This is exactly the book I was looking for! Having recently decided I wanted to try my hand at something artistic again I had picked up my pencils and pastels and began practicing. However, I wasn’t getting the results I hoped for. This book was the answer. It takes you through the different ways of drawing different types of fur step by step, both in strokes used and differing darkness of pencils to get different effects. It was the missing part of the puzzle for me. The authors gradually progress through different difficulties of animals from a rabbit to a koala and everything in between before progressing to use of colour. I loved this book and found the detail of the step by step stages just right. This really helped me get the results I had been striving for.

The Art Of Drawing Animals is beautiful. Lots of advice on what to use and how, as well as detailed descriptions of each stage of your drawing. Accompanied by beautiful pencil sketches to follow along the way. My daughter is taking GCSE art and this is really useful to her, as well as being ideal for novices and advanced art students. There is also later chapters dedicated to colour work in pencil too. A lovely book which will make you want to get your sketch book back out of the cupboard! My only criticism is lack of paint advice and other mediums other than pencil or charcoal types.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This would be a nice book for those wanting guidance on shading. The steps jump from overly simplistic to overly detailed rather quickly. Wouldn't recommend for a beginner but would be a nice edition for someone wanting a specific animal featured.

I was granted complimentary eARC access to The Art of Drawing Animals through the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

For relevance: I am a self-taught illustrator who has been known to dabble in photorealism and I absolutely love drawing animals. My preferred mediums are coloured pencil, watercolour, and ink, but the principles used in this book for graphite work apply to those more colourful media as well.

This book starts out with an overview of materials needed for graphite (pencil) drawing and also makes recommendations for charcoal and conté. From there it covers the basic age-old drawing tutorials of shading and basic shapes before covering materials and quick techniques for other media such as coloured pencils. It covers perspective, shading, negative space, etc. and then talks about how to reference from photos. The first animal drawing tutorial is on page 18 and covers the full two-page 18 & 19 spread. All tutorials from here out are two- and four-page spreads.

My initial thoughts are that the artwork in this book is absolutely gorgeous, and I very much appreciate the fact that the last stage is never drastically more polished than the previous stage. There's no "then add details" trap here! The vast majority of the actual animal tutorials do appear to be strictly graphite work, so this is mostly just a DRAWING technique book (as the title implies.) Starting with a beautiful rooster on page 110 (of 128) the tutorials are presented with colour, presumably coloured pencil,

Somewhere in steps 2-4 on most tutorials there is a significant jump in the amount of detail from one step to another that could be intimidating to beginning artists. There is definitely a presumption made that less practised artists will be spending a lot of time with the pre-tutorial pages, and a section in those tutorials has been dedicated to creating different fur textures. There are mini-tutorials on different techniques in sidebars or corner boxes whenever they appear for the first time if you're going through in order, but these are easily missed if you jump around to just the animals you wish to draw.

I would also like to note that some stage 1 base sketches are much more detailed while others are quite simplified. On one hand, showing the simplified circles and squares type first steps on some tutorials is probably an easier place to start from for more beginner artists, which makes the book more accessible, and I do also appreciate showing that some artists start with / some subjects call for a more refined sketch. On the other hand, true beginners may be overwhelmed by the more detailed and cleaned up first stages. I can't decide if the mix is net good or net chaotic.

As mentioned above, the last few tutorials are done in a coloured medium, presumably coloured pencil. As an artist who loves working in coloured pencil myself, I'm impressed with and love the look of the animals on blank/white backgrounds, but I'm not fond of the result of the final piece where a full background is coloured in. Either the paper is far too textured for coloured pencil work or no effort was made to blend out the circular pencil strokes, but areas of solid colour like the sky are chaotically noisy. This leads me to suggest that this is a good introduction to colouring animal portraits, but not a book to reach for to perfect coloured pencil mastery, as the finer points of blending coloured pencil are not being demonstrated.

This book has been illustrated by multiple artists, which is likely the reason why the base sketches vary so much. Working on that assumption, I think it would be nice to know which tutorials were done by which contributing artist so that readers who find particular tutorials more helpful or are drawn to differences in style can easily look up other books and tutorials by the relevant artist. Based on the first titles that pop up when I search each artist on Goodreads I'm fairly confident that the coloured pencil pieces at the end of the book are by Debra Kauffman Yaun, but the rest? I've also noticed as I was going through that I recognized some of the pieces, which means at least some of the tutorials in this book are re-used from other reference books. This is not necessarily a bad thing, nor is it truly a point of critique and the book doesn't claim to have new, exclusive pieces, but I wanted to note this for the sake of potential readers/buyers who already have several art reference books from this series or by these artists.

Overall this book is stunningly well done and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone looking to improve their skills drawing animals, or anyone looking for a nice gift for a budding artist.

As a beginner watercolour artist with very basic drawing skills I find this book is an invaluable reference guide. The detailed illustrations and drawing tips will definitely help improve my drawing techniques to produce much more detailed and accurate work. It is an essential beginners guide to animal drawing, particularly helpful when trying to achieve a realistic study of the subject.

This is a very helpful book for intermediate artists. I found the instructions at the start helpful regarding drawing fur, hair, white space and more. The start of the book is heavily composed of pets (mostly kittens and different breeds of dogs), then moves on to way more horses than you might need, then eventually goes to some wild animals and then back to pets and horses but this time with colored pencils. Once I got to the end I saw that it was written by a variety of artists and this explains the slightly different techniques and the differences in animal focuses. Overall it's a great resource, though you will need to spend considerable time on each piece.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

Lovely book with a wide variety of animals and textures to practice! Most of the creature are mammals (both domestic and wild) with a rooster and an owl thrown in for good measure. In the beginning all the animals are grayscale and later on the authors explore color pencil. I didn’t realize how many authors wrote the book’s demos until I hit the end so I was mildly confused by what animals appear next to others as there’s not much organization there.

To me it was interesting that some of the animals are drawn construction style, tracing references, and also (one animal) by filling in grids. This didn’t make much sense to me since the authors don’t really go over how to do any of this... If you already know those basics, great! If not, maybe google them or read a beginner art book before picking up this one.

Overall a solid art tutorial book. Now to go and draw fur and feathers...

It's a modest little book, but it contains the basic know-how for beginners, in order to draw animals with graphite or coloured pencils: mammals: wild and domestic animals, various cubs, a section with horses, some birds.

**I received and voluntarily read an e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**

I am horrible at drawing/sketching, so I always jump at the chance to read art books like this one. Not only does this book teach you how to draw several different animals, it also teaches a lot of information about sketching and drawing in general.

Overall, definitely a book I would add to my collection.

This is a nice book but a bit confusing for beginners. It tells you what materials to use, some techniques, perspectives, textures and them a step-by-step teaching you how to draw some animals like bunny, bear, lion, lamb, giraffe, cat and dog. I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

This book is not for the very beginners, but it is an excellent source for all amateur artists. The instructions are clear, and the drawings are perfect.