To paint the character and personality of animals is to create an interaction that can be more intense than with a human sitter. Even your most faithful pet won’t actually sit for its portrait or re-create that perfect pose you just had to capture.

Therefore the images here are not strict representations – if you want to know how to create physical representations of dogs, cats, fish, birds or wild animals, this is not the book for that. What you do get, however, are paintings that capture the inner essence of their subject – the soul, if you will.

Jean uses a variety of techniques to achieve this. The first is a lot of water – this is wet-in-wet that’s as wet as it gets. She also uses often unconventional mixes of colours – your first instinct on painting an elephant probably isn’t to reach for the greens. Subjects also frequently merge into, or emerge from, their backgrounds and forms are often indistinct.

This is as much a book about understanding your subject as it is about representing it, and it’s all the better for that.