Welcome to Animal drawing 101

Learn the art of animal drawing! It’s fun and really important for your career! This is the first course in this series on drawing animals for animation. This online course is part of our 3-year diploma course in character animation and can be taken for degree credit.  In this online course, you will learn the basics of drawing Mammals from life and from a book.

Why learn to draw animals?

So, what is so important about animal drawing?  People love stories with animals in them. For example, Aesop’s fables to Zootopia! They all have fun animals! Firstly you must study the animals from books. Secondly, you study the animals from life. Further, you draw them from your imagination! If you learn to draw animals you will learn to draw anything!

Where should I  do animal drawing?

It would be best to do animal drawings from life. You don’t want to draw exclusively from photos. The pressure of drawing living animals, the stress of never knowing when they will move, even if they are sleeping! You can ask a family member or a friend if you don’t have any pets. A pet store or you can go to a local zoo or even outside to draw wild or feral animals. Animal drawing should always be from life as much as possible!

What do I need to know before drawing animals?

You should have taken some basic drawing classes like still life and figuredrawing. You should also be familiar with various animal drawing books. Be familiar with gestural drawings. In other words, quick sketches! Animals move and you need to capture their movement! However, you can also use photos if you need to.

some of the concepts covered in this course are :

• Mammal construction and comparative anatomy and caricatures.
• sketching Animals from books and photos.
• Drawing animals from life and books
• dogs and action
• cats and repose
• cows and anatomy
• Drawing Rabbits and hares
• gestures and quick sketches
• Mammal construction from memory
• Studying from videos and books