Drawing Animals

Animals combine everything you've learned: simple forms, gesture, anatomy and texture. They also move constantly, which makes them a great teacher of quick observation. And here's a secret: if you can draw a human, you already know a lot about drawing animals.

Start with simple forms

Most animals can be built from a few masses:

• A chest/ribcage mass (often an egg or a bean).
• A hip mass, usually smaller.
• A head (a ball with a box or cone for the snout).
• Legs as tubes, a tail as a flowing line.

Draw the masses lightly, connect them with the line of action of the spine, and refine.

Comparative anatomy

Animals share the same basic skeleton as us, with different proportions. Understanding this demystifies their legs:

• A horse or dog walks on its toes: the "backward knee" on the hind leg is actually its ankle (the heel lifted high). The real knee is high up, near the belly.
• A cat or dog's front leg: the joint that looks like a backward knee is the wrist.
• Birds walk on their toes too; the joint that bends backward is the ankle.

Gesture first

Animals rarely hold still. Use gesture drawing (see gesture): capture the line of the spine from head to tail in one stroke, then the legs. Zoos, parks and pets are perfect for 30-second gestures. When the animal moves, start a new drawing, and come back to the old one if it returns to the pose.

Heads and character

• Herbivores (horses, deer, rabbits) have eyes on the sides of the head, long snouts and large ears.
• Predators (cats, dogs, owls) have forward-facing eyes for depth perception.
• The proportions of head, eyes and snout define the "personality" of an animal. Bigger eyes and a shorter snout read as younger and cuter.

Fur, feathers and scales

Follow the texture lesson: shade the form first, then suggest the texture with marks that follow the direction of growth. Fur flows from the nose backward and down the body; feathers overlap like roof tiles; scales follow the curvature of the form.