How To Draw Animals, Jack Hamm – Book Review

It’s another Jack Hamm book, a 120-page paperback about drawing animals.

Just like the Jack Hamm book on people and faces, this isn’t a book to sit down and read.  It’s a reference book to consult as and when I want to draw animals.  But I think this book will be more useful to me than the other.  Whatever animal I want to draw or paint, I can look it up in the index of this book and it will point me towards all the pages throughout the book where that animal makes an appearance.  This even applies to animals like badgers, who only have a single picture on a “here are lots of other animals” page.

There’s a general introduction on drawing animals, before we get on to how to draw specific animals.  The cat and horse family get the biggest page count, with bears, elephants and the dog family also getting extended coverage.  For most animals, there’s lots of useful information on all the little lumps, divots and creases that make that animal unique.  In places there are simple “start with a square and divide it up like this” techniques that I quite like in moderation.

Overall, it’s a useful reference book.  If feels like it should get 3.5 palettes.  I’m going to be mean and round it down to 3.