How to Draw Anime Wolves

Perhaps due to the popularity of certain anime television shows, many amateur and professional anime artists are looking to draw wolves. Challenging animals to draw, wolves evoke a certain solemnity mixed with danger that is popular worldwide in the anime genre.

Things You'll Need

• Eraser
• Graphite pencil
• Picture of a wolf
• Sketch pad

Instructions

Draw Impressive Anime Wolves

1. Decide on the scope of your piece. If you are drawing only a head, then center your drawing. If you are drawing an entire body or partial body with the head, then you will need to realign the head accordingly.

2. Draw a simple circle for the wolf's head. This should be one-fourth the size of the entire body (if you are drawing one). If you are drawing only a head, you can fill your page with the circle.

3. Attach a cylindrical shape to the side of your circle to begin the muzzle. As you begin detail work on the mouth and nose of your wolf, keep in mind that you can add dimension by observing the shadows and light around the area, shading it appropriately and giving the muzzle depth with different layers to the initial cylinder shape.

4. Add upside-down triangles in varying length to the undersides of the wolf's mouth. These teeth should be pointy, with negative space left in the middle to give a gleaming white appearance. You can shade the side of each as the light hits them from one direction to add drama.

5. Concentrate on your wolf's eyes by shading them dark in the pupils. Leave a pop of white in the upper inside corner to give a reflection of light common to anime characters.

6. Draw a lot of exaggerated hair in spiky chunks low around the forehead, arching back across your wolf's neck and upper back. This is not necessarily realistic, but is very widely used in anime to give wolves intimidating and ethereal appearances.

7. Add standing, pointed ears to the side of your circle. If the wolf's head is turned, the ear furthest away should be one-third smaller than the one closest to you. You can also add hairs or dark shading to the center of each ear to enhance detail.

8. Finish your wolf's head with whiskers, a scar or patches of color.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are having trouble getting down the exact characteristics of wolves, try looking at an actual picture of a wolf for design details. Try to find one that is in a stance similar to the one you're trying to draw for the most accurate representation.

• If you do add a body to your wolf, incorporate the same amount of hair for the body as you have for the head. Otherwise, your wolf will look like it has a mane, causing it to appear more similar to a lion than a wolf.

• In anime, less detail is more, so don't overdo the shading and addition of hair or whiskers for wolves.

• Just because you can draw anime dogs doesn't mean you can instantly draw wolves, and you should know that there are many differences between the two. The key difference between an anime dog and wolf is the shape of the head and muzzle. Wolves have pointier snouts and ears, along with menacing eyes and larger bodies.