For each of the past 38 years my partner, Jane Ashley, has given me a pencil drawing of animals or birds. All to me are treasures. Dudley Whitney, 88, Vermont Sarah Joannides ...

Amy Tan, the author of “The Joy Luck Club,” “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” and other popular novels, often writes her fiction ...

View A collection of 60 bird pencil sketches by Philip Rickman on artnet. Browse upcoming and past auction lots by Philip Rickman.

Just doing pencil sketches, getting to know the birds, learning the shapes and the postures and the general patterns. And then when I go into the studio to paint, I have my sketches.

If that seems an odd vignette to render in colored pencil, nearly all of the entries in the Colored Pencil Society of America’s 25th-annual exhibition are photorealist.

Hernando resident John Romaine is one of those artists, though he uses colored pencils to do his eye-catching sketches of birds, other wildlife and nature scenes.

Intimate Sketches from Bird Life Written and Illustrated by Eric J. Hosking and Cyril W. Newberry. Pp. xx + 104 + 53 plates. (London: Country Life, Ltd., 1940.) 5 s. net.

In her most recent book, “The Backyard Bird Chronicles,” the best-selling author revels in a newfound preoccupation with birds — and drawing.