The Art of Botanical & Bird Illustration: An artist's guide to drawing and illustrating realistic flora, fauna, and botanical scenes from nature

Mindy Lighthipe's excellent book works for both the beginner and intermediate artist and perhaps the more advanced artist seeking instruction to botanical and bird art. She has excellent introductions to graphite and color with graphite hardness range charts with exercises to build one's own personal charts as well as color chart and color mixing charts to test one's range of pigments with advice on a limited palate to begin with and advice on supplies beyond pencil and pigments, such as paper, erasers, palettes, etc. The books is generously illustrated with charts and color photographs, including ones from her online courses, and this book would be a wonderful supplement to her online courses, while one need not take the online courses to benefit from the book. (However there is much in the online courses that is not covered in the book, so don't feel that that the online courses would be redundant. Mindy Lighthipe is a very lively teacher on her online course and a wonderful demonstrator and there is much to learn from viewing her technique. Unfortunately, she has yet to make a video course of her bird drawing or color pencil technique yet, but that is no criticism of the bo ok, but rather a plus that at least we have her bird techniques here. If only she had covered her butterfly techniques here also! I am sure t that she will someday soon.) Mindy's discussion on perspective is very helpful, at least to me, and by discussion I mean the heavily illustrated pages demonstrating the terms and definitions commonly used. It helped clear up some questions I had held for many years and could not get quite cleared up. She also covers cast shadows. Her armature drawings are extremely helpful for preparing for finally beginning painting and really clinch turning the 2D drawing into a convincing 3D representation on paper. This is a very useful bookend you should definitely get it if you would like to begin drawing and painting, even if you are not concerned about what subject matter. Botanical and bird art are very good subject matter to begin with and this is a very good approach. See also on Youtube her free demonstrations and give some thought to saving up and signing up for one of her online classes.

Great references. Pics are awesome.

I like the thorough manner the subject was covered from beginning to finished painting. I already had some art training and experience but I feel even a beginner could use this book. It has step by step illustrations throughout the entire book. There are several practice exercises.

I had never taken an art class before taking one with Mindy, and now realize that she was the best teacher I ever had in my art career. I'm so happy that when I opened her book, I was immediately taken back to her class and the excellent fundamentals she taught me. Anyone can pick up this book and, regardless of skill-level, create something beautiful. Even now, as a more practiced artist, I find that the exercises help me to improve my own art style and push me even further to do my best. I can't recommend highly enough.

I have more than 100 books on art covering great masters to Manga, even textile art. This is the best beginning to completion, beginner to advanced book I have read and used to improve my art. There was even great information I could use to improve my classes for children. Thank you Mindy Lighthipe for creating this valuable resource.

I actually bought the book hoping to have plenty of beautiful bird illustrations. But there are quite a lot of botanical information and detailed illustrations with plenty of sound advice and superb drawings and paintings of mostly botanical illustrations and she has an amazing eye for plenty of detail! Wouldn't recommend to the absolute beginner I think they as I did become overwhelmed in the painting and drawing process. Might leave beginner's frustrated due to lack of skill!?It's completely worth the price!

As a beginner in botanical art and watercolor I've taken all of Mindy Lighthipe's online classes and highly recommend. Her exceptional teaching style and experience has helped me to achieve my goals. Lighthipe is an exceptional teacher...clear, concise, and practical in her approach. She offers easy to follow lessons that build one upon another and this book is no exception. I have other books on drawing, watercolor and botanical art and Mindy's is my favorite thus far. A definite go to resource that I will use time and time again.

This book is nice but too complicated for a person, like me, who can barely draw. This book has very very few how to draw leaves and flowers. It is dedicated more towards the plant and bird structure, coloring, blending and detailing. May be good for a more experience artist.

Il libro si presenta bene ed ha una serie di informazioni naturalistiche che possono essere interessanti. I progetti sono sommari, pochi passaggi stringati. Diverse pagine dedicate alla struttura anatomica degli uccelli, nei minimi particolari. Trovo più adatti per chi comincia a studiare questo soggetto i libri di John Muir Law, ricchi di esempi, disegni stupendi e spiegazioni tecniche sull'approccio pittorico.

I have quite a large collection of botanical/wildlife instructional art books and this is in my 'favourites' section. It's an enjoyable book to sit and look through - laid out in a very attractive way and full of nice, large illustrations which are big enough to see clearly (even the simple diagrams and step-by-step pics are nice and clear - this is the stand-out feature of this book for me).At the start, there's all the usual general info about materials, colour mixing, perspective and how to draw and shade different shapes. I have a lot of books which include very similar content to this so I tend to ignore this part, but for beginners who don't have lots of books already, this book explains things simply, with very clear diagrams and pictures.Then we get into the more specific botanical and bird stuff - sections about different types of flowers and leaves, rendering branches, root structures etc, and bird bone structures. It's all explained in a concise and basic way, with plenty of good-sized illustrations.Next there are the step-by-step demos in which each stage of a finished painting is explained. This is my favourite section of the book, and I find the explanations of each stage very interesting and helpful. Again - the pictures showing the steps are excellent - big enough to see the detail clearly. The artist uses various media in combinations and the finished pieces are beautiful.Finally, there's a section with a few tips and ideas for creating a sketchbook, and a gallery of finished work.All in all, this is a lovely book for anyone interested in producing illustrations of birds/botanicals, particularly in combination. There's plenty of practical guidance and it's all put together beautifully, so leafing through this book is a pleasure as well as a learning experience.

Recebi o livro agora à pouco. O livro é grande, ricamente ilustrado. Pelo preço, poderia ter capa dura. Veio com uma leve avaria mas nada demais.Muitos estudos de movimento e composição, o que eu achei formidável! Anatomia botânica e animal, passando por técnicas de hachuras à lápis e lápis de cor. Exercícios de observação das aves na natureza Fora os demais estudos de expectro cromático e mistura de cores. Um auxílio aos que possuem um nível intermediário em aquarela. Mãos à obra!

Muito útil para quem quer aprender sobre detalhes e estrutura de flores e pássaros

If you are looking for good books to add to your watercolor repertoire I'd definitely check out this one. It is very technical and offers exhaustive schemes and pictures of botanicals structures and birds anatomy, breaking down what results very difficult when approaching this type of drawings. The size of the pictures and the various techniques suggested definitely make it a helpful guide in my watercolor journey.