#lostgraves

Looks like a dog. Unfortunately it's nearly impossible to nail down a specific breed.

lostgraves

looks like a smaller domestic dog

Thats a good idea! I think really the best way to do it is to look at what other people have done in terms of stylistic choices, and learn from what you see. Realism is about looking and translating that into drawing, so looking at cartoony style artwork will also be using that same part of your brain, so it's a bit of a better transition into learning how to draw cartoony again :) 

I'm the opposite of you, I really need to work on realism, whereas cartooning is my forte. However when someone asks me to draw a likeness of an actor, I usually look at how other cartoonists have drawn that actor, to get a sense of how they re-create the likeness in their style. What they choose to keep and what they choose to leave out are important when drawing in a cartoony style.

I think the biggest difference between drawing realism and drawing cartoony is making the artistic choice in terms of what is necessary to keep when you draw an object. That's why using reference is so important. I've drawn household objects before that just don't look like the object at all. It isn't until I use a reference I realize one key detail was what I needed to push my drawing from 'sorta looking like an alarm clock' to 'that's an alarm clock'.

Hmmm... well is your problem drawing cartoony? Or is your problem drawing from your head?