Painting Animals That Touch the Heart [Hardcover]

Popular artist Harrison has perfected her technique over decades of practice, achieving success in part because of the emotion she both brings to her work and evokes with her expressive animal portraits. She thoroughly explores painting techniques, materials, and lighting, then, dispelling the notion that animals lack feelings because they cannot speak, moves beyond technical considerations to help artists identify and convey animal emotions so that they're "telling their stories" in images rather than words. Many large, full-color plates with step-by-step instructions show examples of subjects such as big cats, wolves, horses, birds of prey, foxes, and dogs and cats, providing something for every artist and animal aficionado. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

For many artists, evoking emotion and feeling is the ultimate goal of their work. Popular wildlife artist Lesley Harrison shows readers how to do just that in Painting Animals that Touch the Heart.

She covers everything from specific pastel painting techniques to choosing papers, reference materials and lighting. Another key component of the book is Harrison's strategy for identifying emotion in animals--the first critical step for a dramatic painting.

Readers will find a chapter dedicated to each of these popular animals:

-Big cats -Wolves -Horses -Dogs and cats -Baby animals (including a lion cub, gosling, bunny and otter pup)

Lesley Harrison is one of the most popular and most recognized wildlife artists in the field. She has written several books including Wildlife Painting Step by Step and The Best of Wildlife Art. Her work has appeared in Equine Images, The Artist's Magazine, and Art of the West.