This book is for all artists who create animal portraits and paintings in the studio. Do you already have some experience with painting but are just beginning to work on animal subjects? This book gives practical advice to help you get on the right track. As well as providing a good foundation, it shows you many ways to improve the design on your paintings. The main focus of the book is the process by which ideas are generated, used to create a design, and taken through to a finished painting. The author has drawn on his own experience to show how it's done in the studio of a professional artist. It was conceived and written as a book that can be used to solve problems in your own work, guiding you through the many decisions that must be made during the creative process. Most of the examples given are related to working with oil paints. Although a lot of the discussion about design and painting can be applied to any color medium, it is written with the oil painter in mind.