Drawing Animals Made Amazingly Easy

by Christopher Hart

Overview

Christopher Hart, America’s best-selling author of art instruction books, tosses all that aside to make drawing animals truly amazingly easy, by simplifying animal anatomy so that artists can get the poses they really want. What does that animal look like as it moves, bends, twists, jumps, runs? Simplified skeletons and an innovative new approach show how to look at an animal as a strangely built human with an odd posture—allowing the artist to draw animals by identifying with them. Hart’s step-by-step instructions and clear text mean true-to-life results every time, whether the subjects are dogs, cats, horses, deer, lions, tigers, elephants, monkeys, bears, birds, pigs, goats, giraffes, or kangaroos.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823013906
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	01/01/2007
Series:	Made Amazingly Easy Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	1,129,505
Product dimensions:	8.53(w) x 10.86(h) x 0.42(d)

About the Author

CHRISTOPHER HART is the world's bestselling author of drawing and cartooning books. His books have sold more than 7.4 million copies and have been translated into 20 languages. Renowned for up-to-the-minute content and easy-to-follow steps, all of Hart's books have become staples for a new generation of aspiring artists and professionals, and they have been selected by the American Library Association for special notice.

Read an Excerpt

Believe it or not, but animals do not walk on the soles of their feet! They only walk on their toes. Let's go in for a close-up of this concept.

When relaxed, a dog's paws are always floppy. That's one of the main distinctions i've noticed between animals and humans: Humans use their hands in a very precise manner, whereas animals use their "hands" in a loose and imprecise way. 
The idea of relaxed front and rear paws is especially important when dogs— or any other animals with similar "hands" and "feet"— walk. Take a look at the Great Dane to the right. This relaxed-paw quality is something that animators use and know well. It's a principle known as drag, and you can see it if you watch any wildlife special on TV. When animals walk, the paws drag behind in a floppy, relaxed manner. This is very different from the way humans walk. Yes, the joints in human hands are often loose during walking, but they never "drag" behind to quite the extent that you see on animals.