Learning to draw wolves!

[Taz]

Hey ^-^ I'm currently learning/teaching myself to draw wolves, yay! So with that, ANNNY tips/critiques/helpfulness in general will make me love you. ESPECIALLY with faces and heads, because that's where I'm struggling the most.

Coloring medium = colored pencils because I effing suck at coloring on the computer

A picture of my charry Isis


Uncolored picture of her son Pierce


edit: Pierce has been colored.


COMMENTS and suggestions please cause I love you

[.Tourniquet.]

Well, first off, you have a GREAT start! Seriously, when I first started they looked like circles of nothing. >>

But you have most of the basic anatomy down, and that's good. But when you're starting to learn to draw something the best way to draw their heads is to the side where you can only see one eye. As you keep drawing them to the side, you get more familiar of the things you are missing. Then you can try out 3/4 shots like you've already drawn and you'll notice how much better they turn out. That's just my opinion though.

Since I'm not exactly the one to give out crits, here's a site that I referenced from in my early years of drawing wolves. Ever heard of Goldenwolfen? Here's her site: goldenwolfen.com Just find her portfolio and click on the pictures for reference. Most of them are werewolves and they have different types of paws so DON'T reference off of those.

[Taz]

Thanks for the site! ^-^ I'm finding it REALLY helpful to look at pictures like that when I'm struggling on a certain part. That'll help me a lot :D

[Disclaim]

The BEST way to get down the anatomy of wolves (or any other creatures really) is looking at REAL PICTURES of them. Try looking up some wolf and canine pictures on google. I've learned from many rather high-calibur artists that you should NEVER reference off of someone else's art for anatomy. Their anatomy is NEVER perfect, as much as it may seem so. So use real photos. They're a lot more helpful. Seeing as other people's art can be very stylistic, even if it seems perfect. Such as GoldenWolfen. I'm sure she refs all of her work off of real photos too.

But when you reference off of photos, it's always a good idea to add some personal zing in there. Don't just copy straight from the pictures. Just use them to get the little-more-than-basic anatomy down.

That's how I got to where I am now. And even now, I STILL use wolf refs every once in a while.

[.Tourniquet.]

I know it's best to use real photos, but I just can't use them because I find it extremely hard to find where the fur ends and where the background starts most of the time. x.x

[Taz]

I mostly use real photos, but as Tourni said it can be really hard to find ones that show certain aspects of the anatomy, so it can be helpful to look at other people's art sometimes (especially when you've spent hours trying to find a goddamn photo of a wolf sitting down that has a good angle of the way the leg bends xD)

[Toksyc]

Wow, you're JUST starting? That's about how mine looked a couple of years ago XD Those are awesome and you're just gonna keep getting better if you're starting off that awesome. My first wolves were kinda... amebas or some odd shapes XD

[Different]

Jeebus. o.o You're better than me already! xD

Personally, I find it best to find simple sketches other people have done whose style I like, and draw their style a few times. Then I move to a few more and combine the aspects I prefer out of all of them into my own fashion. :3; It looks like you're doing fine whatever you're doing, though, so great job! In a few months people will be like, WOW.