Drawing Wild Animals by Oana Befort, Maggie Reinbold

Drawing Wild Animals by Oana Befort, Maggie Reinbold ISBN-13: 9781631593499 Paperback: 144 pages Publisher: Quarry Books Released: May 8, 2018

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Featuring the delightful and informative illustrations of artist Oana Befort and the inspiring expertise of conservation educator Maggie Reinbold, Drawing Wild Animals guides artists at all skill levels as they learn about, observe, and draw animals in a whole new light.

To feed your curiosity, you’ll learn the characteristics, behaviors and, habitats of animals from categories like predators, grazers, and marsupials. To nurture the artist, you'll get step-by-step instructions that show how to develop each animal from simple shapes into richly detailed drawings. Armed with a deeper understanding of animals, you’ll be better able to capture their stunning beauty and enchanting attributes in your artwork.


My Review:
Drawing Wild Animals is an art book on drawing and painting wild animals. The conservation educator provided some basic information about the animals in the demonstrations. The artist showed how to draw wild animals with 26 step-by-step demonstrations. Each demonstration had 6-8 steps with easy-to-follow illustrations and clear text instructions. She used general colors in the instructions rather than specific brand name colors, so you don't need a specific brand to follow the demonstrations.

She started by drawing the basic shapes in pencil, then connecting and refining the shapes. She then added the features, fur, and patterns to make the animal look realistic. She used ink to draw the finalized lines then used watercolor to add color and shading. While not hyper-realistic, the finished art is realistic, not stylized. She didn't specifically talk about how to look at an animal and figure out the steps (using shapes to establish proportions, refinement of the form, adding details), but she did point out how the steps for one animal could be used to draw similarly shaped animals. I felt like I could apply the steps to animals that aren't in the demonstrations. Overall, I'd highly recommend this book to beginning animal artists, from children to adult.

Animals in the demonstrations: Bengal tiger, grey wolf, polar bear, mongoose, elk, hippopotamus, giraffe, zebra, rhinoceros, elephant, hedgehog, chinchilla, hare, sloth, bat, monkey, lemur, koala, frog, toad, salamander, gecko, rattlesnake, crocodile, tortoise, and turtle.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.