Alright, we're at part 2! So you got all your shapes sorted out and your form established with them, what next? Well, you connect the lines to make sure the form is established before adding detail! Let me show you what I mean.
Establishing a basic form helps give you a guideline for where to put detailing, and if I didn't say it before, this doesn't just apply to drawing pets or animals! These steps can help guide your process in drawing anything! Objects, sceneries, portraits and action forms for your original characters.
Granted, everything is its own form of difficulty, but you're not limited to drawing just one kind of thing if you learn how to use shapes! They're everywhere in everything in our lives, training your eye to see them gives you more to practice!
You remember when in art class, your teacher would show you to draw eggs to make a barrel? Or draw a tomato soup cap? Kinda boring in concept, but it's to train your eye to use shapes to your advantage!!
Shapes don't have to be how they're shown in a textbook either, you can twist shapes to work for you! Like with our doggos nose here: It's not a traditional egg shape oval, right? Even shapes can be done any number of ways to make forming the guideline easier!
But that's enough yapping, let me show you my detailed sketch.
So! If you're ever struggling with the shape of something, like paws or flat things like a collar, there is likely something to help you find the right shape to practice it yourself! The internet is a vast place, and artists would much rather you try to draw yourself than use a 'magic' machine to make it for you. Definitely ask, and don't be shy or scared!
We're all learning constantly, and while a lot of learning is done at the beginning, we're all works in progress! Just like our.. Piles of WIPs in the corner, or lost in a random folder on our computer. XD;;;;
But that aside, for fur, a good place to start is little tiny triangles, at least for this good boy. Orienting them the right way can be difficult, but there's no shape in using references which show clear line definition for forming things!
And like shapes in forming the figure, animals have many shapes that are consistent throughout their species! If you can draw Scratch's nose, you can likely learn to adapt the shape to draw other dogs!
If you learn to draw paws, you can adapt them to draw paws for other dogs or even other animals! It takes practice to adapt things, but again, you're not alone in this! The internet is a big ocean, so dive in and find what helps you best!
Even with what I've done here, I traced to help define the shapes and replicate them into the figure. Some artists look down on tracing, but when you're starting out, and have no idea how to place the shapes on the page, references can help! Starting out, I would say tracing is good for learning the process, but like riding a bike, you can only do so much on a little kid bike.
If you don't get a bigger bike every time you improve in skill, you're stuck going slow on a tiny bike, so even if things feel uncertain, you won't know if you can do a thing unless you try!
Even I'm still learning, and feel like I'm only just connecting these things in my head, and it's hard sometimes to see that if you can't see in your head in the first place.. Fiddle-faddling on a page or digital document is still learning!
Sometimes, artists have their moments where we just want it to turn out right, but it's making us want to tear our hair out. If you're frustrated, take a break, and come back to it later. We're all on this road together, don't feel bad for learning!
I hope this helped you a bit! Thanks Astarion for motivating me to give this a try! I'll post the good boy pic when its done, I'll work on it on my own version of a 'magic' machine to make it look good. ^.^
