Lesley Harrison is an amazing pastel artist. Her paintings are the kind that you just want to reach into and touch the subject. They are full of emotion and light and beauty. We, as artists, are lucky that she has written a book to share some of her techniques and “secrets”.

This book is really something unusual in that it is not just about painting animals, this book shows you how to focus on the things about animals that really make you feel a pull at the heartstrings. This is also one of those amazingly rare finds, a book about pastel artwork that shows you how to create intricate detail. Two great finds in one beautiful book!

As I said, this book is about painting with pastels, and the title may be a little confusing if you don’t know that. The principals are fine for any medium, but the meat of the book is the step-by-step demos, which are geared totally towards pastel work. A large part of Ms. Harrison’s technique is the use of a special paper, a velour or velvet finished paper. You won’t be able to get the same, soft but crisp results without this paper. And, honestly, having tried pastels on patel paper and then trying on the velour paper - WHOA what a difference! It actually makes pastels almost easy. Luckily this type of paper is readlily available at art and craft stores. The techniques involve the use of both hard and soft pastel, so to follow them you’ll need more than one pastel set. A set of Prismacolor Nupastels are pretty much a necessity.

The book has sections on horses, big cats, wolves, cats and dogs, and baby animals.She also has many demos that cover specific portions of an image, the eyes, paws, ears are all given individual attention. One think that I really like about this book is that it focuses on giving your paintings the spirit of the animals portrayed. She shows you how she goes about capturing specific emotions and moods in her paintings. There are few art books out there that cover such an ephemeral topic, and I consider this book one of the prizes of my collection.