Do you have any advice for drawing rodents? Any advice help as I'm having trouble drawing their faces.
Hey there! I hear you honestly, rodent faces took me forever to figure out. I will say my style is very cartoonish, and I take a lot of liberties with my characters so I can have them fit a persona, style, or look that I'm going for.
But if you'd like a quick little tutorial I'd be happy to give it!
Most important thing is to study. Look at real life rodents, look at rodent skulls. The skulls especially are the building blocks of the entire anatomy of the face.
I'm mainly going to focus on side profile of a rat for now! Pads here is a good example of how you can take the basic form of the skull and add your own style to it.
When I look at the rat skull I break it down into the separate forms. I use circles here but you could easily use rectangles and squares to assist you with the volume/depth. I like to imagine the muzzle area as one slightly stretched egg shape. When switching to front view you're looking at the egg from top down, it's almost completely round.
You can use these forms when you are sketching out the outlines to help you draw the face. The most prominent feature on rats is their large upper jaw. A lot of mammals share this trait, but on rats its more pronounced and it's far more sloped.
Here's a quick step by step. Rat/rodent heads are far more narrow and sloped downward than say a canine head, which often sports a longer more upward turned snout.
Once you have the basic of the form down you can pretty much go crazy from there! Pads here is a bit more angular and intense than say his sister Sorcha, who I've softened and made more sleek in comparison. Here's a pic of her and a few other rats!
But creating stylized characters is all about breaking rules. Once you have a basic understanding of the form, you can learn all the angles from there!
Hope this helped!
