How to Draw an Animal Caricature

Series Summary

Do you ever wish you could earn a living drawing cartoon pictures? Learning to draw cartoons is a great start for anyone interested in a career in graphic design and illustration. Animal characters have long been a favorite subject matter for cartoonist. Adults and kids alike find humor in cartoon animals not just because they’re cute or funny, but because they’re often portrayed with amusing human characteristics.

In this series of free video art lessons you’ll learn basic tips and techniques for drawing cartoon animals. Artist, illustrator and expert cartoonist Daniel Bissell guides you step-by-step, teaching you how to create lines, add shading and use proportion to draw some of the most popular cartoon animals, including a cartoon dog, cat, duck and mouse. Follow the simple instructions in these online video clips and you’ll be drawing like a professional cartoonist in no time.

Video Transcript

"Hi! We're drawing cartoon animals today, and we're going to start off with caricaturing. A caricature is basically a drawing that has the embellishment of a person or animal's most prominent feature. You can pretty much show any kind of animal that you want to draw by just drawing that. If I want to start with a squiggly line with a little nose on the end, already what are we thinking? What's the most prominent feature of this creature that I'm drawing? He also has large ears. We can tell by looking at that little fellow that he is an elephant. Going along with jungle creatures. Who's got a big huge horn. Before I even finish, you're probably saying to yourself I think that fellow is drawing a rhino. Well, you sir would be correct. Moving right along with that. If we were to think of an animal that has a long neck, what kind of animal is that? My money is on a giraffe. He's got a long neck and he's got little spots. Basically, by embellishing any prominent feature in any animal that you can think of, and just concentrating on the first thing that you think of when you think of the animal, chances are somebody else is going to think it's the same kind of animal. Caricaturing."