Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer

6th Grader Drawing of Animal

  • Lesson Details
  • Transcript
  • References

How do you begin to draw something you don't know anything about? Start with what you know: humans, then apes. In this introductory lesson to Drawing Animals, Glenn will teach you how to observe the visual qualities of an animal based on differences in bone structure analysis, scale, and their diet. He draws a variety of animals from reference to illustrate his points, and finishes by doing gestural drawings of mice from life. The last chapter is a timed assignment for you to practice what you've learned. Premium members have hi-res downloads of the same references that Glenn uses, plus others.

Glenn's approach to drawing animals is similar to his approach to figure drawing-– start with the gesture, then construct and use light to describe form and accentuate movement.

Instead of copying what you see, you will learn the skills necessary to draw animals from imagination. Glenn will start with Comparative Anatomy between humans and animals, and then break down specifics of animal anatomy. Specifics such as knowing what an animal eats and its place in the food chain can be discovered by analyzing its anatomy and structure.

By taking this structural point of view, you will be able to draw any animal from your imagination. This is beneficial to all artists, whether their interest is in Fine Art, Animation, Comics or other fields.

Beginner Friendly

14710 views

85 likes

Choose one video.

I originally started teaching animal drawing, oh, fifty years ago.
How do you draw something
that you don't know anything about?
I'm Glenn Vilppu ,
I approach animal drawing differently.
I teach animal drawing
from a structural point of view so that you can draw animals
from imagination.

I'm Glenn Vilppu. Today, right now,
animal drawing. Now let me give you a little background
on how I approach animal drawing and how I started teaching
animal drawing. I've been doing that for - I've been teaching animal drawing
for probably close to 50 years. Okay.
The first time I started teaching animal drawing
was not to teach animal drawing.
It was really on how to take and draw something
that you didn't know anything about and so
that was the beginning point. And
it's all based on analyzing what it is that you're
drawing, just like my figure drawing class. In fact, you're -
those of you that have been in my figure classes, this will all seem very, very
familiar. Okay so the idea was to take
and analyze what you were looking at. Okay now how do you
go about doing this because you don't know anything about the thing that you're drawing.
Okay, you start with something that you do know.
Or hopefully what we're focusing on
then, we're starting with - we'll take an example now, we're gonna take -
what do we know is us?
The humans. Okay so if we start out with the basic
elements that are common to all
people. Okay let's take and start with basically the skull.

Okay let's take and start with basically the skull.
Okay this
you need to know to start with. Now everybody
has two eyes, a nose, a mouth, you have the ears
that would be sticking in here. We're all pretty much the same. So
these are the basic elements that we start with. Okay so normally we take
and go through this and
so the starting point is first -
and I'm gonna do a profile here to begin.
Okay. Now here's our basic
human. We start out with something like that. The eyes are
in the center. We got the brow line here,
we go a cheekbone, the nose sticks out.
The mouth in here, chin.
The jaw coming back. Everybody's
ear is in pretty much the same thing. We have the zygomatic arch, which comes back
here. We can feel the corner of the eye socket is here.
Coming back we have a nuclear ridge in the
back of our head and the neck then taking and
coming down. Okay. That's - and we pull from that
into the ribcage. That's the beginning.
Now everybody
has - now let's just take and draw this again from
the front view.
Okay, eyes are in the center. We got
the corners of the eye socket through
cheekbone here.
The ear pretty much lines up here.
The plane going across here. Bottom of the nose.
Down,
jaw coming down. Okay.
Then the pit of the neck, going down.
Eyes. Okay.
This is pretty much a standard. Now, what if we take -
and let's start with this again and I'll draw a little bit lighter
and we'll start to modify and we'll draw this sort of three quarter view now.
(drawing)
Corners of the eye socket.
Brow line.
Eyes going down, corners of the cheek,
jaw,
add this plane, mouth, nose.
And here mouth coming out.
Okay got the
zygomatic arch, got this line coming through.
Pit of the neck down here.
Now okay
what if I take - let's take and
just remove the top part
of the head and go back
here and I'm beefing up the brow line a little bit.
Coming down, we still got the cheekbones, coming through,
now what are the elements that we take
and deal with is scale
of animals and what - who
are predators and who are gonna get eaten. Okay so
basically we're a predator. Our eyes
are straight forward. Now we eat fairly soft
food. But if you take a chimpanzee or a gorilla,
their eaters of a lot of very rough food
and they're jaws are much stronger so if we take
already here as I removed sort of, in a sense, the brain here,
but now if I pull out the mouth
through here and we got the teeth
in here, the nose is still in the same place,
Okay so the minute I start to do that
this starts to become pretty much
a chimpanzee.
Okay so - but now we have to deal with
scale. Okay. The bigger
the animal is, the heavier it is,
the more muscles they have to have to take and
deal with this but the fundamental elements are pretty much the
same. There's not that much difference
really between say a mouse and a horse
or a dog, something like that. They're all - we all have the same - all
mammals have the same basic elements. So now if I take
and say well okay what about a gorilla. Well if you take a profile
of a gorilla, in other words I'll go back to what I've just drawn here, we've got
all I've done here now is taken this
and pulled out
this teeth, the nose is
still in the same place, and I lopped off the top.
So there you basically you've got
a chimpanzee.
And now if we have a gorilla, a gorilla's got this
huge head. Let me show you.
This is a gorilla.
Look at this head. Look at this
scale that we're talking about here.
Heavy. What you see here is we have this
big flat area across the back of the head.
Now that's needed to take and hold up this
massive head that we're working with. So you've got this large
volume that we're looking at. So this
thing. But you notice the brow, the mouth, cheekbones, where the ear
is and right here, let me
put some of this down. The ear is right there. Same thing.
End of the zygomatic arch. So as we take the forms
as I take this and add
this and we start to come in,
so now we've got basically a gorilla,
big muscles taking and coming down, heavy head.
But all of the basic elements are in the same
place. Nose, mouth, eyes.
All we have is difference.
That's all there is. You look to see the difference. And so
it becomes an analysis. So once you know the human head
you pretty much know a gorilla head
with slight variations. Okay
and those slight variations of course can be rather dramatic
as we're taking and working with these things. But here it's a matter of
scale. In other words if I take
here this is a cat.
Cat skull. Okay.
This is a tiger skull.
They're the same - they're basically they're the same thing.
There's not that much difference other than size.
It's the size that takes and makes the difference.
But house cat's a predator -
well obviously he's a predator. Or this is a tiger actually.
But you can see the tiger now, like the gorilla
has to have an extra extension,
this plate back here, to take and hold up
this massive head.
Okay but the eyes - the cat's obviously a predator.
Now, there are differences. We come through these things
so this is one of the big differences to start with
as we're talking about what do they eat.
Chimpanzee, gorilla, rough food.
Cats they eat - predators,
just like us. So there are differences
but the eyes, the nose, the mouth, things, are all pretty much the same,
Now but when you move away from
the predator type, which
I'm talking about who the predator is eating, who are they chasing?
Then we change the basic
anatomy but the parts are all in the same place.
So as we take and go from that now we take
a good example here would be
let's take this. It's a mountain goat.
Sheep, goats, all pretty much the
same. Okay. But you notice that they eyes
are on the side this way.
Okay, so what we get then is we start
out with the same basic configuration. And as we start
out we usually - this is the same thing. Now, you're gonna
find as I'm doing the drawing of these animals, I'm
gonna be doing a lot of stuff that's gonna look very, very
familiar in terms of animation drawing.
We take and do a lot of what you do - and I did this in the figure -
we take and we construct the figure.
We construct the animal as we're going through doing the drawing
but we construct it in a logical way.
As we go through this you're gonna see we're not all that different.
Now these guys are from here or to a goat
or to a rabbit, pretty much have a lot
of similarities. Okay. But here we can see now that we have
as I'm taking here. Instead of the eyes being in front like this,
we have now the eyes are more onto the
side. So we got through this shape
the eyes are on the side here now. And we go back,
pull in through here. Now you're gonna find - but also
what do they eat. A sheep take
and eat - they're browsers.
They're picking stuff off the ground. So
notice that there's no teeth up here. He's taking
and he takes and he's a nipper. The bottom teeth they come up,
they're nipping off the bottom in here. So this is a basic
part of it now and so the differences of what they eat,
scale, but eyes are in the same place,
nose is in the same place, zygomatic
arch is in the same place, the ear is in the same place,
so all of the basic stuff, same spot.
And this is what you need to take and now then we start to look at
the differences. So as I'm drawing this I'm gonna come through and I say
well alright, come out here, here.
And the nose, the nose would be in the same spot.
No different than the horse, same thing.
Coming through the mouth. Jaw is gonna come down underneath.
The zygomatic arch is taking and pulling
around through into here. The ear will be
right here. So we constantly
are taking and looking at these basic elements
This is the starting point. Now you start talking about
teeth. How they take and relate to each other. They can take
and look at
well while I've got it here- okay this is another,
this is a sheep.
Look at the teeth again. Very similar to
this,
big difference between the two here, this has got more of a rounded
face coming across through here. Okay.
Eyes are way to the side, zygomatic arch, teeth.
Now you notice the teeth. The teeth they don't - they're
grinders. They grind the grain, eating stuff off the ground.
Okay. Now that's where
our friend the cat takes and comes in
to play. As you look at this now,
look at the teeth that we're looking at. Okay.
(fixing)
Now, one thing a lot of people don't realize. Cats
can't chew. These teeth,
the stuff goes just like that. There's no
side movement to it. It's a stab
and slice is what it is.
So what they eat then is important. But your
house cat is exactly the same. House cat, they don't chew,
they squash. They capture,
they puncture. Okay. Still looking
forward, you can see the eyes are facing forward. Zygomatic arch,
got this huge space in here because the muscles now that come through
are locking into the jaw, they have to be really
big muscles because this guy is taking and opening his mouth
like that to take and grab something. Okay. So this
is your basic Siberian tiger.
Okay, now if we go back to our
gorilla. Okay gorillas can chew.
But they can also stab, they can also nip
We've got all of these basic elements. We're talking about scale,
we're talking about the stuff. Now if we take and go from
the cat to say, a rodent,
now you're looking. Look at those teeth.
Okay. What you got, the teeth
are now taking and for gnawing.
Okay the eyes sort of combination.
Pretty much looking to the side though.
Okay so we're gonna be looking at some mice a little bit later on we're gonna be taking
and drawing mice and a hamster. Okay you can see
that this is the way it goes but they can open up the really
but the eyes are still in the same place, nose is still in the same place,
teeth are in the same place, jaw goes back to
the same point right in front of the ear.
So we're all the same thing.
And this carries through so now we can take and
you look from here to this.
Now we have a cat,
little white jaw is a cat and I think - I'm not sure what this was
but this is another little bit larger,
sharp teeth, nipper, just like the
cat. So the similarities
pretty much the same. And so I'm looking at the skulls -
maybe one's a little bit longer, one's a little bit forward,
not that much difference. Now some of the animals do have
rather different looking skulls. Okay now
here this is a domestic pig.
When I got this pig it
was on a platter with - that somebody had just
butchered it and brought the thing to me, the head was on
a platter and I had to take and clean it. But you look at
the shape now, the skull. It's very different.
Okay but what you see, the eyes are in the same place, nose
in the same place, teeth, the zygomatic arch.
Now the eyes, a little bit more but still they're on the side but they tend to
look forward a little bit. Pigs can be predators
okay. So now what we can find that are the teeth,
now this might be of interest. Now when I got this
and I was cleaning it unfortunately it got dropped someplace
along the line and got broken but you can look at the thickness. Look at the thickness
of the skull in here.
Really thick. Again so we have all these basic
things that are similar that we do
and similarity goes to a lot of different points/
For instance okay we started out with the idea of a sphere
but when you start dealing with the other animals like the deer
even the pig, goats
what we see that is pretty much a variations on a triangle.
(drawing)
They become this type of a basic shape
with the eyes in here.
The nose coming through.
Now the jaw, coming down,
and what we find then is that this triangle - now this could be -
we're talking about giraffe,
horse, goats, sheep,
they're all variations on this triangle.
And so the slightly difference is some are taken a little bit
broader. We start to look at the similarities of
shape then. And to see how these
variations play, one into another. So these are the steps
now. As we go through the figure then, as we go through the animals,
we're constantly taking and breaking it down
into its components. And so
here we need to take and let's get a clean piece of paper here
and we'll take and okay now, as we go back to
what we know, these are all ourself. Let's take and
start - the idea of the ribcage. Well now here's
where we get really big differences between the ribcage.
Know that we're very broad, we have this
clavicles that take and come around. So we have this broad shape
that's coming through here. So let's take and compare
a little bit here.
Now, as I'm taking and thinking okay if I look at a cross section of our
ribcage, what we see is something like this.
(drawing0
We're broad
and our scapulas
are on the side and they're going back
this way. They're on the back, sort of this back and side type thing.
Okay so the scapulas are back here, this way.
Okay now, as we start going through
all of the mammals, what we're going to see is a very clear distinction here.
Like we take a horse or a cat, what you're gonna see
instead of this, the ribcage is taking
and doing this.
It's rather narrow,
rather than wide. What that does is the
scapulas that we have on the back here
now take and come forward.
into here. Okay so what we think of
as the shoulders, not actually become in front.
Okay so now I'm gonna take and we're gonna go through
sort of the generic
four legged mammal idea. So
we start with - and this is - it follows
a basic pattern of the human. In other words if I take and do
a simple diagram of a human
(drawing)
or primates okay, we have the head, neck,
ribcage,
going down.
Pelvis, through here,
the legs coming out and we're going down to the knees
and so forth. We have these very clearcut sections.
Clavicles come from here, go out this way,
leave that way. Arms come down, elbows
wrist, okay. Notice I'm
taking and putting spots
to where the joints are. This is going to become a very, very critical part of
what we do. Okay so now as I'm taking and sort of the
generic animal here is that we start with okay
the head. And I'll give it even a
sort of triangular shape here. Feel the neck
coming in. The ribcage.
Now this is a
part that most people tend to not be
conscious of, even in the regular figure drawing classes. That the ribcage
is very, very small up at the top.
This is tiny, tiny. Tiny, tiny, tiny shape up here.
That's true for all of the animals now. Our ribcage is very
small at the top, well with dogs, cats,
horses, we all are the same. The spine now takes and comes through
and goes through to here.
So we have our ribcage, we have our
separate parts. We got the same elements here except now the
scapulas are taking
and are on the side, coming through this way.
And then elbow coming down,
coming down through the wrist and into all
the phalanges. Okay now the pelvis,
now here's where we get some differences. But not for all the
animals now. A lot of the larger animals have similar
kind of pelvises that we do. Notice that this is very broad across
here. Well we start looking at some of the animals now
what we find - let me find my
pieces of pelvis here. Okay, the pelvis
of most of your animals, cats, dogs,
horses, not horses so much, but
your felines and stuff, it's very narrow. This is a
half of a pelvis here.
Okay, so this is a corner. Let me take and draw what I'm trying to say.
This is a - this would be for a goat
or actually I take this back, this is probably a dog,
it's a piece came through. But you can see that it's rather
long this way. I'm gonna take and
just diagram this pelvis as -
our pelvis is
broad this way. Profile.
Pubic arch here, ischial tuberosity is here.
Trochanter would be.
Tail coming down into here,
end of the iliac crest, and then the leg.
Okay, that's us. Now if you take a cat
or even a rabbit here,
we have a rabbit.
As you look at this, what you see is the
pelvis is long and narrow this way.
So the difference then here, as you can see,
this is like a line that goes down this way.
So
let me see if I can put this back. Okay. So what I'm
showing you here is this rail
is one half of the pelvis but it's long so if I take
and modify ours here, what we get is like
this
to that.
If we take and diagram this three dimensionally then, what we see
and I take and we're looking for - these are like two different
rails that are taking and going back this way
with the spine, the tail coming
out of up here, trochanter here,
the ischial tuberosity would be in here and then we're going down,
the knee, ankle,
and start moving down. Now
cats and dogs, pretty much the same. Same as this rabbit pretty much.
Okay the difference between say a cat
and a dog is that a cat's pelvis
is parallel this way. These are
points are equal. Tail coming out of here.
A dog is just the opposite, a dog's pelvis
is wider at the back than it is at the front.
Okay so what we're talking about now is we're
talking about the spine that's coming through, going in here,
pelvis that is on an angle, coming across through here
this way. And then we're taking and coming down.
Notice
that the shape here, this area here, this
is roughly a square.
That you will find is true for most
four legged animals. Dachshunds of course have been bred to be something else
and so have some of the other animals. But that's very typical.
Okay so we tend to start looking for the same
elements within the drawing then. Okay.
Let's take and get another clean sheet of paper here.
Okay now I'm gonna draw this
generic animal here, a couple of them sorry. About three quarters.
So now I'm gonna start out with this head
coming through, the eyes going across,
(drawing)
through. The muzzle, shape
coming through. Cheekbones going back.
Through. Nose is gonna be in the same place.
Ears in the same spot.
Okay now think of the neck going back in.
And what we're doing now is we're taking and saying
okay the neck is fitting into this
ribcage, which is this volume
that takes and is going back in.
Coming through.
The ribcage, where the spine continues on, going back,
and now we come to the pelvis.
Here, pelvis now is these rails that are
going back through here with the tail
coming up here. Now in the front,
we take the scapula now are taking and coming forward
this way.
Now there's a difference
in the scapulas because of the fact that
it's in front and they don't have a clavicle
to hold them apart. Okay so the shape
of the scapula is different. Here
ours is the sort of a triangular shape, one side of it being
so much larger than the other side. But what we find
here now is the scapulas for most of the animals now
you will find that the two sides
will be pretty much the same. Also they don't have
a point for where the clavicle
would be attaching. Okay so what this does now
this creates a corner in the front.
Now the neck now, if we take into consideration
all - the esophagus
and muscles and stuff, this is essentially a cylinder
now that is feeding into this
triangle of a box. Now what you will see as we
go through in drawing the animals, this becomes
very clearly a box.
Generally we were able to see the scapulas sticking up from
the back. The humerus as it goes down,
the upper arm
it helps to make us see this sort of a box type
shape. So now we have a ribcage
that's taking and coming down. They have a sternum
just like we do through the neck, okay
coming through. This is a rounded form. Coming
around through here.
Okay now the waist, this is a different point now.
Where you look at our waist, okay, you can see
that these bones are taking and are pretty much -
are pretty much parallel. Okay this is from a
a sheep. Notice how this thing sticks out.
Okay, each part of the
spine has
specialized bones. The neck is different
from the thorax to the lumbar to the sacrum.
They're all different. Okay now at the waist
these bones stick out, showing more
like this on the side.
So we get a very flat area
across here, which really creates a waist
within the form. And then we feel the
corners of the pelvis where it's actually sticking out at that point.
So now if I diagram what we've done
so far. Head -
and I'll actually put a spout on this thing, ears,
will be to the side. We have a neck.
We have a ribcage, it's narrow in the front,
broader as we go back,
we have a waist
and then we have the pelvis,
which is again in box form. So now you've got this
schematic. You can see these are the elements. The scapula,
then we'll be taking and fitting in here and here on the side going
forward. This way. So now
these become the basic elements that we're constantly
looking for when we're doing the drawing.
This is the pattern
that the bones go. As
artists, you have to know - and if you're gonna start painting
or illustrating or animating - you have to know
where all the parts are. Just like here.
You've got to know now this relates to that to that
to that. You've never think about drawing the human
without knowing where the elbow was or the shoulder or the wrist.
We have to take and deal with this. Now
one of the basic characteristics is that in four
legged animals, it's a pattern again. It's really
a pattern. We have a diagonal here.
Now this is true to almost
all of the animals with some exceptions. Okay.
The first big exception is an element. Elephant's
clavicles are not on a diagonal, they're vertical.
Okay but here what we find is we go from here
to here to here to here.
It's a zigzag pattern.
It's this. Each of these points
you think about as being a hinge. They can take and move
just like us. We have these like hinges that
they can take and move. So we focus on
following the pattern of how these forms take
and then go.
It's a pattern, pattern, pattern.
And so you need to know how this pattern takes
and works. Okay so this is the beginning. This is the
beginning thing. Now whether it's this rabbit,
see the rabbit's got the same exact
thing. Scapulas going to the side, coming down to the
elbow, to the wrist, into the fingers.
Leg, coming down, has a patella just like we do,
come down to the heel, ankle, and then down into the toes.
The ribcage, narrow in front, gets broader as it goes
back. Notice that the spine now
has these things that are going out to the side, just like what we're
talking about here. The rail of
this pelvis is the same. On this one they've got the tail
sort of folded back on it here. But this is
all part of the same basic configuration.
It's the same thing. See so we take and
you looking for all of this. See when you look at this
up here like that, very familiar. Very familiar.
So these are the shapes, these are the shapes that we take and deal with
and look at. And we're constantly trying to see the difference
from one to the other. Okay now some of the
differences that we come into and I'll take and
as we start working I'll be showing you more skeletons and stuff
online, that we take and we build with this stuff. So you're
constantly taking and looking at the sort of the basic pattern
so no matter where you're taking and looking from,
whether you're looking at it from the back - now here is
a strong similarity between drawing the figure and drawing the animal.
The first thing you do is the gesture.
The movement of the animal. Now one thing I want to point out
if you go out and get your own cat, your own dog,
look at horses, you go to the zoo, you're drawing
animals, they're not gonna sit still for you unless they're sleeping. And then
they're no fun to draw. Okay so what they're gonna do, they
will be constantly moving. And so what you do
is you do many drawings and you will find
that the animals will tend to cycle through the same basic
poses as we start going through. Okay so the first step
then is just taking and feeling
the flow of what the animal is doing.
And as I'm drawing I'm thinking of
the pattern that the animal takes.
Where the scapulas are, which way it's turning,
looking up and through. I'm constantly taking
and just drawing the flow
of - it's like when I first started working
in animation, knew nothing about animation.
I was 40 years old but I had been teaching animal drawing for quite a while already.
And so when I had to start taking and drawing
characters, animals, we draw animals
as often as people in animation, that it was just very
natural. There was no big difference from what I was doing. So we just
took and we started to build with this. So now as I come through, I'm taking
into consideration these different parts. We got the head,
now I've got this animal taking and turning. So I'm thinking of where the eyes
which way are they going? Muzzle is going up that way,
the neck is pivoting. I think of the ribcage, so now as I'm drawing
this ribcage I'm going around, coming through,
scapula - like okay where is the scapula?
Well the scapula is taking and coming up, it'll be in here.
Coming back from the scapula to the elbow, to the wrist,
I look for the waist, coming through, and then I'm conscious of
a box that's being created by the pelvis
itself. So I've got all of these elements
now that I'm taking and constantly taking and working with. The tail,
where the tail would be coming out of here, where the leg is
going back in and coming back out and how
we start to take and work with this. So this is the beginning stages
of everything that we do. It's first, you take
and get the gesture, feel the
flow. Taking and
as I'm doing that I'm consciously, right away, you can see in the zigzag
as I'm coming through,
nothing fussy, nothing just feeling the flow
as you're coming through.
And you build on that.

Do some drawing from some more stuff. Okay
now what we have here is
a running cat. Cheetah I guess it is.
Now so I'm gonna go through this several times
and then we're gonna look at one that's a stuffed one
and talk and relate and things. So the first thing
that we go through - and this is the basic procedure
that we follow when we're doing the drawing
and we take and
through. I'm taking and
basically hitting the points that
we have in common.
Coming through and you look at the mice
you're gonna see - we're gonna be drawing some mice - and you're gonna see
I'm doing precisely the same thing.
Notice I'm drawing very lightly
and that's giving me a chance to take and adjust
so there's no difference between what I'm doing with this
and what I'm gonna be doing drawing a human. Now
scapula - again it's coming up.
Comes forward,
thinking of the big pattern, thinking of going across,
okay and I'm dealing with the
pattern of how
the limbs go.
It's feeling the pattern.
As we take and go through. And we can see
the hind quarters coming out.
(drawing)
Draw through. We're drawing right through
and I do this
even when I like I'm looking at the real
animal. I draw through it as if it were made of glass.
So now let's take and break it down
into the elements a bit more. So now first we're seeing
corners of the eye socket.
Same thing as humans now. And I'm gonna draw the shape
And one thing that we don't do on humans so much
that what I do when I'm drawing animals is I go to
the back of the skull and try to hit the
point - on the horse we call this the pole.
Okay. Now we feel some of the
differences, like the eye sockets, don't necessary always attach.
There will be things - the nose
is looking and coming out, see the shape.
Coming through. Now note the cheekbones
are really wide. We saw this when we were looking at the tiger.
Because they need to have a place for all those big
muscles to take and come down and through, to attaching to the
jaw. Okay so all of this is coming around, it's all
the same. We're coming through
and now feel the neck
coming down and fitting in
coming through.
Now I'm blocking this in. I'm gonna wanna come back and modify
this into a simpler
breakdown that we deal with more when we're
actually drawing. So here we're seeing all the pieces
coming through.
Notice the ribcage is pretty small in front. Coming around.
Now the whole big pattern
of the scapula, it's really
big, round shape. And notice
that the spine is in the center, in contrast to ours.
Okay. Coming through.
And pick it up on the other side. Now, particularly
with cats, when they're moving around you can see that very, very, very clearly.
You can see the whole point.
Now as we go along later, I'm gonna take
and just gonna bring this up so I can see the foot a little bit
better. As we come through
it's coming down
one of the things that I'm talking about, the actual
movement of how the animals move, how the pattern of the legs
move. I would suggest that you get a book,
the whole series of books, but basically by
Muybridge. Muybridge was the
standard that was used by everybody for
taking and looking at animals.
And so that's the really
the thing that we work with. So we're coming through
Okay now see I'm taking
constantly thinking in this pattern. Remember
this is a Z pattern
and it's always this angle.
Even when we do the stretches it out
it's still gonna be like you're gonna have the Z in there.
Each of these points now is like a hinge that you're
working from. Okay now you can see the pelvis,
corner of the pelvis is up here, going back
here. Okay, the other side we're not seeing it
in this view. Then we've got going cross from here,
coming forward, down, and then we're going
through here and then paws coming out with claws.
And then the tail by taking and moving
out from that. Okay so that's
element to start with. Now
what we wanna take that that I've drawn here now so
then we start to visualize this as
a cylinder
that is taking and going down.
And it's fitting into this box that's been created
by
the scapula fitting over.
Then the arms going
back. Now here is where - okay you think of the
muscles here. We've got this
shape coming down. Okay, one of the
points that allows the
animals to have is a better leverage system than we do.
For instance if we take and come on back, in other words if I was drawing
my elbow you would see
that the end of the elbow is right here.
Then we go down to the wrist down here.
Well if you look at the cat here, what you can see is that the end of the elbow
is actually extended this far.
Okay the muscles then are attaching
here. But that's a big advantage because here's where the pivot point is right here.
So you have a big advantage.
So if the muscle was taking and going from here, up and
attaching to the scapula, okay
the muscles coming off of the scapula or taking and attaching
farther down so again that gives them a double advantage so
what we see then is these muscles now are pulled down
into here. We feel the shape in here you get this
pulling out. And so
there's where we start to see the actual shape of the animal.
They have the trapezius muscles just like we do. They come off, we can
feel the shapes in here. Now one of the things
that I haven't mentioned it. As we were looking at the things and if we look at some
of the other skeletons it will become more obvious - is that the
spinal column - ours barely stick, we have
the seventh cervical vertebrae at the back of our neck sticks out but
most stuff doesn't stick out very much. But we look at the animals,
their vertebrae will stick out in varying degrees. Their vertebrae will stick out in varying degree
depending on how big the head is, where things
have to connect. So what we see then is a building
up in here like this that the tendons then are
taking and pulling through. So again this is
something I'll talk about this more later. But then
the waist goes in, the pelvis
now sticks out.
Coming through. The muscles are pulling off of the scapula - off the
pelvis, down to the leg. We feel
a pull is stretching down, coming through,
the muscles are coming through, they're building
so in other words the minute you start to take and fill in
where the muscles actually go we can start to see
more clearly what we're dealing with. So let's take into
and look at the animal here now. It's not exactly the same
pose but very close to it. The big difference is its head down
and things so there's some variation in this.
Now let's go through this. I'll take and approach this as if
I was taking and doing it and we'll break it down even more.
We see now, coming through,
the head going across. Now
even as you're drawing from photographs,
take and do the construction,
do not just copy the photograph.
Take and bring knowledge to it
that you're taking and working with. So coming through
you're taking and feeling
the flow. Feeling the flow as we go through.
(drawing)
I would prefer a certain level of inaccuracy but with movement
and a sense of the action over to
what we consider a perfect drawing.
(drawing)
Now as we go through the -
listen so I'm gonna be also bringing out
how the various different legs, how
the fingers, claws that take
and work with each other.
So now you can see I'm taking across,
you're going through.
Now
from here I'm
taking and adding to it. Now what I do
is just think of the structure. So
coming through, going over,
we can feel the skull. Feel
the cheekbone coming out, we
follow that back, the ear is coming through.
We can feel the base
of the skull in the back.
Little bit larger
on the other side. Coming through.
Now
this is a question that I always bring up in class,
I have yet to have anybody
that actually knew the answer but it's so obvious
it's funny, the question that I always
ask is what's the difference between a dog's nose
and a cat's nose? I have
never had anybody who actually knew it
who have cats and dogs and have all kinds of animals. If you don't,
you don't look at the things very much.
And here I think I'm coming down and drawing the chin. The big difference between a
dog's nose and a cat's nose - okay here
let's say we have dog.
(drawing)
I'm drawing the cat already. Okay but the
dog, the dog doesn't have any hair on the end of its nose.
Cats have fur
on the top of their nose. That's a very big difference.
But if you don't look, you're not
really conscious of it. So these are really taking and talking about
being very, very conscious of the shape of
things that we're looking at. Now, as I'm drawing this
I'm going back now and I'm taking and coming through and thinking
of the cylinder of the neck
as it's fitting into the thing.
Now
if you see this you can see the corner of the shoulder
sticking out. And the other side,
a little difficult, a little dark, but the same thing, coming across
and then what we see in the center here, this is the
sternum coming down and they have the pectoralis
muscles pulling across. Okay the scapula
now is taking and pulling back and is the shape
in here. Okay it's picking up on the other side also.
So these are the basic elements now
that we're looking for. And so this is - you can look at this you can
see that there's actually a
platform, there's a change in the direction of the top as it comes down.
As I was drawing these muscles here you can see that the muscles now are coming down
feel the elbow coming out,
now we're pulling down
to here, coming through, thinking of where the joint is
in contrast to where the elbow is.
Coming down and into the paw.
We have the same thing in our hands. We have
the carpal bones, two rows of bones.
Well they have exactly the same thing. And like I said, as we go through this
farther will be taking and bringing out these
similarities even more.
So we take and we build now. Here I was talking about the
trapezius, taking and pulling down. You can feel
the muscles taking and going down, the spine is going through.
You can see this platform, this
shape, the way those trapezius muscles take and come off of the scapula.
Then the roundness
of the ribcage, the corner of - you can feel
this volume as we start coming through.
And as this lifts up, now at this point
the pulling back we can feel the waist
in here, pushing down
and then the corner, the corner of the
pelvis as it's sticking out at that point.
Okay that pelvis is going back, the ischial tuberosity would be back
here. The muscles though are coming off of the
skeleton, the bone is coming out of here. You come forward
we can see at this point where we're at.
That bone - they have a patella just like us.
Okay, coming through, and then the muscles are
taking and stretching out. These are your thigh muscles,
the pull, your vastus
rectus femoris and we can feel in here the wrinkles,
the compression that's taking place. So all I am
doing is now as I'm going through this is I'm taking and
hitting these points. We can feel the
bone coming through, we can feel the tendon now
coming back and so it'd be the Achilles tendon as this is
stretching back and pulling through. So
we're getting all of the same
configuration, anatomical configuration that we do
in us. Now coming down
and later on we'll talk about the differences between the
paws. The fingers. Similarities but they're
are actually some pretty strategic differences
that give them new
capabilities. Okay
so now I'm just gonna take and
break this down a little bit more so we can see
a little more clearly. Let's take and
I wanna take and make a real emphasis now to see
that this is the neck.
This is a cylinder.
We wanna see this as a clear
cylinder that is fitting in.
See this in here now we get the -
so this is a box form on the side now.
Okay so you can see the differences now.
So you wanna keep in mind that you got this real corner here,
got this, this is coming down and fitting in
and we feel the scapula of the spine, coming up
through, we feel the scapula on the other side, and we've got the
trapezius. And these shapes are going down. There's a corner here.
And so we take and feel these forms
then as we go back in. This paper doesn't work too well
with water. Okay.
So that starts getting to the point. And so you can start to visualize
getting and going back over this
planes of the eye socket. Nose is
coming down to the side, we can feel the cheekbone coming down,
pulling through. See how I'm just walking this in
as a series of box forms that we
would be exactly the same considerations that we're
dealing with as a human. Now here in the waste, you wanna
be conscious of the fact that his is
coming down, there is a waist that is coming down through here.
But not all horses, or not all animals have
very much of a waist. Like for instance in horses, they really don't have a waist.
Horses can't bend at the waist.
So we can see how we're building this thing up.
So let's look at some of the other elements here.
Okay now here we have, this is a running
dog. Or more likely a wolf.
And so as we look at this now,
same configuration. Start out
taking and - let's see
we start out with the
head.
Through,,
again we're just blocking in very, very
simple, feel the neck coming through,
pull into the ribcage, feeling the spine
going back. And so as
I draw this I would be going right around, feeling over the
around the surface. Thinking - now one of the things that you notice now
if you look at that photograph - is that
we have the vertebrae are
sticking up in here.
So this is - we don't see that on the cat.
See this is really much more of a
prominent play of this. And as we come through
you can see the spine as it's funneling in. The ribcage again
is really narrow up here, is really tiny.
Through in here. Then it expands
dramatically as we go back down
in.
Coming through, building around,
spine's going back and then again pretty long
waisted here. And then we get the pelvis, back here.
Going back in. So we're thinking corners. So
we come across, we're visualizing
where the corner's at here. Feel
the scapula coming across, it's in front,
it's this big paddle. Now things like the horses for instance
they have the very similar look except
they actually have an extension. Cartilage across
the end of there that takes and makes it even stronger.
Then we're coming down, pull,
feel the way you get the
shape right through here. Coming across, pull
through.
Pelvis coming out of here
or the leg I should say. Now the trochanter sticking out
and we're going back, following the pattern,
we feel the heel. So it's very different, talking about
a cat and a dog essentially. Not much difference. Pretty much
the same. So we need to take and be
very, very conscious of how these parts
take and work with each other. And they start to -
I guess I coulda
given myself a little bit more room here. But that's the idea.
So you take - and then if I was to start filling this out I can see
what I draw. Starting coming through, we start to build
on top of that we start to see where the
corners are, we start to fill in the muscles
they take and they build. You think of the waist. Now there's a
difference here now when you start talking about
cats and dogs and I'm just reminding this
of the waist. When you look at a cat,
the profile of a cat,
(drawing)
tends to be -
(drawing)
the belly, the ribcage is here, but they're
stomach tends to be really long. Like in here,
their waist, pelvis is here, and we can start to see that this
coming down.
Okay now most dogs,
unless they're way overfed,
this doesn't fill in.
This doesn't fill in here so what you see then here
is with a dog we get the line lifting
up this way. Now that's
seen more typical, that's the more typical contour
that we take and deal with. So you're seeing this
coming through. Where the cat will tend to be a little bit more horizontal.
Also some other differences, as we were talking a bit about
the skeletons going on. Cats have a much more
flexible skeleton. The cartilage
in between is way more flexible. Dogs
are much more rigid. It's very easy to throw a cat over your shoulder
or around your neck. Dogs don't work quite that well.
So they're big shapes, differences here
that's more where the dog will tend to be - pull up
and we start to see here
stretching back. Now again,
good mechanical advantage when it comes to
the back or the legs
shoulders, head, like this guy was a wolf
and so we're pulling through. The ears,
same place.
Nose is in the same spot.
(drawing)
And the jaw. You can see as I start to fill in
the elements, the way the
muscles take and then go, it takes on
the look that we're used to seeing.
That's a beginning. Okay let's
take and go from there.

This one takes and gives us a whole new
sense of what we're talking about. But all the same basic stuff.
So starting out - ah let's take
and
okay all the same stuff now. Got the head.
(drawing)
Feel the neck coming in, feel
the flow of the spine. At the same time
now we're taking and taking in the ribcage,
coming through. Now one of the
points that I'm bringing this up right now to show
the contrast. Now this is a buffalo.
Look at the great sail
up there. We're taking and all the vertebrae.
Taking and coming through. That
is because we now we're taking and attaching all the muscles,
attaching on, holding onto that end. So as I'm doing this now
look at how far the scapula - take
and build up and but we're coming across -
is huge now. And then
the sternum is sticking out in front. It's a little bit behind
on the other side. Then we come down, through
the knees.
Again you follow the bones. You follow
the bones. Coming through, coming back in
now here it doesn't do this so much, it's taking and coming back.
It's pretty much an arch going through.
And we get the pelvis back here, look for the corners.
Coming through. And then we pull the bone,
coming forward, back, feel the
heel coming down. The other side,
pretty dark, can't quite see but there. So now this is the
starting point. Now if you look at the head
what do we see? Okay, the eyes, again
straight in the front. This is like
a cow, similarity
to even a horse. You can see the eye
sockets, you can feel the nose coming across.
Then we're
pulling down into the mouth down here. The jaw,
cheekbone coming across, coming back,
here the horns taking and coming out.
Now pretty much everybody's horns come out of the same spot
again, just above the ear,
slightly behind. The jaw is gonna take and fit in,
coming forward.
Feel the bison horns.
Now I don't wanna spend too much time in here
because I want to take and primarily focus on the fact that
contrast. We're talking about all of the same stuff again.
Got the neck, feel the vertebrae
coming through. You can see
the beginning now. You can see where we'll start,
in here. Look at this shortness here. This is a big difference now.
If you take - if we had a horse here for instance, we would take
a profile of a horse.
We will see this line
coming across here, neck.
(drawing)
Okay, now
here we get a line that's pretty much coming across.
Doesn't change that. So but if we're looking at this
there's a picking up right here.
Feel the pull. Okay this is coming
across. Now a horse has got
withers coming through here. But this,
what creates this line is called the nuclear
ligament. Okay now it's
where the ligament attaches to the vertebrae
that are sticking up. It gives us much of the look. So
what we have here is the vertebrae will be attaching
in here, the nuclear ridge will be attaching here but then
we've got all of this that is lifting up.
So what we see the - you look at
a buffalo, we see this huge
lump and the muscles that take and go back down to the
pelvis. That's your lump. And we
can see the scapula, it'll be pushing through
in here, it gives us a corner. We can feel this.
Now of course they're building up with all kinds of fur,
make great coats. Okay.
But you can see the building, the shape of the
animal now is being determined by
scale, how these things are pulling up. Then as we
get through here, look at that heel, the way that heel
is taking and coming out this way. Or actually that's
the elbow. Coming through. So as these muscles come down, the
joint is here. So what we feel then is
again we feel this - the muscle that's coming through,
coming down, over -
is all the stuff is built up. We feel the trapezius muscles
taking and even on the back of the neck, building into
all of this. So it's
focusing, seeing the anatomy. Seeing the joints
that come through, looking at the two rows of bones.
Now what are the differences here
that we're talking about a
two toed animal.
Cloved foot. Okay.
Now horses,
we're more familiar with horses as being with one toe but they also
started out with three. Okay so again
when we talk about horses we'll take and be doing a day just on horses.
But we start to see how all
of this stuff now builds, how we take
and work with these volumes. Everything I do
you can see as I'm adding to
that basic structure. Everything begins
with the structure itself.
And that's where we go. So to be
successful at animal drawing, you have to take and
understand the basic structure
of the animal that we're drawing. And that becomes
an absolute, you've got to know how these things
take and move where they go. Thinking of the volume
but what I'm trying to do is give you a simple, simple,
like we see
the basic volume
fitting into the box.
This is a corner
coming around, fitting into a box. We have the ribcage
underneath, we have the waist and we have a box
basically for the pelvis that these things are fitting into.
And if you can contain, if you can think in terms of
these volumes and resist trying to
copy the animal. Okay let's take
our thinking a little bit farther then. Now we're gonna go
through the steps again. One thing
to go through and look at the
videos and listen to me drawing, you'll
find that I repeat and I'm constantly
doing the same thing.
That's where I started out. I started out by
teaching animal drawing, by taking
and having a way
to analyze something that you didn't know anything about.
So actually by the end of today
we should have the tools to take
and be able to start analyzing a little bit
because you're always looking for the same thing. Okay so now
we start out and
(drawing)
first, get the action,
feel the gesture. Even though I'm working with a photograph,
I still approach it as if I wasn't.
(drawing)
Now
you will find that if you take and have this pattern
develop it will give you
much of what's needed to take and
draw from imagination.
And then you'll use the particular animals
just take a photograph, we use the particular animal
as a reference.
(drawing)
Now I've taken a very, very
loose beginning. So now I come back in and I start to be a little bit more careful.
(drawing)
Now this goat looks like he's been budded.
Budded means that they've taken like the horns.
It's an animal that's used in a
petting, animal
petting thing for children. So they take and go to the zoo
petting areas a lot of the goats will have their horns removed.
(drawing)
Now I
don't block it all in too tight, we can start with getting...
(drawing)
Through, come down. I always
leave room for myself to take and adjust and change.
Now consciously think of this
as a cylinder that's fitting in.
You feel that cylinder
and you think of the vertebrae now that are sticking out.
Okay now
he's got the legs coming back, the scapula - the scapula
is pulled in from here. Shoulder is over here.
The other shoulder is moving forward, the arm is moving his leg
out. So taking
the corner, through.
Hoof.
So those again, I'm not being very tight yet. I'm taking and
going through the steps in the drawing.
Feel the shoulder, feel the muscle coming across,
the elbow, feeling the scapula.
(drawing)
I try to make -
I'm doing the
knee. Now one thing to keep in mind too, the goats, they spend a lot
of time taking and kneeling
on the knees. So
a lot of goats have pretty knobby knees.
(drawing)
Now here's where
you take and make subtle
indications. As I'm drawing this
you can see it coming across. Right at this point now
you can see the - where the
waist is and we can feel the corner
of the pelvis right there.
So you're looking at, you're seeing this coming down, that's the corners
sticking out. Now we come back down so now
this leg is going back under here.
The heel is
way up here. Okay now the elbow
is coming forward and is up in here.
Okay. This
form is coming down.
I take it back I think it's right to start with
with what I'm looking at.
Looking at the change in
the color, a thing that can throw you off dramatically
right away. Okay. Now we're coming down,
pulling.
(drawing)
Okay now
where I go from here is I take
and I'm always focusing on the three dimensions.
So as I come through now I'm taking
and really visualizing okay the center, coming down.
You can see that here this is
sticking up. The eye
socket behind as we looked at the skulls
is taking and coming through here. So this surface
is taking and coming out.
The eye socket is in here
and we can feel the hollow behind it, just like we are.
(drawing)
Okay. Coming through. Now
comes forward. The bone stops about in here.
Then we take and come forward,
we have lips,
through, feel, going over the
surface, down, chin
going underneath. Going back
we have the cheek, coming down.
The pull, through.
Now all of
this, get the zygomatic arch that's coming out.
(drawing)
Through. I'm taking, consciously thinking now,
the corner here. This is going to take and coming forward, down
and all of this is going down. Okay now
the pull, the ear is
coming, it's folding, coming over,
pulling out, same spot. Coming through,
around. So
take and approach this aspect, this part of the
drawing as a discovery process here. Taking
and trying to discover. And so as I'm doing the drawing, I'm
constantly going over, going over the surface
as I'm doing the drawing.
And again, you can feel - you have
to have a transition from the head into the neck, you have
the esophagus. Feel the pull. Now
here, this comes through very clear now.
You can see the cylinder of the neck.
The way the shadows and stuff were coming down.
Now okay, we can feel the
vertebrae sticking up.
In here. Now a lot of times the - some of the goats
that are more fun to draw are pygmy goats
because they have such exaggerated
shapes. Now
from here, you can see the trapezius muscles going back,
you can feel the scapula is fitting in
here, so all of this is a plane
now that's going down. In here what you're seeing
is the scapula, you're seeing
the fullness of the muscles now.
And we're feeling the pull across, there's the plane
that's coming through in here. And then we start
to pull down. From here what we're seeing - it's coming across - these are
your pectoralis muscles now that are taking and pulling over
to the leg. And we can feel the pull
coming through. Down to the point.
So we're constantly
relating these things to anatomical points that we
know on ourselves. So this is a corner here. So this is the
leg and we come through, you have the sternum, coming down
and the elbow would be sticking out. Feel the pull.
These forms are taking and going back
and so we feel the fullness of the form
coming through. Now you can look at this, you can see
now we go over the surface
of the form, coming down, going back in
and back down. Going through. You can
feel the pull here. And as I was drawing this, you can
see the corner of the pelvis sticking out.
I'm gonna take and look at another
here. Okay here
is where we get a little bit clearer sense of
now this is a good example now. So what I'm doing
is I'm looking at a different view of the same
animal. But what I'm seeing more clearly
now is the way the sternum
is sticking out so we can feel the fullness of this form
coming down, which I wasn't seeing very clearly
as before. So now we can think of the shoulder as
still way over here and so
the reference, the critter is just
a reference that we take and use. We can feel
the building of this. Now we can see the pull
pectoralis muscles, pulled across here. But
we can see the pulling down
through, belly. A different angle
of the leg but we can still
take and get a sense of this is coming through.
(drawing)
Automatically here I'm taking and
this point right here for instance,
elements that I - whenever I look at anybody's animal drawing,
four legged animal in particular, this is what
I look for is that the way the Achilles tendon
and the fact that we have this gap
because the bone is sticking out and we can feel
here's where the joint is. If they don't do that
then basically you know that they really don't know what they're talking about.
Okay. So you have to feel, you have to
see that that is what's coming through.
Okay now we can start to pick up here. We can see the corner of the pelvis a little bit
more clearly, even though it's from a different angle we can take and
sense what it is and the way these muscles
are taking and pulling away from the pelvis and coming down.
We can feel the coming across where the elbow would be,
these forms are pulling in.
Through.
Joints and
(drawing)
so this is giving us a starting point now
of what we're taking and working with.
So here as we're coming across now we can see also that the belly's
continuing on. Pectoralis,
ribcage, coming through.
Waist, in
between.
Elbow - or knee I should say.
And all of this is the muscles now that are taking and coming down.
And we can feel the transition over -
coming through.
So that gives us a start.
on the whole process. Now let's take and
look at some more
elements here. Here we have
the
tiger. American tiger.
Now again this is a cat.
Again what I'm bringing this one up for is I'm talking about this
point here. As we're coming through. As you look -
as we look at this, look at the shape,
look at the shape of things. Coming down.
See what you're seeing there now is the knee, the knee comes down,
you've got the patella
in here. And then
coming through, now they have the same
or this shape really sorta corresponds to the
tibial ridge. Now we get the leg going back in
and then you get the fibula,
the small bone that we have coming down, through here.
Well it's really small now. Okay but
what I wanted to point out was this. Look at that heel,
the calcaneous bone sticking out that way.
(drawing)
So
you're really seeing this thing
pulling out and then we go into
the toes here, your carpal,
metacarpal, phalanges,
okay. But this shape here, this
is where I was saying that this is where your Achilles tendon
takes and comes down. The soleus muscle on
underneath that and your gastrocnemius
will be going up into here. That's a big mechanical
advantage. Okay. And this is the area
that I said that that hollow area behind
your leg - and you have it in your leg too but it's
nowhere near as distinct - or obvious.
In other words I'm taking and making a point out of that. So that
is what I look for constantly to take and try
to help the understanding what we're doing.
So now in this cat then
look at the, again, it's that really
tiny, tiny ribcage. We can see
the head now so as I'm drawing this I think of the head
coming forward. I'm visualizing - I started
out with a simple sphere, then I go across
looking for where the eyes are. Coming through.
The eye socket, just like on a human now. Cheekbone.
Notice how broad the cheekbones are.
The nose is coming forward, exactly the same spot.
And then these fantastic
teeth coming through.
So basically look for the same
thing, feel the way the neck is taking and coming through
and then a very tiny, very, very tiny
opening of the ribcage. It's really
very, very narrow, small,
then the ribcage takes and expands
on that and it becomes really full.
Okay you can feel the vertebrae, you can feel this going back.
See now the pelvis is sticking up.
Scapula now is pulled way up here. And it's
coming forward in here. You can see it on the other side
over here. So in reality now we would be seeing
this cylinder of the neck
fitting into this box on the scapula,
okay, and coming forward. So these are the
basic elements now. The leg coming down. We can feel
the elbow sticking out.
Coming down, the legs coming forward,
the wrist coming down into the paws.
You build, you're constantly building,
you're working from these basic elements as we
draw. Okay now let's take and
really change pace. Okay where do you
go from here? Okay. How do we
deal with this guy? We
do it the same way. Now you have to be -
you have to look into it
and try to understand it. So where I start then
is again simple sphere
form. Okay.
Now going through, looking where the eyes are.
Side. Then we come through,
then we try to visualize the skull underneath. There's the
end of the nose, here's the skull coming down.
This is a rodent. And we can start thinking about
how this is coming down. We can feel the cheekbones,
round, full cheekbones,
We can feel this pull through here. We can
think of the center, we think of the eyes on the other side. Okay.
The ear is exactly in the same place as everybody else's.
Right here. Coming through. Now as we go
through the different animals we're gonna find there are different
configurations of ears that we can use.
One of the most common is that if you think
of a cylinder to start with and then think of
the cylinder as like an iris flower, that it opens up
and starts doing this.
Okay and then it's always
hollow inside. Now that's gonna be rhinos and hippos
and in a sense also the horse.
You find the same kinda
configuration in taking and dealing with. Now
so if we take that idea right now and we think about where we're coming out
of here, see I'm starting out with a cylinder
and then I'm following - I'm following the pattern
of just literally what I was doing here, except
that now this is a round thing coming
back into here. And then this is
pulling down and so again this is now a
similar bit of a pattern that we see
over here, we're seeing the profile
so it's more of this. Now as we go back
into this, you have to think now okay
this is gonna have the neck, it's gonna have a ribcage that's in here
and it's
gonna have to have a pelvis. Okay. Now
so the shoulder is, as we look at all of this,
stuff coming out here. We can see that there's a shoulder
is right here. Scapula's going back
in at that point and the leg is going back in
and then it's taking and coming forward.
And we're coming through in here. So you're taking and
visualizing this is a corner. So now what I would be thinking of this
is I draw that, I'd be focusing, this is corner.
We can see all this fur
going back in but this is a plane going back in.
The stuff, fur, is coming around
but the leg is coming, the elbow is back in there.
The leg is coming forward, it has
the same configuration of bones that
everybody else does.
Through. Now what else,
we're taking. We got the elbow, taking, coming back, you can feel this pushing
out slightly. This fur coming around.
Now we're thinking okay the belly. Now as you
look at this, if you can imagine the spine going up
and if you take and use
a little bit of creative scene here you will see it.
And I drew that a little too far up. I need to take and make this
coming through. Right at this point there is a
slight change
in that surface. And then from there
we're getting this coming out, coming around,
coming through. And we've got the other leg,
the back leg, coming out of here. So we're constantly
working over these surfaces. We feel this sort of mass of
hair that's coming through. But as I'm doing this, I'm
always looking for the same thing. Can I find - I'm trying to find it. Where is it
at, where is it at? Now see I didn't make this ear
quite big enough. By coming through I can take and sort of thinking
okay now the fur is coming down, we can feel the
nose coming out. And he's got this
itty bitty nose out here coming through.
Come down he's got full here,
coming around.
(drawing)
We can feel the fullness of this fur as we're coming around.
Got the eyes.
In.
(drawing)
Cheeks, zygomatic arch, things taking and coming
around. We take and we can feel the fullness
of these forms. Now you can see where this holds up.
You can feel it coming around, coming full
through, feel the eye socket coming out on the
other side a little bit. Fullness, fur. So
even as you start out, what you're seeing is this huge
blob. Okay I'm taking the lower part,
got really big teeth,
it's a rodent. You can feel this thing coming down and
now we start to feel all of this, the rows and rows
of fur coming through
but it's all still building, it's all building on top
of the basic structures. Like humans.
Somebody that weighs 400 pounds,
their pelvis hasn't changed, they're no bigger than anybody else's, it's just
that all of this stuff that they've added onto it that takes and makes
the change. It'll look different. I always joke about
being in California, our governor Arnold
was a great weight lifter and body builder
but his ribcage wasn't any bigger than mine.
I wish some of the other stuff was
but it's as big as mine.
Okay now I got this pulled off a little too far, this take and come around.
But you're taking and working around. You can look
into the animal, you try to discover
what it is that's going on inside there. Okay.
Now let's take and
go on and look at some mice. Okay now the
first thing I want you to work with. We've gone through all the skeletons, we've
gone through all the stuff. Start with mice
and hamsters. I would get one.
A lot of people - actually studios often when they're dealing with a small critter
people would buy mice or hamsters and they would have
them sitting on top of the desk. Okay, the reason I'm saying
starting with this is because what you want
to be able to get - and I keep repeating - it's the action.
And as you can see, they're not gonna sit still for you. Okay.
And so what we deal with then is very, very, very simple forms.
Now see I'm starting out with this, this, stretching
up, coming through, feel the pull,
the legs going back down. Taking and
sculpting me out here, here, coming through.
Now it's a very, very simple round form.
So now we go back and we start looking at them. And we start to see
this is taking and
through, through,
ears,
as you can see mouse doesn't really look an awful lot like Mickey.
Oh this guy's getting ready to get out of there.
Okay so now
I can draw that head a little bit large but when you take and you feel
the volume of the form.
You're feeling the volume and as I do this
I'm very, very conscious of the scapula.
The pattern that we're
going through, hands
got the ribcage, I'm taking,
conscious of the pelvis and so we come down
the knee, coming down here
and this is the beginning. So
now as we draw them, as you take and you should fill up
pages of drawings with the mice. So you take
and coming through, coming around,
Small - now there are certain characteristics,
mice, even the meerkat is,
that you will see squirrels, be taking the ribcage,
their tummies will take on different characters. They may be even fuller like this,
coming through, you're still looking for the pelvis, coming in,
(drawing)
tail, smallish arm
head, coming through
ears,
so we need to take and do
a lot of drawing from them to familiarize yourself
with how they go. Se we're taking and
now let me take and break
the heads down a little bit. What you're doing with this
is a little bit more accurate - that's too big.
Okay start with the idea of the simple sphere.
Now have the eyes
and then this is taking and coming forward
and coming through. So
right away and they have cheek. Coming through.
So right away now you can see
that takes on the generic rodent look.
Ears, coming through. That's the beginning.
Right there. It's very, very, very simple.
Then you take and you start to, as you build with them, like we get the hamster
over there now, a little different in there,
he's climbing, looking at where the nose, eyes,
ears, taking - he's taking, got really
full in here.
Feel the fullness coming through.
Bottom. Coming through, feel the tail.
(drawing)
So everything
just taking and constantly drawing
and you build, fill pages up
all of these drawings.
I remember once when I was actually
director of the character animation department at Cal Arts
and one of the things we did is we would take
and 500 people apply
and I remember this one particular semester
somebody did not have much experience drawing
figures but had some really nice
drawings just showing the action
of a mouse. And they had so much
movement and flow to them we accepted that person.
Rather than somebody who was much, much more proficient
with the figure and they could render and everything else but they didn't have any life to them.
And so what you're looking for is to be able to take an
draw the characters and bring them to life.
And you can see as you're doing it then
what goes on. And if you can possibly take and interact - get animals to
interact with each other as you're doing the drawing you make it up.
Storytelling.
(drawing)
See I'm just
dealing with very, very simple, simple volumes that
I'm building on. It's essentially talking about
building a ribcage, fitting into
a large area that's got
some corners on it. The scapula
is building on top. The head
out here and
we take and you work with
the basic configuration
of the animal.
That's what we're doing is you should try to take and do
a hundred.
Fill up pages. You can draw with a pen, pencil,
it makes absolutely no difference. But this is what we wanna do
And one of the things I've done in the past with the drawing
is to take and
actually an animal drawing class I took and rented 30
mice. And I gave everybody a mouse.
And they actually had a model on stands
or drawing benches turned on edge, put them on the edge of drawing bench.
They didn't go anywhere. Okay. They didn't
like the fall. Okay, then we take and
we had sticks going across from one to the other that they would scamper across.
Another thing that you can do is take two, clear, plastic
cups and put a mouse in it
and then put them together and tape the edge so that you can look at it from
any kind of angle. Put some holes so they can get air
but that's another way of taking and doing it. So you're building
but you draw from them and what they will do is
they will force you into not copying
because they are not gonna sit still for you. And that's
exactly what I want. I want you to feel
the flow and the movement of
the animals. To see the basic kinds of shapes
that they take and start making.
And how they take and build.
(drawing)
Look at artists like Beatrix Potter,
great. Here whole career was built
around taking and seeing and drawing
these small little critters.
Okay so now I can come back in and I start to add a little bit more
and coming through
we're building on
so this is the critical part for everything that
we're gonna take and be doing is to
start with these small little animals
build, feel the shape,
(drawing)
see how they relate to each other,
look at the fullness of the belly, try to see
the slight differences from one to the next
and we go from there. But it's all building
one simple
volume on top of another simple volume.
Okay this is a good beginning
now. Okay this has been a good start and let's get on with it

Transcription not available.

6th Grader Drawing of Animal

Source: https://www.nma.art/videolessons/animal-drawing-part-1-introduction-to-animal-drawing/

Post a Comment for "6th Grader Drawing of Animal"