How to Draw Animals Better
Drawing animals can be a fun and educational activity, but also a difficult one. Biological forms don't always have shapes that are easy to draw. Also, there are fewer visual references to aid in drawing a particular animal, compared to drawing other subjects. But artists have developed many approaches to drawing that make these problems much easier to solve. With the right drawing approach and focused study of a particular animal, it won't be long before you can draw that animal well. Once you master drawing a few different animals, you'll likely find similarities between them. These similarities will help you draw new animals.
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Instructions
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1
Get a photo of an animal you want to draw well.
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2
Trace the photo, including its outline and all significant curves inside the outline.
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3
Trace the photo again, except leave out one major part (e.g., a leg, head or abdomen). Then, hide the photo and try to draw the missing part from memory.
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4
Evaluate your drawing by asking yourself and others if the part you drew appears natural or artificial to the animal. If it looks natural, go on to the next step. Otherwise, redraw the part with the help of the original photo. Repeat this step until the part looks natural.
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5
Trace the photo again, but leave out two major parts. Then evaluate your work as you did in the previous step.
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6
Repeat this process of tracing less and less of the animal and completing the drawing from memory, until you can draw a realistic view of the complete animal without referring to the original photo.
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7
Repeat the previous steps for a new photo of the same animal. Ensure the new photo shows the animal from a different viewpoint or pose. Then, repeat the previous steps for two different photos of a different animal. This process builds your visual vocabulary for drawing animals.
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Practice drawing a box in different orientations. Download the box template from the Resources link, then make the box by following the template's instructions. Label the faces of the box: "Top," "Bottom," "Left," "Right," "Back," and "Front." Make several drawings of the box, each with a different orientation or from a different viewpoint. Also, draw boxes with different sizes. This will help you draw a box that's the same size as any of the animal's parts. For more practice drawing boxes, see the Animation World Resource link.
Artists use boxes to draw complex forms for several reasons. One is that the box's parts are easy to draw. For example, since all its edges are straight, you don't have to guess, as you do with curves, about where and how they turn.
Artists also draw boxes because, compared to other forms, boxes can be easily shaped into new forms. For example, a box can be quickly converted to a pyramid by drawing lines from the center of its top face to the four points of its bottom face.
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Estimate the camera's position in relation to the animal: For each side of the animal, list approximately how much you can see of that side. Here's a sample list, which describes a front view of an animal with a little of the left and top sides visible:
Front side: most of the front is visible
Left side: a little is visible
Top: a little
Right: none
Bottom: none
Back: none -
10
Use your box-drawing skills to draw a box with the same orientation as the one described in the list you just made. Draw this box on a new photo of your favorite animal, such that the animal's torso seems to fit snugly inside the box.
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Draw boxes or cylinders around the remaining large parts of the animal. Then, draw these shapes for the next largest parts. Repeat this step until you can sense the animal from your drawing alone, without the photo underneath.
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12
Repeat the instructions in steps 1 through 6, except use your box-cylinder drawing to trace and study instead of a photo.
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13
Redraw each of the boxes to appear as the actual animal part they represent. Work from the largest to the smallest boxes, redrawing the box's straight lines as the curved lines of the animal, and adding other details as needed. If your boxes are accurate, they won't require much redrawing.
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Continue your study of animals by imagining different poses or viewpoints for a particular animal, and drawing from these mental images.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit The wild animal - a marten (it is photographed in bondage) image by Sergey Galushko from Fotolia.com
