When you are darkening the values, switch to a softer lead instead of pressing harder. If you want your image to be shaded more lightly than the reference, just leave out the lightest shading to keep the values “proportionate” to the reference.
You want the shading of the image to be “proportioned” the same as it is in the reference. Now it is time to take those darkest values and make them darker, then lightly shade in the second-darkest values. Do not press with the pencil while doing any of this. Pay attention now to the way light hits the eyes because this is how the animal will look alive. This Boston Terrier is mainly black so there’s a lot of dark value to fill in straight away. Not all of the values, just the darkest ones. Now, very lightly shade in the darkest values. It’s far more difficult to correct mistakes after shading has begun. Once again, don’t continue until the lines are correct. Keep these lines faint, especially the lines indicating where the fur changes colour, and don’t make them too precise either because fur isn’t really precise. When the overall proportions are measured properly, you can begin to include faint lines for other details, like the different colours on the animal, as well as bone landmarks (on this Boston Terrier there is a prominent bone above each eye that indicates the shape of the head really well). When you do the first part of the drawing, whether you are doing the geometric shapes or the plain lines, be sure to measure carefully.ĭon’t press hard with the pencil, and don’t continue until the measurements are correct. If you are a beginner, I recommend doing some studies of just the geometric shapes to learn anatomy. I can do this shortcut because I have practised enough. Oftentimes people will begin a drawing with structural forms like spheres and rectangles to visualize the dimensionality, but for me, it is more intuitive to just do a line drawing. The thing to remember about animals is that underneath the fur and the colour patterns, there is a structure of bones and muscles just like on a human (although the bones and muscles are going to be different). Read until the end for extra notes about stylizing your animals, and drawing fur! This article provides examples and directions for how you might draw a dog realistically so that you can apply the principles to other projects. However, the rules of anatomy still apply when drawing animals, and there are some additional things to keep in mind too, such as the texture of fur and the different shapes of animals’ eyes. Many animals are a bit more forgiving to draw than humans are because our psychology picks up on more errors in a drawing of a human than of anything else. Drawing animals can be wonderfully relaxing, and provide you with something adorable to hang on your wall.