TUTORIAL // drawing animals (Patreon)

It’s time for this month’s tutorial: drawing animals! This is of course a very broad subject so I focused mainly on the challenges that I experience when drawing animals. Topics covered in this tutorial include: 

• analyzing the reference image to see what the most important shapes are 

• construction: going from the rough sketch to more detailed lines, and solving issues with the likeness throughout the process

• what to focus on: which details make the animal more believable and identifiable 

• how to break up the basic shapes into smaller segments to get a sense of volume

• making animals with really simple shapes still look interesting

• capturing gesture & exaggerating for extra movement

• using fur patterns, whiskers, paws etc to enhance the form & recognizability of the animal sketch 

• rendering with a focus on enhancing the volumes 

I draw a lion, wolf, guinea fowl, and red panda! But I talk about how these principles can be applied to basically any animal. It ended up being quite long, so sorry about that! Let me know if you have any questions after watching it, and as always, hope you enjoy!