Drawing Wild Animals

Essential Techniques and Fascinating Facts for the Curious Artist

Oana Befort, Maggie Reinbold

• Publisher: Quarry Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781631593499
• eBook ISBN: 9781631596360
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Featuring the delightful and informative illustrations of artist Oana Befort and the inspiring expertise of conservation educator Maggie Reinbold, Drawing Wild Animals guides artists at all skill levels as they learn to draw—and learn about—a diverse array of mammals, amphibians, and reptiles from around the world.

To feed your curiosity, you’ll learn the characteristics, behaviors, and habitats of animals from categories like predators, burrowers, grazers, marsupials, frogs and toads, and lizards and snakes. To nurture the artist, you'll get more than 25 step-by-step instructions that show how to develop each animal from simple shapes into richly detailed drawings. Armed with a deeper understanding of animals, you’ll be better able to capture their stunning beauty and enchanting attributes in your artwork.

Some of the intriguing animals you'll encounter:

• Bengal tiger
• Yellow mongoose
• African bush elephant
• European hedgehog
• Black flying fox
• Ring-tailed lemur
• Blue poison frog
• Gold dust day gecko
• Russian tortoise

With Drawing Wild Animals, you'll learn to see—and draw—animals in a whole new light!

MAMMALS

REPRESENTING the smallest class of vertebrate animals, with roughly 5,400 described species across multiple orders, mammals are an incredibly diverse and fascinating group. They range in size from tiny bats and mice to massive whales, united by the presence of hair, mammary glands, and unique brain and ear structures.

All mammals are endothermic, or “warm-blooded,” with the ability to regulate their own body temperature through internal processes instead of relying on the external environment. Endothermy allows species to thrive and survive in even the harshest environments; consequently, mammals are broadly distributed across all habitat types throughout the world.

Mammals display an incredible range of lifestyles and food preferences, from arboreal insectivores to aquatic carnivores to fossorial (burrowing) omnivores. They vary greatly in their external ornamentation, from color patterns such as stripes and spots to structures on the head like horns and antlers. They communicate in a variety of ways, using scent, sound, and movement to relay information and interact with each other under myriad community structures, from solitary living to strict hierarchies.

All mammals give birth to live young, except for a few egg-laying species such as the duck-billed platypus of Australia. The platypus and a handful of echidna species, collectively called monotremes, lay eggs like birds and reptiles, but most of the incubation occurs inside the mother’s body, with young drinking milk immediately after hatching. In contrast to the monotremes are the marsupials, a group of mammals that give birth to live young, but the offspring are born extremely small and undeveloped. Newborn marsupials are essentially still fetuses, and must make their way to the safety of the mother’s pouch, where they actively suckle milk and continue developing. Last, there are the eutherians, representing the majority of mammalian species, including well-known groups such as bears, cats, whales, rhinos, and monkeys. Eutherian mammals nourish their young inside a placenta, a specialized embryonic organ within the mother. They are born fully developed and, in many species, ready to compete and survive within a very short period of time.

One unifying mammalian feature that can be challenging to re-create is the presence of hair or fur on the body. Serving many purposes across species, from camouflage to thermoregulation, mammalian fur varies greatly in thickness, color, rigidity, and density. The way that sunlight falls on or through a lion’s mane on a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Drawing Tips and Tools
• Mammals
• Amphibians
• Reptiles
• Conservation and Value
• Resources
• About The Authors
• Index
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright