How to Draw Animals

Hi, everyone! Today I'm going to talk about how to draw animals. This will be something of a general overview, because I plan on doing many more posts that focus on more specific things, like paws, eyes, etc. (I also don't plan to get into shading today). I'm planning next week to do a series of posts about how to draw dogs and other canines.

If you're a new artist, or just want to find some fun new tools or programs to work with, check out my traditional art supply and digital art program recommendations. Here we go!

How to Draw Animals Tutorial

Art Type: Traditional or Digital
I'm Using: MyPaint and an Intuos 4

Examples of my drawings

I suggest that, even if you love drawing a single type of animal, you occasionally draw other types as well. I usually just draw canines and felines, but I find drawing a giraffe or walrus once in a while to be a fun change. It also helps to keep me a more versatile artist. You should also try to stay away from just drawing animals' faces all the time (this is something I have to constantly remind myself). Art is so much more fun when you can work with full-body poses, and there are a lot of fun shapes in animals' bodies (I particularly love to draw paws). But enough talking, let's get to the how-to.

1. Get a good reference, not too small or blurry. Remember you can use Ctrl-+ to zoom in and Ctrl- - to zoom out in web browsers. I have a dual-monitor setup, so I always have a reference off to the side. I tend to work pretty directly from reference, but the more you practice an animal (and the more cartoony your style) the less you'll have to glance at references. You should still start out learning from references, though, to learn some basic anatomy and proportioning.
2. Identify the basic shapes of the animal. Some animals' heads are like circles, others are like ovals. Shoulders look like kidney beans. Some muzzles look square, others more cylindrical. Take a good look at your reference and find the shapes.
3. Start drawing with the line of action for full-body drawings (it's usually made up of the spine, head, and tail). This is the direction in which the animal's action/energy appears to be going, like what direction it's jumping in.
4. Add on a skeleton made of basic shapes (you can skip this if you've got some animal drawing experience). Circles/ovals for heads, ovals for ribcages, sticks for arms, and circles for paws will get you started.
5. Check your proportions. That's why you start simple, so you won't go crazy if you have to erase a lot. Make sure the head isn't too small or large, stuff like that.
6. Flesh out the form with more shapes. Tapering shapes for arms, wedges for thighs, etc. You shouldn't have any body parts depicted by sticks now.
7. Check your proportions one more time. You don't want to be an hour into a piece and realize the body is too short.
8. Make your blocking out drawing less opaque. If you're drawing on paper, rub over it with a kneaded eraser to lighten your lines. If you're drawing digitally, just lower the opacity of the layer you're on.
9. Make the detailed drawing. If you're drawing digitally, do this on a new layer. Look for changes in the planes of the animal. Some areas will be obvious, others you will have to learn to see. The more you draw animals, the better you get at finding all their little details. You don't have to go super detailed when making a line drawing. Too many details can make your drawing look too busy, and many subtle things are better represented with shading than with line. Usually you'll add the most subtle details when you shade or color your work.
10. Clean the drawing. If you're working traditionally, erase all those unnecessary guide lines from when you blocked out the drawing. If you're working digitally, hide unnecessary layers. Look for stray lines, and erase when necessary. You don't have to clean it too much. If you wanted to use the piece as line-art, you'd want to ink over it anyway.

I've recorded myself drawing a three different animals. Take a look at the videos (feel free to just scrub through them, you don't have to watch every second of them if you don't want). I've provided some commentary for each of them, and a link to the image I referenced. After reading and watching all of this, try drawing what I drew, keeping in mind the 10 steps above.

How to Draw a Wolf's Face

Reference here

0:11- Blocking in basic head shape.

0:17- Setting my center guides

0:20- Finding the center of the muzzle

0:25- Giving the muzzle 3D form

0:40- Using the corner of the eye to place the ear.

1:15- Defining the face shape

1:29- Re-positioning the eyes

1:36- Switching to the sketch layer

1:54- Note how I "feel out" the line before I add it.

2:59- Note how I'm okay with going farther in or out than where my guide shapes are

3:20- Realizing that the face needs to be poofier than the guide lines have it planned.

6:15- Super basic shading.

How to Draw a Lion's Arms and Paws

Reference here

Similar things can be seen in this video where I show how to draw a young lion's arms and paws. Pay attention to how I don't allow my blocking lines to constrain me. If I feel something needs to be bigger, longer, or shorter, I draw it that way. The more you work like this, the less often your blocking will be incorrect and you can stay within your guides.

How to Draw a Kangaroo

Reference here

But what if you're drawing an animal that you are not very familiar with? Well, you approach it the same way. You can see how in this video, my blocking shapes are much more scribbley. That's because I'm not as sure of myself, so I go over my lines more as I fix them. But I go through the same steps as in the last two videos, and the end looks fine. With more kangaroo practice, it would look even more similar to the reference photo. Also, it doesn't hurt to spend more time with a piece if you need to. All of these videos were pretty short because the program I was using to record them (Windows Expression Encoder 4) only gave me 10 minutes per video, so I had to draw fast.

Today's sketches

Reccomended Reading: "The Art of Animal Character Design." I got this last Christmas and love it! It's the only art book I have that I've read all the way through. At first glance, it seems to be mainly full of pictures with very little text. The truth is that David Colman gives all sorts of wonderful animal drawing and designing tips in a good concise amount of text, letting his art drive home his points. The beginning has some especially helpful tips about animal drawing, including the most difficult type of animal drawing: drawing from moving animals. I highly suggest it.

So that's it! I hope this overview of how to draw animals was helpful! Next week, I'll do a much more detailed series of tutorials all about how to draw canines (one of my favorite subjects). Feel free to leave comments and questions, and to link me to your work!

Until next time!