The Art of Animal Drawing: Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature (Dover Art Instruction)

A wonderful resource for any artist interested in drawing some well-known animals; such as, horses or dogs. The sketching by Hultgren is phenomenal. This is NOT a book for beginning artist. If you are looking for a drawing book that gives you the step-by-step instructions using circles, triangles, and lines, you will not find that in this book. Other books are available that will give you this type of instruction.Hultgren comes more from the viewpoint that you already have a fundamental understanding on how to draw. He does offer tips on drawing animals, but it is more advanced than draw three circles, then connect this circle to this circle. He speaks more of the specific elements of different animals; such as, verbally instructing you to divide the animal into three parts - forequarters, belly, and rear - and drawing a dorsal line between these parts. He also provides a section on mood and feeling that I found interesting and personally helpful. Furthermore, sections on the use of line, action analysis, and brush technique are included.Now to get down to the specific animals Hultgren covers. For me the selection worked well, but it is not all encompassing. It couldn't possibly be, or else you wouldn't even be able to pick up the darn book. He offers detailed instruction on the Horse Family, Deer Family, the Cat Family, and the Bear Family. These are the most detailed sections of the book offering instruction drawing the skeletal and muscular structure of the animal. These sections also provide instruction on action, motion, specific body parts, and types of the animal. For instance, the lioness or the draft horse.The other chapters of the book feature cows and bulls, giraffes, camels, gorillas, pigs, dogs, foxes, kangaroos, rabbits, squirrels, and elephants are not as detailed and do not offer instruction on muscular drawing. Additionally, each animal section offers a short introduction to caricature from 1/2 page to a maximum of 2 pages. I personally enjoyed looking at the caricatures. Not all of them were "typical" cartoon drawing. The final chapter in the book covers composition in animal grouping. It gives the artist the fundamental principals behind animal grouping composition.This book is one of my favorites because it has really challenged my drawing abilities. I highly recommend this as a resource to those who have a fundamental understanding of drawing. For those of you starting out in drawing, I would recommend you find another resource first before pursuing this book.

Pictures are worth a thousand words. I don’t need to be told beforehand, or as I’m looking through the pages, that this guide was written and drawn by someone with a background in animation. The animals drawn here are full of life and look like they want to leap across and out of the pages. Examples and techniques emphasize realistically rendered animals, though there’s the occasional page demonstrating how to draw caricatures, which look more like what you’d expect from Disney cartoons. In my opinion this guide is not for beginners, but rather for those who already have a grasp of the foundations of proportion, form, and rendering, and are looking for ways to instill more life, fluidity, and dynamics into animal drawings. There’s no step by step handholding or detailed tutorials on the basics of setting up and building on a drawing. The author assumes you already know most of that. I was a lapsed artist who used this book as motivation to get back into animal drawing. I recommend it for intermediate-advanced artists who want to take animal illustration further.

A lot of details but a bit excessive with the horse illustration in the first half of the book. Other than that the book has some good lessons on how to draw. I wish the author gave more caricatures examples though.

Dover strikes gold again with their comprehensive animal drawing book, a must-have for aspiring artists and seasoned illustrators alike. This gem provides invaluable insights into capturing wildlife from every conceivable angle, fostering a deep understanding of anatomy and movement. While it demands diligent practice, the payoff is immense as techniques become second nature. A prized addition to any artist's library, this reference book not only enhances personal skills but also serves as an excellent teaching resource. For lovers of fine instructionals, Dover delivers once more.

Our daughter is working hard to become a math/science focused teacher for elementary and middle-school age students, and has been doing very well in the classroom and in the field.However... the girl just could not draw at all -- not even stick figures -- and she really wanted to learn how to improve her ability to draw so that she might be able to use those skills to help make points in the classroom. That's an admirable goal; she is trying to do everything she can to help improve her ability to teach.The pictorial materials in this book began to help her visualize how animal drawings should be conceived, as a build from detailed understanding of the animal itself. By looking through them and then tracing over the drawings, she gained better understanding (and now at least her cats look like cats and not alligators...).Combined with a few other instructional books like Fast Sketching (Fast Sketching Techniques: Capture the Fundamental Essence of Elusive Subjects) and Drawing Realistic Faces (Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces), she really has come a long way in the last year.Highly recommended as part of a learning program.

The media could not be loaded. Cumple con lo solicitado y lo esperado..Muy completo el libro..

This book is a great start to learn how to draw animals it provides a basic knowledge of 1 group of animals mostly mammals if you want to learn how to draw birds or lizards then get something else but it this is a good start