Review on Drawing Animals Victor Ambrus by Shantel Griffin

This is a great book. Victor Ambrus, the illustrator of this book, is a gifted draftsman. Ambrus studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts and at the Royal College of Art in London. He illustrated about 300 books; I also highly recommend his book on figure drawing. The drawings in this book are very expressive and seem deceptively simple, but years of skill and practice give the draftsman the ability to edit and reduce the amount of information written. The drawings were originally made on tinted paper but reproduced in black and white, but the quality of the reproductions is very good. Other reviewers have commented on the little guide, it is true that the information in this book is a bit sparse. Perhaps this book is more appropriate for people with some sort of drawing or art training. I suppose you should commit to learning by copying or just trial and error. I found this book quite useful, but I had years of art training. Ambrus talks a bit about paper, surfaces and pencils (charcoal is his preference *not the same as charcoal), as a plus there are also zoological notes by Mark Ambrus (brother). This book serves as a good reference to understand how to approach drawing live, moving animals at home or at the zoo. The drawings alone are beautiful to look at and serve as a great learning tool if you decide to copy them. All in all a great book and a great price!