Get into Art: Animals product reviews

I was very excited to receive the book. The front cover is amazing and bright. It features one of my most favourite artists too, Andy Warhol. The bright red with yellow and blue, are fantastic and eye-catching. I had no idea what to expect, except that the book might include some art activities that would suit my daughter and I.

Inside the book, a different artist and art style is covered per two page spread. Each artist has drawn or painted an animal. The artists are a real mixture with the most contemporary being Wayne Alfred and Beau Dick's Totem Pole sculpture from 1991. The oldest piece was from the 1600s.

My daughter enjoyed looking at each painting style and the cleverly hidden activities. They were very inspiring for her and she got a lot out of that. The instructions are pretty good. Brooks leaves things kind of open for you to play with the concepts. But there is enough guidance to do the activity and then some advice on ways to vary the result if you want to.

I actually took a while to twig that the activities were on the page as well. It wasn't until the third artist in, that I realised that the page kind of opened out further. Once I found that, I went back to look over the rest. For me, this book was awesome. I love art and studied art history at University, so to be able to share some of this with my own daughter was fantastic. We were both inspired and with the school holidays coming up I know we'll get a lot more use out of this book.

My daughter loves drawing and painting and all things art so I knew this book would be right up her alley. I wasn't sure what to expect thinking it might be more aimed at younger children but I think now it would suit children of all ages as the activities were even suitable for my 11 year old where some of them would also be suitable for a 5 or 6 year old so it is very open aged.

The book covers a range of artists and showcases one of their pieces of art and how they were created which also gives you a bit of information about how they were created. Then on a fold out piece on each page there is a similar art activity for the children to complete themselves. The activities are relatively easy tasks that can be completed with materials you would mostly already have at home I couldn't find any speciality materials needed. My girl already has pastels, crayons, markers, paper and paint so could rip into the book straight away.

The first activity that drew her in was a piece by M C Escher of tessellating fish, she has been doing a bit of this at school for Math so soon ripped into the activity of creating a tessellating fish pattern which was quite a simple activity but it did take lots of paitence and time. She loved the activity that accompanies Andy Warhols painting of a dog which was to create a stencilled cat and she did several of these in a variety of colours which looked really effective.

I think this book is a great introduction to the world of art and if my girl wants to do Art at high school this book will give her some introductory to art history and some well known artists and their work. For now she is enjoying looking at the artists works and creating her own masterpieces and I am sure over the coming weeks with the school holidays there will be a lot more pieces created. A great book in all aspects :)