How To Draw Animals in Simple Steps
Polly Pinder, Susie Hodge, Eva Dutton and Jonathan Newey

Search Press
18 May 2011/ ISBN 1844486648
How-To Books/Art
Amazon US || UK

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

This is a compilation of five previous books on drawing cats, dogs, wild animals, birds and horses -- not a brand new book. If you don’t have these previous titles you can now obtain them in one handy volume with nothing omitted.

Each page (larger than UK size A4) shows you how to draw an animal or bird, starting with a rough outline and adding more in subsequent diagrams (usually six). The last two show the drawing shaded in pencil and finally with paint added for a colored study. One helpful aspect of this is that each additional drawing shows what has been added to it in a different colored pencil, although in some cases more stages would have made the book even more user-friendly. For a beginner it is not always obvious how to get from a simple line drawing to the fully shaded study next in line, but working it all out is perhaps part of the fun.

Certainly this is a beautifully simple approach to drawing, where there are no captions – they frankly just aren’t necessary - just steps to work through. I enjoyed using it, and anybody who wants to learn how to draw a range of different creatures will, too.