Drawing Pets!

I have a tough time drawing pets! Can you tell?

Drawing people comes easily to me (now), but that is a result of many, many hours of practice. I’m sure it will take twice as much time to get good with pets. I have never been good with drawing animals, not even anthromorphized ones (like animated characters such as Bojack Horseman).

I tell my workshop participants that drawing anything is about building a vocabulary of shapes. Over time, with practice, you can internalize a working understanding of anatomy, and then layer that with various shapes that you have practiced for different human features.

But pets come in so many different sizes, shapes, breeds and details, that I am unsure how much time this might take me! In a sense, then, I am glad that I get the opportunity to practice when people send me pictures of their pets for the Faces for India Project. The downside is that I am using their portrait requests for my learning! But alas, what can I do?

Here are some latest drawings. Can you tell that they are labored??

Some dogs, albeit cutely so, can be so fluffy that you lose all sense for their anatomy. I have to draw them just as a large outer shape, then use hatching to indicate various features.

As for cats, I think all my cat drawings look evil. Is it something about the cats that I draw, or is it about how I perceive them? Cats give me the shivers!