Drawing Animals P.66

Drawing Animals  P.66

Cats seem to be a good choice for me to try and draw with having two ourselves and having spent a couple of days watching their behavior and movement, I feel I am ready to have a go drawing them. As with any skill, the more you try something, the better you get and I have noticed this when drawing Mollie. The shape of her head, body and tail become familiar. Here are some attempts at drawing her.

Mollie eating her dinner

I started by sketching a few connecting circles just to get Mollie's proportions down before  adding basic outlines As you can see, I started with the head because while she was eating this part of body was moving the most so I wanted to get that down as soon as possible  Mollie stayed eating in that position for quite awhile and I was able to continue with the rest of her body

Completed sketch of the picture above, I used some crosshatch marking for the wall in the background and a bit of shading around Mollie's bowl to indicate a cylindrical shape I like how the door frame and scratch post frame the picture

Having bought a book " The Fundamentals of Drawing Animals" by Duncan Smith, he highlights the importance of being aware of simple anatomy when drawing animals because a lot the time, be it cat, dog or horse, the skeletal structure is similar so I attempted to estimate the structure of Garfield because to know this basic information is to know how to draw the animal, whatever the position

Top Left - Mollie in the window sill, it seems to be a good  place to catch her as she tends to stay in one position in the window quite a lot. Bottom Left - Casper sitting in a low down window sill, the low afternoon sun created a long shadow on Caspers body. Bottom Right - Garfield relaxing on the floor, his normal position was to keep his head flat to the floor but I managed to catch this sketch of him looking up (which he did numerous times)  Top Right - Again, trying to create the skeletal structure of Garfield

Casper (Pure White Tom) being quite playful so I took the opportunity to do some quick sketches of him looking in different directions and at different distances

My preferred style for drawing animals are from photographs, this is done using Pastel Pencils on coloured pastel paper . I chose a colour of card that would compliment the wolf and even allowed gaps on the paper for the grey to show through.