The Art of Animal Drawing: Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature Hardcover – Illustrated, May 31, 2016

A wonderful resource for any artist interested in drawing some well-known animals; such as, horses or dogs. The sketching by Hultgren is phenomenal. This is NOT a book for beginning artist. If you are looking for a drawing book that gives you the step-by-step instructions using circles, triangles, and lines, you will not find that in this book. Other books are available that will give you this type of instruction.Hultgren comes more from the viewpoint that you already have a fundamental understanding on how to draw. He does offer tips on drawing animals, but it is more advanced than draw three circles, then connect this circle to this circle. He speaks more of the specific elements of different animals; such as, verbally instructing you to divide the animal into three parts - forequarters, belly, and rear - and drawing a dorsal line between these parts. He also provides a section on mood and feeling that I found interesting and personally helpful. Furthermore, sections on the use of line, action analysis, and brush technique are included.Now to get down to the specific animals Hultgren covers. For me the selection worked well, but it is not all encompassing. It couldn't possibly be, or else you wouldn't even be able to pick up the darn book. He offers detailed instruction on the Horse Family, Deer Family, the Cat Family, and the Bear Family. These are the most detailed sections of the book offering instruction drawing the skeletal and muscular structure of the animal. These sections also provide instruction on action, motion, specific body parts, and types of the animal. For instance, the lioness or the draft horse.The other chapters of the book feature cows and bulls, giraffes, camels, gorillas, pigs, dogs, foxes, kangaroos, rabbits, squirrels, and elephants are not as detailed and do not offer instruction on muscular drawing. Additionally, each animal section offers a short introduction to caricature from 1/2 page to a maximum of 2 pages. I personally enjoyed looking at the caricatures. Not all of them were "typical" cartoon drawing. The final chapter in the book covers composition in animal grouping. It gives the artist the fundamental principals behind animal grouping composition.This book is one of my favorites because it has really challenged my drawing abilities. I highly recommend this as a resource to those who have a fundamental understanding of drawing. For those of you starting out in drawing, I would recommend you find another resource first before pursuing this book.

Our daughter is working hard to become a math/science focused teacher for elementary and middle-school age students, and has been doing very well in the classroom and in the field.However... the girl just could not draw at all -- not even stick figures -- and she really wanted to learn how to improve her ability to draw so that she might be able to use those skills to help make points in the classroom. That's an admirable goal; she is trying to do everything she can to help improve her ability to teach.The pictorial materials in this book began to help her visualize how animal drawings should be conceived, as a build from detailed understanding of the animal itself. By looking through them and then tracing over the drawings, she gained better understanding (and now at least her cats look like cats and not alligators...).Combined with a few other instructional books like Fast Sketching ( Fast Sketching Techniques: Capture the Fundamental Essence of Elusive Subjects ) and Drawing Realistic Faces ( Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces ), she really has come a long way in the last year.Highly recommended as part of a learning program.

I love that I am able to get this in hardcover because I wanted a quality product. However the pages inside are so paper thin, like vellum or tracing paper, that I can see the page underneath the page I am reading. The content of the book is amazing however so I will be keeping this.

this is a reprint of a book from the 50's but the drawings are still very helpful to my daughter. She is teaching herself to draw animals and using this book to for that purpose. She likes that it was written by a former animator for Walt Disney Studios. It helps with drawing animals in action, musculature, anatomy, caricature, etc. There are chapters on establishing mood and feeling, conveying action and brush techniques. Excellent book that should be in every young artist's bookshelf.

I've mainly stuck to drawing portraits of friends and family members but have wanted to explore how to draw animals. This book is filled with beautiful drawings that are also accompanied by a short explanation and a rough sketch as well to show you the process of the artist at work. It is incredible at teaching you the anatomy of deer, bears, horses, etc, explaining how they move while also giving skeleton and muscle drawings to help you grasp how the animals body should look. There are also a few more cartoon-looking drawings as well if you are interested in drawing in a more toonish style. The writing is brief but tells you exactly what you need to take from the drawings being shown. I sat down and done some quick 10 minute sketch work and was blown away with how well my sketches came out. I love this book!

As a keen cartoonist and author of children's books about the sea I was looking for a serious book that combined not only authentic anatomy with a guide to capturing the essence of an animal's 'character' in cartoon format. Former Walt Disney animator Ken Hultgren's book promised this, and I was not disappointed. My only plea on how to make it even better would be to include a few marine animals (whales, dolphins, fish, crabs etc.) which are my own specialty. But that's just me! If you want a book that gives you all you'll need to draw serious pictures or cartoons of a wide range of (albeit) terrestrial animals, this is definitely the one to get.

I haven't finished going through it so far, but already I've used a few tips to improve my drawing skills. Dynamic poses are something I still struggle with, and this book discusses how to create the illusion of motion in a simple and easy to understand fashion.Keep in mind this isn't your typical how-to-draw book, so I'm not sure how it will be for beginners just trying to get started in animal drawing, however for someone at an intermediate level who is trying to improve their skills, it makes a good reference.

Goes through some of the basics of drawing several different types of animals in a variety of styles - I found it very helpfulP.S.Imagine my suprise when I realised some of the art drawings in this book had been copied by another (deceased) professional artist to partly illustrate the old 2nd AD&D monster manuals, which seem to have been published at least 30 years after the original issue of this book!

This book is for the experienced artist who want to make their animal drawings more dynamic and take their drawing further, and Ken's experience as an animator shines through, It was never intended as a step by step beginners book as there are plenty of them already. Well worth the small price and great to see it still available.

This book is very good, especially for action poses, lines and construction/deconstruction.I would prefer having more tips and a more animal anatomy, but still is an AMAZING BOOK: I recommend it

This book is the best I have found so far for instructions on drawing animals both realistic and in caricature. The pictures are clear and easy to follow with numerous examples of most creatures.I bought it to help me draw the illustrations for my own books and I'm certain it will be of help.Gail JonesAuthor and Illustrator of 'Beaut'.Due out late 2013

A good book to start drawing animals