How to draw animals

TUTORIAL 1- Explore nature

Nice simple drawings. Just follow the idea.

Jason Morgan - ebooks, DVDs and tutorials

Perhaps not quit the next Robert Bateman but a good help for drawing difficult features like fur or animal eyes...

XIA TUTORIAL - Cartoonesque

STRUCTURE!

You can't learn how to draw animals and how to draw anything in general if you first doesn't start looking at it!

It seems obvious but I have seen people in front of an empty canvas starting to draw clouds from memory without any idea of how a cloud is made. And it's not enough to reproduce a cloud from a picture.

Like a cook who uses onions, cream, eggs but without knowing why, when he learns the properties of the ingredients, the minerals in vegetables, the chemistry of them, he then suddenly discover the reason why he uses them and becomes a better, more inventive cook.

So here are the main parts of a dog for instance:

It's important to know these parts (head, neck, rib cage, pelvis, upper arms, "feet" and "hands" and especially the pivots points (points of leverage).

Pivot points

Updated 3 August 2010

The same, for an artist . "You cannot draw anything if you don't know how it looks like" (quoted from this website, surprise, surprise!). And, again, if you know the "why" it looks like that, then suddenly you know why it makes sense and this take you to drawing from your eyes imagination, making sketches without models, for free drawing, cartoons, caricatures, animation...

Dogs, cats, lions, elephants, and people are made in way that we must at least study a bit, the proportions, the position of certain main features like neck, back, arms, legs and the main muscles...

Let's consider mammifers and quadrupeds. Do you know how the skeleton is made, the bones are shaped? At least the basic feature you should know; head, chest, pelvis, upper arm/legs, hands/feetm spinal chord...And the main muscles, too. This will give you an understanding of how and why you do what you do.

(continues...)

There is also another great video that I would like to share with you here.

David N. Kitler is really a nice teacher and gives you also lots of tips.

"...one of the best drawing DVD's I own" by Gary, USA

"..is really amazing and helpful. In a couple of days I have changed my way of drawing animals!!! " -   by Sabina from Italy

The DVD production company is also a great website for all art learners.

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