Illustration Studio: Inking Animals

This book does an excellent job of combining both traditional and abstract drawing processes. The first pages provide an overview of different types of inking tools, a variety pens and brushes, along with dry and wet inking techniques. Later diagrams show the development of drawings of different animals beginning with realistic sketches, and progressing to stylized or abstract compositions. In addition to drawing several projects explore printmaking techniques, such as collage and linocut as well. This combination approach emphasizes skill building and drawing from observation as an important path to creative expression.

“Illustration Studio: Inking Animals is such a fun and pretty handbook for learning to do whimsical, original artwork of your fave creatures. Talented artist Sova Hůová uses a wide range of creative and fun inking techniques and unique projects, with creative prompts and exercises, to encourage artists of all levels to experiment and play as they learn. Covers drawing, inking, and coloring techniques, exploring abstraction for expressive artwork, enhancing illustrations digitally with easy-to-follow instruction, and much more. Highly recommended!

Pub Date 04 Sep 2018

Thanks to Quarto Publishing Group – Walter Foster and NetGalley for review copy. Opinions are fully mine.

#IllustrationStudioInkingAnimals #NetGalley

“Illustration Studio: Inking Animals is such a fun and beautiful handbook for learning to do whimsical, original artwork of your favorite creatures. With creative prompts and exercises, to encourage artists of all levels to experiment and play as they learn. This book is divided into six sections: Introduction, Woodland Creatures, Domestic Animals, Birds, Exotic Animals and Imaginary Creatures.

Illustration Studio: Inking Animals is a fabulous book. I love the layout and process of instruction. I've done a lot of ink work as a technical artist, but haven't really known where to start drawing animals. I am so excited to get my hands on the print copy. It will be a wonderful guide for me as well as a great coffee table book that I'm sure will fascinate my guests..

Illustration Studio: Inking Animals
A modern, interactive drawing guide to traditional illustration techniques
by Sova Huova
This is a book I requested from NetGalley and the review is voluntary.
I love this amazing book! It just triggered the creative juices inside my head, not much else is there, lol. There is so much in this book. The author shows how to make your own light box, tells you what tools you need for this book, gives you lots of hints and tips, and steps you through lots and lots of projects of various kinds. She explains and shows the different ways of inking a drawing. No same old stuff here, boring is not allowed! It all looks so fun and exciting I wanted to start right then.
Projects that are shown and described here are woodland animals, domestic animals, birds, exotic animals, and imaginary animals. Many of these are step by step and others are used to show different inking effects or other cool ways to use ink! Love this book. Really spurs the imagination to do more with ink. Great for beginners or those that have been around the ink well a few times!

Illustration Studio: Inking Animals
By Sova Huova

In the introduction one finds, tools, techniques, basics, lightbox information and more and then the book is divided into woodland animals, domestic animals, birds (and nests), exotica animals and finally imaginary creatures. There is information on patterns to use for various animals, stippling, opacity, dry brush, ink into wet areas of paper, patterns, collage and linocut prints. With the use of color and imagination the techniques and ideas presented provide much fodder for artists of all ages and interests.

5 Stars

A lovely book full of creative projects and new ideas. There are a variety of techniques and styles to choose and everything is original. Great for animal lovers, journal projects, and would also be great projects to do with children. Colourful and imaginative. Thank you

This book goes into great detail of tools and equipment you’ll need to create beautiful illustrations of animals! These techniques can be applied to any sort of drawing and painting. I think this a great book for people interested in trying their hand at new art techniques. I am in LOVE with the wet inking technique in this book!

Looking for a great way to get into drawing/illustration? Look no farther! Sova provides a very accessible approach to getting started. First, we get an introduction to the various supplies we'll need. We get tutorials on a variety of illustration methods - drawing (pen, ink, pencil), painting and even block printing as well as combining techniques. We also get great artist tips along the way such as starting with the most detailed parts so if we mess up, it's not as big a deal to begin again. Sova makes drawing a more approachable art form.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book. All comments are my own, unbiased opinion.

I describe myself as a perma-newbie artist. I don’t put in a lot of effort, but I do enjoy art books and try to use the tips in them to help me get beyond stick figures. Because this book is more focused on inking specific animals, I do feel like you will benefit from it more if you already like to draw, specifically animals.

The first section has the usual art book intros to supplies and basic techniques as well as a DIY lightbox project.

From there we move into Woodland animals, Domestic Animals, Birds, Exotic Animals, and finally Imaginary Creatures. There are things like collage projects, Lithographs, minimalism, and creating animals from geometric shapes. I feel like if you have any interest in drawing/inking/painting animals, you will find something to like here. If you don’t feel comfortable drawing, you will still find something here to help, but I’d start elsewhere.

Wonderful pictures of animals in ink made me want to grab my pens and inkwells and start recreating some of the animals in this book.

After the introduction to the materials and techniques used in this book, the first part of the book is about drawing animals, adding character and colour to your drawings. From sketch to finished illustration of woodland creatures/domestic animals/birds/..., every step is explained and photographs add further guidance. I especially liked the exercise areas where part of the finished animal was already provided to learn the techniques explained on the previous page.

Beautiful ideas, sketches and art work.
It inspired me to illustrate birds and the book gave a clear instruction on how to get started.

What an absolutely gorgeous guide! It starts off by clearly explaining the different types of inking materials, from traditional dip pens to mop brushes, to then going through different inks, papers and additional materials.

I love that it teaches you how to make a DIY light box to assist the ability to reproduce your sketches without having to painstakingly redraw them each and every time. 

This is a wonderful book which explores different methods and means to draw using ink, along with providing numerous sources of inspiration for your next project. Illustration Studio: Inking Animals will definitely come in handy for when Inktober comes around and I am looking forward to putting these techniques into play.

*thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Walter Foster for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a wonderful book! and the perfect inspiration before Inktober begins. I'm so happy I requested it. It looks beautiful and Sova's whimsical animal illustrations persuade you into trying your luck at drawing and painting animals using inks.

The book focuses on how to draw and paint animals with inks and a little bit on how to create compositions. It is well suited for beginners, it has step-by-step tutorials, a lot of artist’s tips and explanations on different tools and techniques you can use (india ink with brushes or dip pens, fineliners, calligraphy markers, white gel pens, etc.). It also shows how you can mix other media like goache, watercolors, colored pencils, etc. to create beautiful illustrations. The animal tutorials cover woodland, domestic, exotic and imaginary animals (Unicorns!!!) and birds have their own section as well.

It’s nice that it covers a wide variety of techniques and you can pick your favorite tool and give it a try. My favorite parts of the book were “Finding inspiration”, with advice on how to keep your creative juices flowing, and the “creative exercises”. It is worth mentioning that it explains how to make a light box and that there is bonus material online. Totally recommend it!

Some of the best times I had teaching my children over our years of homeschooling were outside in nature.

We did the nature walk scavenger hunt thing, we spread a blanket on the beach and learned about sea life, we even sat in a big hole in the backyard to learn literature analysis. Those really were some of the most fantastic moments with my kids.

There is just something about nature and forests that allows your child to really learn and explore.

I recently read three fabulous books that can help you teach your children math and art using a nature theme. These are books you can use with your little ones to learn math and appreciate nature. You can also use them with your elementary aged children to do those wonderful crafting and art projects that really make the memories. And you can use these books with middle ages and even high schoolers who love to get out and smell that crisp fall air in the woods.




Illustration Studio: Inking Animals

This is an amazing book by Sova Huova for any child older than about ten, although my daughter would have loved it at nine. You are guided by the author through a thorough introduction to all the various tools you need to draw with ink from the different nibs and types of pens to instructions for making your own lightbox. Then your child will learn the basic strokes and techniques for creating textures and patterns. After a brief introduction to the shapes that make up various types of animals, your child launches into a series of animal drawing projects from a ink washed-bear to dry brushing a fox and many, many more. This book is everything your child needs to start illustrating animals, except the actual ink and pens.
Author: Sova Huova
Format: Paperback, 144 Pages
ISBN: 9781633225763
Publisher: Walter Foster
Series: Illustration Studio

This is a lovely book on the use of ink with artwork .The animals are really sweet and look very effective - this is a step by step type of book, and includes ink watercolour, linoprint, masking, collage from inked backgrounds and mixed pen and paint techniques. There is certainly many things to learn from this book, and much fun to be had. It is a good starting point on using and understanding ink, and the whimsical animals are just different enough to make them "on trend". A fun book for both adults and children

Illustration Studio: Inking Animals is a new tutorial guide for visual artists by Sova Huova. Released 25th Sept 2018 by Quarto's Walter Foster imprint, it's 144 pages and available in paperback format.

I think there are many would-be artists who believe that they're not capable of 'real' art because they've spent their non-childhood lives in a negative feedback cycle. Children (as regards art) are mostly fearless. As Picasso said, “All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” Anyhow, though I often feel the desire to be visually creative, to paint and draw... my efforts generally don't live up to my expectations and I get discouraged.

This book does a very good job of trying to counteract that negative feedback loop. The author is encouraging and positive, always upbeat.

For a relatively short book, there is a lot of content and many techniques. I especially loved the tutorial guide for collage. There how-to sections include prepping paper for collage, lino cutting, some digital work, drawing, drybrushing, wet inking and more.

The author spends about 25% of the book's content introducing and showing the materials and methods used in the book. The next chapters show different types of animals and in different media. There's even a chapter on imaginary/fantastic creatures which has a nifty mix-and-match creativity exercise included.

There is a fair bit of 'note' space and doodle space included in the page count which could have been given over to more content, since most readers will not be marking up the physical book. Otherwise, it was a really encouraging, fun, and very useful book.

Four stars! I had a lot of fun with this one; in fact, I had enough fun that I am encouraged to continue.

I feel that this book has a lot of value for both new artists and seasoned artists, offering some new suggestions and tools to help view drawing/inking from a different perspective. While I felt that many of the tips were familiar, I am an artist and spent a fair amount of time with brush/pen and ink while starting out. However, for my friends and nieces who are unfamiliar with the tools, the basic breakdown of the physical tools and the skillsets to create forms is incredibly helpful! Overall this is a great book for public libraries or creative programs!

This was a very educational book. It taught me how to used wet and dry inking techniques. As well as how to ink animal patterns. It also taught me about using varying even the smallest detail, can alter the mood in a picture.
I would recommend this for any newcomer wanting to start inking their own animals.