Description
The artist describes the basics of drawing such animals as dogs, cats, horses, and birds. Also included are demonstration drawings of several subjects in different media, as well as notes on colors, composition, and the value of sketching from life.
Review
On the surface, this makes a decent primer for animal drawing. Astin's methods of breaking down the structures of various subjects almost go too primitive, to the point of being unhelpful. I also wasn't sure about the demonstration projects. But he has some decent stuff here, presented in a relatively unintimidating format. Astin also touches (briefly) on birds, which several animal drawing books I own ignore completely. If you wanted to start drawing animals realistically, you could do worse than to start here, but other artists have covered similar material in other works, with more interesting methods and results.