Animal drawing practice

Two masses and a spine. Every quadruped on earth is that, and the fur you were worried about is not the problem.

What this drill trains

Seeing an animal as two masses and a spine. A ribcage, a pelvis, and a curve connecting them - that is a horse, a cat, a dog, a deer and a mouse, at different proportions. Once you see it, the whole category stops being a hundred separate subjects and becomes one subject with dials.

The proportions between those two masses are most of what makes a species recognisable. A horse has a huge ribcage and a small pelvis set far back; a cat's are closer in size and much closer together. Get that ratio and the silhouette follows almost by itself.

The other habit is ignoring fur. Fur is the thing beginners spend forty minutes on and it is never why an animal drawing failed - a badly constructed animal with beautiful fur looks like a badly constructed animal wearing a rug.

How to do it

Draw the ribcage first and make it big. On nearly every four-legged animal it is the largest single mass in the body and beginners routinely draw it too small.
Add the pelvis, and pay attention to the gap. How far apart those two masses sit is the difference between a dachshund and a terrier.
Run the spine through both as one curve and continue it into the neck and tail. One line, not three.
Put the head on as a simple mass at the end of the neck. Note where the neck leaves the chest - on a horse it comes out of the front, not the top, and getting that wrong accounts for most bad horses.
Legs as centre lines from joint to joint. All four legs bend, and the back legs bend the opposite way to the front ones.
Stop. Do not draw fur, do not draw eyes, do not draw a nose. If the construction reads as the right animal from across the room, the drill worked.

Why the references are drawings, not photographs

A photograph of an animal is mostly fur, and fur hides the two masses you are meant to be drawing. On a long-haired dog the ribcage is genuinely invisible, so the exercise becomes guesswork dressed up as observation.

These references are the construction itself: ribcage, pelvis, spine, limb chains. Nothing to be distracted by, and nothing licensed, attributed or withdrawable.

Once the construction is automatic, work from photographs of the specific animal you want to draw - and if it is your own pet, the photo tool will break it into shapes of light and dark for you.

What we measure, and what the number means

Proportion: the ratio between the two masses, the gap between them, and the leg lengths relative to the body. Those three decide whether a drawing reads as the right animal.

Nothing about texture, silhouette prettiness or expression is measured. They are not what the drill is for and scoring them would push you toward exactly the fur-first habit it exists to break.

On the flying and trotting references the limbs are excluded from the ratio check, because a limb moving toward you is genuinely shorter on the page and marking that wrong would teach the opposite of foreshortening.

Where it usually goes wrong

Ribcage too small. It is the biggest mass in the animal and almost nobody draws it big enough.

Legs that do not bend, or that bend the same way front and back. A quadruped's back legs fold in the opposite direction and a drawing that misses it looks like furniture.

The neck coming out of the top of the body. On most animals it leaves the front of the chest, which is why so many drawn horses look like giraffes.

Starting with the face. It is the part you care about and the part that carries the least structure - build the body and the face has somewhere to attach.

The lessons this drill helps with

Every animal lesson, and the tree lesson too - foliage masses and body masses are the same restraint problem in different clothes.

How to draw a dog · How to draw a cat · How to draw a fox · How to draw a fish · How to draw a butterfly · How to draw a tree

Questions about drawing animals

How do I draw any animal?: Two masses and a spine. Ribcage, pelvis, and a curve joining them - then adjust the size of each and the gap between them for the species.
How do I draw fur?: At the silhouette edge only, and only where the coat is genuinely long. Fur drawn all over turns an animal into a rug and it never rescues a construction that is not working.
Why do my animals look like furniture?: The legs are straight. All four bend, and the back pair bend the opposite way to the front pair.
Why are horses so hard?: The neck comes out of the front of the chest rather than the top, and the proportions are unforgiving because everybody knows what a horse looks like. Start with the two masses and resist the head.
Can I use this to draw my own pet?: Yes, and then use the photo tool - upload a picture of them and it breaks it into shapes of light and dark in the order you would actually draw it.
Are these real animals?: They are constructions we drew. That is the point: on a photograph the fur hides the ribcage, which is the one mass the exercise is about.

Session lengths

60 second animals A warm-up, not a session. Its job is to get the first bad line of the day out of the way somewhere it does not matter - do it immediately before a lesson.
3 minute animals The real session, and the default. Long enough that the correction starts happening inside the session instead of between them.