Animal Painting and Anatomy

[affiliatelink align="right"]1[/affiliatelink][affiliatelink type="link"]1[/affiliatelink] was perhaps my first experience with critique. As a child, I drew with enormous enthusiasm. Eventually, my parents gathered up some of those drawings and proudly sent them to my grandmother.

Her response? To send me back this book, along with a letter kindly pointing out where my weak areas were as an artist and how I might go about improving them. As a painter and concept artist herself, she knew her stuff. But I, as a clueless kid, opened this book and was shaken to my core with how much there was to know about an animal when trying to draw it. There was so much that I was overwhelmed and briefly discouraged from trying to draw again.

Now, as an adult, I still have the book that she sent me, and every time I open it I remember how right she was to try and give me a window into the incredible wealth of information that exists to make our animal drawings more expressive and realistic. This book contains incredibly detailed descriptions and illustrations of some of the most complicated and most iconic parts of animals, from skeleton to muscles to skin folds, from cats to horses.

So brace yourself: Knowledge ahead!

Comments

AdrienneRose
"If you use this link to buy this book, a small portion of the proceeds will go toward creating new drawing tools.: --- There is no link showing to click on.
Kim - Site admin
There should be an image of a book there. If not, you might have an ad blocker that's decided it's an ad since it links to amazon.
AdrienneRose
It looks like a very nice book. I don't have any art books, but I have downloaded some Loomis books that I have yet to read... lol.
Kim - Site admin
I have big stacks of books next to my bed that I have no idea when I'll ever get to as well! Information overload.
Ele (unregistered visitor)
I know it's not particulary about animal anatomy, but it's relevant :)
My mom (who has an academical art education) sent me books about anatomy - both human (Bammes) and a small one about animals (really tiny). But my question is... how to read them? Are you supposed to just read them as a normal book and try to memorize stuff? Or are you supposed to read and then try to draw what you've read about?..
caleb fairchild (unregistered visitor)
basically you should try doing both, drawing it sinks it in into your memory much better and youll know the names along with the places and reading it will usually give you more information about how the muscles work and are layed in a framework on the animal. you also may want to learn basic animal construction too possibly from another book like Ken hultgrens drawing animals.

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