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Posted
Hi Shusmee
I too love Beatrix Potter’s drawings and I think she was a wonderful artist but she herself never considered herself to be one, she said she just copied from life (she obviously had a natural talent, something I rather have to work at but thoroughly enjoy nevertheless). And I’m sure being born into a privileged artistic family, being taken to art galleries as a child, having a private art tutor and wonderfully long holidays in the countryside must have helped her along the way to be the great artist she was. Lucky person.
But many great artists have started out by copying great works of art, grounding them in the basics and have then developed their own style, so I’m sure that once you have had a few pointers, either from a book or a tutor, you will develop your own style. I’m afraid I don’t know any books that teach this type of drawing but could I suggest that if you have access to a natural history museum, you could start there, and like Beatrix did herself, you could draw from dead specimens. Once you have some basic shapes/forms/proportions, you could try from the living/moving animal – hopefully they will stay around long enough for you to draw them. The best advice I’ve been given is to just keep drawing, anything, so as to develop the skill of observation.
I wish you good luck and perhaps we will see something of your work on the Gallery.
:-D
Posted
If you can find them, the Walter Foster books (large format instructional manuals, from the USA) are probably your best bet.
I do a fair amount of this sort of thing, for birthday and Christmas cards - some of mine are a touch on the grotesque side, and I'm not all that keen on showing them because I wouldn't want to get trapped into basically cartoon-type work; but if it helps, the way to bring an animal to life in anthropomorphic drawings is to seize on one feature and exaggerate it (as with any cartoon) - it might be the stomach, the glint in the eye, a furrow above same to indicate a quizzical or irritated look. Just a slight variant in the natural line of the mouth can give an animal a completely different character.
The "authentic" Beatrix Potter look on the other hand took her a fair amount of time to perfect and you'll take time over it too; the usual advice is to get used to drawing shapes, circles, oblongs, freely and make these the basis for your animals (in time, this comes naturally). As said above, study real, live animals (and dead ones, if you find them), get a lot of pictures, make a sketch from them, and then sketch from your sketch, not the original. I know you're not strictly speaking seeking to draw cartoons, but it helps (actually, here's a little secret, it helps with all sorts of things!) if you make a cartoon and then refine it until it becomes as near to realism as you can get it or want it.
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