Learning how to draw wolves!(or anything, really)

Soo, i could spend my saturday with god knows what, but since the sushi lunch with friends got cancelled i decided, I´m going to learn how to draw wolves! and I figured i´d put up the progress, along with tips and workflow of how i go about learning a new subject. The basics of anatomy will ALWAYS help, muscles and skeletons aren´t so illogical as you might thing, one muscle pulls, the other one opposit it will relax, and basically all mammals have the same sort of skeletal construction (four/two legged once, nope, let´s not look at whales for this) if you just spend a little time getting familliar with skeletal structure say first in horses and humans, drawing a wolf/boar/deer/elephant isn´t all too different. 

Soo, if you want to join me in some tutorial steps here we go: 

Step 1: MAKE A REFERENCE BOARD!
I can´t stress this enough, don´t ever complain about your art not developing properly if you ignore this step. references are your friend, your best friend, and should always be part of step one. If you don´t feel like googling images use the one i put together, save it on your workstation for easy access. Make it in some sort of order, the only thing i stress is use a lot of images(my example is bare minimum in my opinion, the more the merrier!) This won´t cover all I need to draw wolves properly, but it´s a start. Also, note i´m NOT including any stylized/drawn/3d modled wolves, always start drawing from realism before going more simplistic/cartoony.

 

Also, if you haven´t already, make your step 1 about looking into basic anatomy, muscles, skeleton, compare it to other mamals and try wrapping your head around how they work, both through loose sketches or simply studying images. 




Step 2: START SMALL BUT LOOK AT LARGE SHAPES!
So got your references and basic understanding of the subjects anatomy in check? then it´s time to start grinding! Grind meaning you simply draw the subject over and over, if teaching yourself something unfamilliar I recomend starting with a section to not be overwhelmed, or get stuck too long at each sketch. A natural thing to start with here would be the head, right? cause who doesn´t love heads/eyes? I recomend first off just making sketches of exactly what you see (the left sketches) and DO NOT get stuck if one turn out wonky, just move on, make another one, and another one..this excersice will help you finding the larger shapes making up the wolfs head, as you draw it repeatedly your brain begins registring reoccuring lines/surfaces. It might feel tedious but keep going, and don´t settle with 10 or 20, but aim for 200-500 sketches!(yes it sounds stupid but this part will create the base of your mucle memory and eye to hand correlation) of course you don´t have to draw 200 sketches in one seating, but have it as a goal over time to start every drawing session with 5-10 loose sketches (10 min each) draw every day and in one week you´ll have 70 sketches, not so bad huh? you´re on your way! To make the sketching a bit more interesting try locating BASE SHAPES, square, circle, triangle, then make entire sketches using said shape(the right hand sketches) wolves have amazing faces, i never notives how different both their facial structures as well as expressions are, and this will definitely help you when later creating your own characters, as a lot of soft circle shapes creates a more juvenile/female look compared to squares etc. 



 
Also, even if your usual approach is tracing/skeleton sketching ontop of images, keep these sketches side by side and resist temptation to correct any ugly/wonky parts. This is a learning process, and even if I for one can enjoy tracing things when a quick result or rather the whole of the image is the focus of attention, this work flow can cripple your eye to hand connection, as tracing focuses more on your skills of following lines or finding the right lines, and I want you to look at the wolf as a model, a 3d object with surfaces rather than a lot of lines(this make any sense? sorry i´ll try clearify if it´s too vague).



Step 3: STAY MOTIVATED!
Okay it´s not much of a step maybe, but now you are in the middle of the learning process, where some sketches turn out awful, you suddenly feel like things go better then you horizontal flip the image just to realize nope, it still looks odd as f*ck. My advice here, as you pile up towards that number 350 sketch, mix up your workflow! Only drawn digitally? throw in some traditional sketching! Just changing the colour of the lines you are sketching with can give a little moral boost, also, if you haven´t tried it, try switching to you `less dominant`hand (for me it´s my left). When you´re an artist your drawing hand will log motions over the years, musclememory is a tricky thing, it will draw thing that aren´t really there because you are so very used to it, and it´s damaging for your end result. I noticed this during figure drawing class that my left hand sketches had wobblier lines, but the lines shapes and angels were actually more correct than those of my right hand. Try it! it´s very frustrating, yes, but also interesting, and can make you notice things your dominant hand is filling in without you knowing it.




Also, don´t worry about your practice stuff being ugly, getting good is only a matter of how many times you´ve drawn something ugly or unsatisfyingly, because as long as you can see that something is incorrect with your art, the better the chance you notice what it is and change it. I fear the day i draw somethig and just go "huh, it´s perfect!".


Step 4: ADD COLOUR AND LOOK AT BASIC SHADING!
This is one of my favourite steps!(and look at that anatomy, already looking better than when I started last weekend!) Now I let myself add shadows(here in form of crosshatching) to really make sure i´ve figured out what surfaces there are to the subject, as well as a first play around with colour (from references of course ALWAYS use references!) and like the other steps there is no cheat or quick way to do this..focus on quantity, don´t fall in love with one of the images and start rendering it, we ain´t got time for that yet! so keep it simple, one layer with colour under a multiply layer of lines. Go!
   


Step 5: FREE HAND!
This is probably the step most want to get to, when you actually just draw from mind, without references and play around. I´m not good with cartoony style but since i want to get better I could repeat all above mentioned steps with say disney art, but...BUT the problem in my opinion when copying someones stylized art is that I don´t really understand how their progress work. They know what to simplify since they´ve drawn realism and then scaled it down and exaggerated features until they found something desireable, soo..instead of now falling back and looking at others art I simply try remember what a wolf consists of, the surfaces, then sketch something on my own. It doesn´t turn out perfect but it´s a start, and i notice the features in my opinion making up a wolfs face is mainly the nose, ears and cheek fur, so I try focusing on those for a start. 



Any questions hit me up and i´ll explain anything that seems odd, there is no WRONG way to learn, this is just how I do it, ut if you´ve never done this i strongly recomend giving it a try^_^