Animal drawing Guide for Beginners

Title: Animal Drawings:

It can be hard to even begin to accurately draw animals with all of their unique features and specialised roles in nature. Due to this, many people will become intimidated by drawing animals, causing them to stop practicing and giving up completely. I encourage you to not let this stop you from drawing, as it can be a great challenge which will keep you practicing and refining your skills.

Each and every animal has unique features, so try to make sure you are making your own interpretations of these features. Remember that every square animal is perfect in its right, so try not to obsess over making something look exactly like its real-life counterpart (if you know who the animal is). Once you get more comfortable with drawing animals, you can look things up online.

Dogs are always great practice animals as they come in a large range of body shapes and size variations. (even in their face shape, only, LOL). If you want to see animals that all look similar, but also have lots of different features, you could try and draw birds. There are thousands of different bird species which come in lots of different sizes, shapes, and colors, with variation in each among themselves. Use all of this for nice drawings!

Make sure to also include science in your animal drawings. Draw the animal’s fur, scales, or feathers in correct states of motion and position. When drawing static positions of animals, these will be more visible in their support extremities. When drawing animals in a moving position, these fur, scales, and feathers will have to maintain the real-life motion and not just position static fur, scales, and feathers in strange or unrealistic shapes.

Even if you don’t draw animals as a form of recreational or practice art, consider viewing these images as realistic support for other movements of the body itself.

Before starting a sketch, find the head and recognize that the head style dictates the body (in the majority of animals). Use this as your frame for drawing out the rest of the body, but have fun and guess as you go because eventually you will have to stop and adjust. When drawing out a tail or foot, you will also have to adjust since both are related to the body frame and likely twisting when placed next to it.

The best way to improve your animal drawing is through practice. Remember to keep practicing, and most importantly don't let perfection be the enemy of the practice.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash