I received this ARC from F W Media via BookishFirst in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion in any way.

This is an adorable book, with lots of really cute animals to choose from, like puppies, birds, and sea mammals. Unfortunately, it somehow utterly fails at its primary objective: to teach people how to draw and paint animals. As an example of how it so entirely fails, the first step on how to draw a puppy is to draw a puppy :/ I was frankly baffled at how little detail it gives on how to start out, and as someone who knows how to draw people but lacks the ability to draw an animal that won't scar all eyes that gaze upon it, I was pretty disappointed. WikiHow is more informative than this.

It's a great thing to own and keep around the craft room, but doesn't really help beginners, or teach many techniques for those new to painting or sketching. What it does explain, it does in simple enough language so as to not confuse younger artists. It seems to be more targeted at the "paint" side of things, rather than the "draw and paint" as the title implies. ( )

I received this ARC from F W Media via BookishFirst in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion in any way.

This is an adorable book, with lots of really cute animals to choose from, like puppies, birds, and sea mammals. Unfortunately, it somehow utterly fails at its primary objective: to teach people how to draw and paint animals. As an example of how it so entirely fails, the first step on how to draw a puppy is to draw a puppy :/ I was frankly baffled at how little detail it gives on how to start out, and as someone who knows how to draw people but lacks the ability to draw an animal that won't scar all eyes that gaze upon it, I was pretty disappointed. WikiHow is more informative than this.

It's a great thing to own and keep around the craft room, but doesn't really help beginners, or teach many techniques for those new to painting or sketching. What it does explain, it does in simple enough language so as to not confuse younger artists. It seems to be more targeted at the "paint" side of things, rather than the "draw and paint" as the title implies. ( )

This book is great guide for intermidiate artists and advanced artists looking to improve their skills in sketching and painting adorable animals. It includes examples of wonderful paintings done by the author throughout the book. She starts off by teaching you about useful materials and techniques, such as transferring a sketch. She then moves on to helpful demonstrations. You learn about rough sketching, breaking animals down into basic shapes, adding details, how to shade your piece, studying animals' features, and much, much more.
I thought that this guide was very helpful in furthering my existing art skills, but it is not suitable for younger or beginning artists. Other than that, it was great! ( )

It's all in the title here: if you're in the market for advice on drawing and painting adorable creatures from all over the tree of life, this is the book for you. This guide is full of studies on the fluffy and feathery, the familiar and the wild. The book is best suited for someone who already enjoys drawing and wants to learn more technical skills for adding extra detail and life to their work. I can imagine this being well-suited for a younger relative who is eager to learn about new tools and to step up their artwork.

Divided between two sections, the book initially shows you recommended tools and media (pencils, colored pencils, watercolor paints, and watercolor pencils) as well as helpful tips, tricks, and principles. Much of this section is a brief introduction to what you might recall from art classes in school: shading, warm and cool colors, thinking about underlying shapes. Then, there are demonstrations of the process of bringing animal illustrations to life. This is full of great references and advice for the young (or young-at-heart) animal lover and growing artist in your life.

The naturalist/marine educator in my heart has to say, though: the baby "seal" illustration is actually a baby sea lion, and yes, there's a difference. That difference being pertinent because seals are much more cute. /rant ( )

This book has a lot of helpful tips and instructions for creating adorable animal art. Not having much experience as an artist myself, I appreciated that the first couple sections deal with materials and techniques. The part about creating fur was particularly helpful.

As the title states, this book is filled with lessons on drawing and painting cute animals (mostly the furry or feathered sort). I like that this book goes a step further. Rather than having you create an image of an animal on an otherwise blank canvas, it has ideas for what to do with the background. Most of the animal studies have instructions on how to fill in the background, but additionally, there are a couple sections devoted to things such as plants and insects that could be added to the picture. At the end there's a brief section with some ideas for putting everything together to create a scene.

Overall, I think this is going to be very helpful to me, and I'm excited to see what I can create! ( )