Start out with a clean sheet of paper

Why is it that drawing animals is so hard compared to lets say a tree? Well the main thing with animals is that every little line has to be perfectly proportioned one little mistake and it can screw up the whole painting. This is because our brain is very good at remembering shapes and details around it. While trees come in all different shapes and all different leaves etc. A cat always has four legs and a certain body type for example, so we will spot the difference rather quickly when something isn't correct.

When you do your next animal drawing, do not rush the early parts of it, the part when you try to get all the proportions right before starting to shade or paint. When you draw animals it doesn't matter if you are extremely good with the shading, or the colors, if you don't get the proportions right, the end result will not be very good. That is how important it is to get the proportions right.

How do you do it? How do I do it?
Start out with a clean sheet of paper, preferably a pretty big one. Find a good picture of that animal you want to draw, this picture will be used as reference for your animal painting / drawing.Start by drawing some soft lines on the paper. After you have done that, start by adding the smaller details of the animal.

When this is done, take a break. Yes take a break from it all! This is good because when you come back an hour or so later you will probably notice small things that needs to be corrected, which you didn't notice while you were drawing the animal. Add more small details and remember don't start to shade and paint the animal until you feel very satisfied with the animals proportion and details. When you are, then I would suggest you start to shade it carefully. How you shade it correctly is another topic, which I will cover on my next article.