Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

My fourth grade teacher was right in saying, "A book can change your life!"

It was summer 1983, and I was five years out of art school and on my way to a career in graphic design and advertising.  On weekends, I was a “wanabee” wildlife artist – producing animal paintings from my photographs.

That summer, I visited a Massachusetts Audubon gift shop and found a book titled The Living Birds of Eric Ennion, compiled and authored by someone named John Busby.

Neither name meant a thing to me, but I recognized immediately that the drawings and paintings in that book were unlike any animal art I had seen before. Ennion’s birds possessed a vitality, movement and immediacy that left me breathless.

Delving into the text confirmed something I had suspected – all the birds in the book were drawn from life!  From that moment, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

A few years later, I found out that John Busby had written his own book, and I immediately secured a copy of Drawing Birds, An RSPB Guide.

I was just as blown away by John’s drawings as I had been by Ennion’s.

I was amazed with his ability to capture a bird’s character with a few contour lines, and even more amazed with his masterful drawings of birds in flight!

But John’s new book offered more than eye candy –...