(intro music playing)
I'm Glenn Vilppu. We're gonna go through
a whole series of animals: horses, dogs,
sheep, goats, chickens. I'm gonna go out and draw
from life. I really don't like to draw from photographs very much.
Sometimes we have to, but drawing from life is really where
the fun is and where the learning takes place.
There's a lot of information, so you should
take and really go through this whole process with me. It's gonna be
a lot of fun and it's a big learning experience.
(music playing)

Animal drawing. What I teach is
an analytical construction. It makes no difference
whether we're talking about for animation, fine arts, or just
for your pleasure of sketching. You need to know what you're drawing.
Now this goes way, way, way back. It makes no difference. You can talk about it
this is during the Renaissance, they go back to the Greeks. Alberti
was a very, very famous artists in the 1400s,
was writing about and talking
about how the Greeks focused on the idea of going from the
inside out, to know the bones, to know
how the muscles are applied. You need to know it. Now this applies
again to - doesn't make any difference if you're talking about animation. Animation
in particular we have to know exactly where everything bends
and moves. Whether you're a painter,
whether you're just doing it for pleasure, it doesn't make any difference. So there's basic
elements that we need to deal with to really understand
the anatomy in a way. And we're not talking about getting very
deeply involved with the anatomy, but we need to take into,
have a sense of what the fundamental construction is.
Now all the mammals, all of these bones and things that we've got here,
everything pretty much has certain elements in
common that are the same. Doesn't make any difference if we're talking about
the simple rodents like this or the horse.
We all have these very, very, very common elements
So let's talk a little bit about that.
What we have in common to start with. This is very fundamental.
You got eyes, nose,
a mouth, got a head.
Now we start with this, every
thing that you see here, everything has got the same basic elements.
The differences are scale. Okay, here we have
a cat, here we have a Saber-toothed Tiger. And then also
what we take and eat.
Now that's gonna be a major thing. So let's just take and go through some of this stuff.
Now, when you take a look at the drawings that I've been
doing and you're watching the videos, you're gonna hear me
commenting about where the eyes are, where the nose,
where the mouth, where the ears are. It all
relates, we're all the same. Okay.
So it doesn't make any difference, whether I'm drawing a Dachshund
or a variation on a wolf. It's all the same. We look
at, watching how these drawings were done
whether it's the llama, the goats,
we build on these things. So now
start with the main
element, and let's just take and go through a progression here where we can understand
this a little bit more clearly. Start with
(drawing)
human. Okay, now I can see
analytical construction, we
analyze and reconstruct. Construction is a series of steps
that we go through. And one of the points that -
and I mention this pretty often as I'm drawing -
I don't really spend much time drawing from photographs.
I try to look at the real thing to capture the real life
of the thing I'm drawing. I'm not copying okay, I'm
analyzing. So in here, we start with the
idea, just where the eyes are. We got the ear, we got a brow line,
we have a nose.
In proportions we think about in the humans. We think about the pit of the
neck is, coming through. So this is the thing, now let me
do this sort of in a profile so it'll show up a little bit clearer. What we're talking
about now. So we take
this basic element here now. Okay, skull
coming through here, our eyes,
our ear. Corner of the eye socket is here, so we have the side of the head
cheekbone. This cheekbone is an important element that we look
at. The nose coming out.
Note the nose is right between the eyes.
The ears line up. Now, the muzzle, the mouth
comes out this way.
The ear is actually - in a human
it's roughly the center of our gravity is in here. So this is the
halfway point, coming around the neck,
pulling back. Eyes are here. Now
this gives us a beginning point. So
then you can see these are the basic
elements that we're working with. You can see the eye sockets. Now
we're predators, just like the wolf
or the one down here, this is the
tiger. We're predators, the dogs, we're
predators, we look forward, the eyes are forward.
So that makes a big difference in what are we doing,
how do we eat? Let's just carry that a little bit farther.
We're pretty much - we grind, we take in
bites, we chew. Now, a lot of the animals
don't chew. A lot of people don't realize it -
that this tiger...
A cat can't chew. A cat
punches and slices. That's what it does.
It has no molars to take and grind
with. So, this always seems to be a surprise
for a lot of people, but even your domestic cat. The only difference between
this cat and this is size.
That's a big difference right there. And that's what takes and
makes. And we're gonna go into that. How the size affects
what we're dealing with. So
now, from that, so we can say well okay
now, if we take one of the big differences between
humans and say, this gorilla.
Okay this
guy here. We look at this brow here
but if you take and think of a human, our head goes this way.
So we're talking about here, so one of the big
changes that takes place here then, we can just take the idea
even of a chimp. We say, we just take in -
lop off this and...
A big element I was talking about, what we eat,
well they eat very, very rough, hard food.
They have to take and really be chewing things.
They have grinders, they can grind, they can nip, basically related.
So what we get then is a
mouth that takes and comes out
to take and deal with all this food. But the nose
is still in the same place, it hasn't changed. If we come in here,
if I take this and lop off the top
and now we end up with a strong brow, cheekbones.
So this is still a major element here now.
But you can see, just with this little bit of change here,
blocking this off and pulling the mouth out
we have basically one of our cousins, a chimp.
Nothing has changed, only
slightly things, everything's in the same place. And so
you're always looking for the same thing. And you're looking for
the difference. But what we would start with is this:
You look at yourself and you take
and see the things. And now, when I was talking about scale
We look at this. We have this is a
gorilla. Now we look at this big back piece up here.
Well a gorilla head is incredibly heavy.
These are massive masses of bone
and gorillas don't stand straight up. They tend to be leaning over and going on all
fours. So they need muscles to take and
attach, to take and hold that head up.
So all of this then, and even these ridges here now
have to do with scale, so that
just by taking and building this up
and coming through in here
now is where the muscles would be pulling. Then we're
taking and you can see now, if we get the basic
image of a gorilla.
Now we go to the same thing. Okay, look at this cat.
If you can see
what we've got going here. You see the back of the skull.
Now this ridge here, this is what we call the nuclear ridge.
On the back of the skull we have the same thing.
but it doesn't stick out very much, it's just a line that goes around.
But here we can see it. But now if you look at the tiger,
this is like the gorilla,
this becomes a large area. This ridge
in here is large because for all of the muscles
that are taking and pulling from here, coming through and attaching
to the jaw. So scale makes a big
difference in determining of the volume that we're taking and dealing with.
So we're constantly taking and
focusing on this scale thing. Like here,
I'm not sure exactly what this is,
badger or something. But you can see that the
ridge is very small. Lightweight.
Now the other thing I was mentioning
was what we eat...
This is a sheep.
Notice that the eyes are to the side.
Now that would be exactly the same thing if you think about the giraffe.
You know, the grazer. You notice that there's no
teeth up in the front. They're a nipper, they come
down and nip, picking up off the ground. So
the mouth is stretched out. So
what we see then if we take and make that transition
now from here, starting out,
and I'm gonna do this a little bit three quarter here so that we
can see it a bit more clearly. You got the
center here. The eyes now have moved more to the
side. Coming through over to the side
in here. And it's almost like a tube going through. And then the
nose, since we're talking about animals that are taking and coming
down, the nose is pushed out more. But we still
have a cheekbone, not that we can see.
We still got this corner come down here. You look at the horse, we can see
there's this bar coming down here. We feel the
line where we would take and go. Here, this is a
a pig. You still got the
corner here, teeth in front. They
grind. So
this is very same. There are difference in the shape of the
top, the shape of this.
Comparing that to say a dog or a cat, we get a
different shape going through. We're looking
at, in the corners we have -
the corner this comes down where they pull through. We have the jaw
going down. What we get then
is a sequence of things. Now another point here
is, everybody's ear is
in the same place. Notice our ear, this is where our ear
our jaw comes right in front, right at the end of
the zygomatic arch. So this is where your ear is.
Look at this guy here,
that's where the ear is, right there.
If we take a look at the cat
that's where the ear is,
right there. The jaw
comes in front of the ear. Zygomatic arch
ends at that. If I had an elephant here it would be exactly the same.
So, what we work with then, and as we look at even the horse
here, I can take this up and...
(lifting)
Here's the jaw coming around,
there's the ear. Everybody's ear is in the same place.
Now notice that the horse's eyes are leaning to the
side. And it's coming down and you can see where we're
coming out the point. I make a point when I'm drawing the horses to talk about
the
fact that the way the nostrils are coming here - horses don't breathe through the mouth,
they breathe through the nostrils. So the way the nostrils are coming out
here, it's where you can see the flatness across the front.
So everybody's got variations but we always look for the same thing.
Now, with the horned animals,
but again notice that the eyes are very much to the
side, notice where the horns are coming out.
This is different than a deer. Goats don't
lose their horns every year. Now, but you'll see
that the ear now is gonna be right in the back in
here. It's coming down through in here. So we take
and we build. We build, everything builds around these
points. Okay, so now we
take and always look for the same thing. We're always
analyzing, we're always thinking about the end
of the skull, coming through, how big is it,
how much room do take and need. Okay now,
so we start to deal with these similarities.
Now when we talk about the legs.
Now not that much difference between
cats and dog in reality. You look at this,
look at all the toes and what have you.
It's very similar,
not that much difference. Same basic
arrangement that we got going.
The same things, the only difference is
look at the end, their toes tend to -
the last digit tends to be up and the claws coming up.
He's got more tendons. But the big things are the same.
So those don't change. Now,
there is a big difference between the mammals
or humans in particular, than everybody else.
And it's the orientation of the parts.
So now, when we look at this cat
we can see that it's really very narrow
And you'll hear me commenting when I'm drawing the horse
that how narrow actually the horse is.
Again, a lot of times we don't think of horses being narrow, we tend to
think that they're really broad and what have you. But they're actually quite narrow.
And the reason for the narrowness is now,
and this is a big, major difference
between humans and most of the mammals.
Our rib cage
is, looking at a cross section, is like this.
Spine here,
okay, we're horizontal this way. Our
scapulas are out on the side right here
and here. And then we have a clavicle
that comes around and comes over, comes over to here
and holds our shoulders apart. In fact
the only place - the clavicle is really
the only point where you take and
connect your shoulders to the rest, it's the only
really real joint. Everything else is being manipulated by muscle
but that's the joint. Cat doesn't have a clavicle.
Horses don't have clavicles. Okay, so
that's a major point. So that what we see then
is we start talking about this. Instead of having a
horizontal arrangement for
the ribcage, they're like this
and the
scapulas then are on the side going this way.
No clavicle. What we have is this little extra
curve up here that pretty much let's us sleep on our back.
You don't see many horses around sleeping on their back,
okay. But, so that's a major
difference. Just the orientation of the ribcage.
You have to keep in mind... Now, so when we're looking at this, and this is a point
that I really make a lot of effort at talking about,
that the scapula is coming down at an angle
this way. And then there's a
pattern that's created going this way, going down here
coming down here. And I will mention this
again. You're drawing
a zigzag pattern
coming through. Your scapula
and we're coming down to the elbow,
and we're coming down to the wrist, and then we'll come down to the parts.
And that's very, very consistent. You're constantly
looking for that. Now, what I'm gonna do is to take and do a
sort of a schematic diagram.

(paper tearing)
Now,
if we take the human, okay, we have
our head,
our ribcage. Notice that our
ribcage is narrow at the top.
We have a sternum, come down, corners of the ribcage,
we have a waist, and then we have our pelvis.
And then the legs taking, coming out down
here. Okay, now if I take, see the cat,
look at this.
Now if you take this into consideration now
we have these very clear cut
areas. You got the skull, you have the neck,
we have the whole thing, scapula,
then going over the ribcage, the lumbar region,
and the pelvis, tail. You can see the zigzag patterns
very clear coming through. Now from that
we take
head,
neck,
ribcage. Notice how
this is very similar now, not that different.
Waist, spine,
coming down. Waist.
And now here's a big change.
We have a rather broad pelvis. Horses have a broad pelvis.
Elephants, hippos, rhinos have broad pelvises.
Cats.
Notice the cat, very narrow.
You can see this is like a rail through here.
So it's a very narrow and it's actually here.
We can see on a horse and a dog, we can see the ends
and goats, we can see the ends. These are the ischial tuberosities
and these are the ends of the iliac crest up here. These are like
rail or box, and I'll go into this a little bit more.
So that's a big difference. But we're -
I generally, when I'm talking about, now this isn't a
biological difference, this is just a visual difference, when I'm talking about
when I go to the zoo and I'm talking about different animals
those with the narrow hips, or narrow pelvis, and those
with a broad pelvis. Visually that's a big difference.
And it's how things work. So if we take
the cat and a dog
we find that we have a rail this way. Now I'm gonna do this sort of
three quarter now. Pelvis is becoming the tail, it's coming out of here.
So now, if I take and draw this,
I'm gonna start going back to the front again. Start with the skull
and I'll just do
a generic sort of thing here. Got the neck
going back in. This is a cylinder.
The ribcage, and this is something to
if you really take and look at horses for instance, you'd be very surprised
to find that the actual ribcage is really very,
very narrow at the beginning. Now this applies to everybody.
It's narrow at the top, it gets broad as we
come down. When drawing the goats that really comes through very, very carefully. Narrow
at the top and broad as we go down. And
so what we see then is this volume that's going back
in, coming down and going around.
Now, because the scapulas are coming
on the side in here, where our scapulas
are out here. And we have this clavicle that
taking and coming around, giving us that broadness.
Well their scapulas, and I'm drawing a top view here,
their scapula is coming through in here and going on the side
like this, so that the shoulders then
are in front in here. So the scapula
is coming forward this way. No sternum.
Well there is a sternum and that may be dropping down
lower, but there's no clavicle. So we have this point through here.
So we get, this becomes like a box then.
that we build on. And the ribcage is then going back.
Okay, so that becomes a major element
then. So we got the scapulas, shoulders are out in front,
this is coming back in, coming through, so
this is nearly then round. Now as we go back
in, there's a waist.
It depends on the animal.
Horses have a negligible waist. A horse can't take and
turn at the waist. To take and turn they have to cross the
legs and move around. Cats you can drape them over your shoulder.
Dogs are pretty flexible. They have a waist, you can see it
So when you're drawing now we start thinking about
okay, how these different animals are able to move.
That's important. Like for instance,
a horse, you don't see horses picking stuff up with their paws
or their hooves in this case.
Cats picking things up, dog pick things up,
so that's a difference sense in how they manipulate things. Part of that
has to do with their bones.
We have this thing called a radius. We can
twist, our arms twist. We can move things,
we can do this. A horse can't do that.
Goats don't do that. Okay, then
on the bottom we have one bone, or two bones,
depending on the goat with the cloved hoof, but
that's a bit of uniqueness. So what you do
is you're taking and starting with what you know and then you expand on that.
So, what we have then now,
we take this idea of the pelvis, and I'm gonna draw this from the back view now.
Now, one of the elements here is that
we're talking about this now, as I start
to draw. Thinking of the spine
Okay the spine, it's not out here
on the edge, it's
down through here. And that becomes very
evident when you start thinking about the horse. When I first starting drawing
horses I basically didn't know anything about them. I was just trying to copy them.
Okay, but once you start to understand what you're drawing it makes a big
difference. So that if for instance we have a horse,
the shape of the horse
is basically something like this.
(drawing)
Okay we see this line here
coming down, then the scapula in here.
Well, I know when I first started drawing
I used to think, "Oh the spine goes like this." It doesn't do that
at all. The spine of a horse takes and goes
down like this and then
taking and coming up and it goes that way. And we have these
vertebrae, now I'm exaggerating a bit, but then we have these vertebrae that are sticking
up here. From here to here
there's, and going to the base of the skull,
in other words, this
section in here where everything attaches, this is
called the nuclear ridge. Woops.
That nuclear ridge
is the same ridge that we have back here.
Okay, notice that we see here the marks
where the muscles attach, here's where everything builds, here's
where the center of your spine goes. It's actually dead center
okay, but we have this nuclear ridge here. Okay, we don't
have a big thing sticking because we're vertical, our
balance is there. So this nuclear ridge -
so when you look at the horse though, they actually have
this cable that come through,
which is the same we have, exactly the same thing. Then they have
things that are coming down here, holding up.
Did I mention when I'm drawing the horse, I said, well horses basically sleep
standing up. They have to pull their head down.
So that's a major shape,
just knowing and being conscious of where that goes.
Because you can take that, put your hand on it and hold it.
Okay so, that's a little bit more to take
and consider. So when you look at the goats, well
why we get a straight line here
is, on the horse this, and on the
cat now has the same thing, here
this is the nuclear ridge. This is the
atlas and axis muscle or bones in here,
and this nuclear ridge goes across and attaches here.
Coming through. Now, the difference
with the horse, it's like they're attaching to the first one. Like here with the cat.
But if we had a goat, and when you look at the goat, you're gonna see a big change
here. Because it's taking in, the vertebrae are
sticking up more. So the ones, and that's seven cervical
vertebrae. You can put your finger on it in the back. You can feel that
bump that's sticking out. That's where the
nuclear ligament comes down, it goes all the way down our spine.
Okay so, that becomes a point
When I'm drawing I try to feel first it's the gesture.
Now that
if you look at any of my books on drawing
that's always the first flow that we're taking
and doing. Notice how I'm taking,
I rehearse the stroke coming through
and I follow the pattern
of the elements.
Now see this can just as easily be a person
leaning over. Now the biggest difference
is gonna be when I start to deal with the pelvis
and coming through. Now see
this could very easily give us the same kind
of a sense that a person - I'm just changing
the proportion of the elements. So when I'm drawing back here I actually
think of that nuclear ridge.
I'm thinking of the ribcage or the neck.
I'm drawing
the ribcage. I think of the
scapula coming through
I feel where we're building up in the center. Now that's gonna
vary a lot with animals: How much it's sticking
up. If we had a buffalo here you would see it just like a big sail
coming up. So we come through here then
we come down, then I'm taking to the corners
of the pelvis.
And with this cat for instance, you can see
that is a
very different are these. The cat pelvis
is like two rails going like this
with the tail coming out of the center here and the spine going up.
So they're parallel. The spine is coming through,
in here, coming out. And the tail is coming out of here. We can see
this back piece in here. The
leg is coming forward, coming back, coming down,
through. There's a waist coming through.
So now, when you look at, again it depends on the animal,
that we can see the
actual sense of the waist here. We have
this plane coming down here. Now
all of the animals have a slight different arrangements.
Each section of the
vertebrae is different. So we get here
this is the cervical area, lumbar,
we come down to, you can see
these. See each section of the vertebrae are different.
They're different. They're different.
You can see this is a corner thing, sticking up where this goes in.
But now, and here in particular if you can see,
here these spines, these
are coming off, they're going in.
This is a fragment of a
goat. You can see this is
still pretty parallel. But you can see the sides here, these are sticking out.
They're pretty horizontal going out this way.
So it'll vary from one
animal to the other, but how it affects the look
is whether you got a real
square corner here, dropping down.
So now you can see as I'm building, doing this
and they start coming through.
I'm keeping, again notice the zigzag patten
coming through. So we're building
we're always looking for these points now.
As we're going through. So it's a pattern. Now
as I'm just blocking in this head here a little bit,
one of the elements here, even as I look at this, I would say well
this is really a
triangular type shape. And you find most
of them are. Okay our head is not very triangular
because our mouth is stuck back in here.
This is in. Now, here
the mouth is really stuck out,
so in the overall sense, and we look at the horse
this is a big triangle that's taking and
being created here. And so that's what we look for in terms of just blocking
in the simple shapes. And whether we're dealing with things
going across horizontally or what we're dealing with.
Now we're talking about, the pelvis here we can do some talking about.
Well the difference between a cat and a dog
is a dog's pelvis is a little wider in the back
than a cat's. In other words, if this is a
dog, I'd be drawing the rear end of a dog here.
I'd be looking for these corners.
It's coming back,
the tail is coming out of up here.
But you can see the points
back here. Then here's where we take, I'm gonna need
to start going to the knee, start coming down. Now
what I just did right there, that's a patella.
Just like ours. Then we get down to the heel, down here.
So when you're drawing them, and we can see
this element. The muscles now start to take and pull off the pelvis
coming down through. Now
this brings up a whole new element
that we take and have to be conscious of. The one thing that I
look at when I look at somebody's animal drawings, the problem
most telling element is
that if someone knows anything about drawing animals or knows anything about
the animals, is basing the heel
and the elbow. Let me explain that and let's get
a piece of paper here.
(paper ripping)
Now
talking about how the configuration
notice now, the bones here
pretty much the same as ours. There's not
all that much difference, expect
they have a tremendous mechanical
advantage over us. Okay, in other words
a cat can jump, or cheetahs running,
what have you. Horses. The difference
is that if we take our
leg coming down. Our pelvis is broad here,
and your pubic arch here.
Our ischial tuberosity is down here,
the shape, the spine's coming through in here, the tail,
we have a tail, tail bone.
This is coming across, down this way
Coming out of here, leg comes down,
(drawing)
patella, and we have the fibula and tibia coming down,
and our heel.
our heel doesn't stick out all that much. And then we've got the foot
coming out. Okay, now if you take
the cat, or dog,
what we get is this: the pelvis is now, instead of being
wide like this, is narrow.
And we're coming down. All of this, the pubic arch
is still underneath in here. In other words we can see.
Okay, this is a
squirrel. Same thing, notice
this is a long narrow piece of bone.
Narrow. Pubic arch is underneath,
here. So it's the shape. Now this is going up here,
going up this way. Actually
there's a little story about this. I was taking and teaching a
class here at home and my
neighbors and friends know that I take and doing like this.
Pig's skull was delivered to me on a big platter, like
the whole skull and I had to clean it myself. So somebody comes up to the house
saying, "Hey we got a fresh road kill for you."
And so I got this road kill and
then I had to take it and clean it. Go through the whole process.
Well I went through a lot of work and I had gotten this thing, and I had the skull,
it was really nice, it was the size I
wanted these things like this. I bought
one but I had it all cleaned up
and I went through a lot of effort to take and go through that and then I took
and for a moment I put it down on the coffee table
while I went. Well in the meantime,
I was just gone a couple minutes, the dog was chewing on that thing
and crunching it up. That dog
almost turned into a specimen. Anyway, but
you can see if we look at the legs, like the hands, it's
not all that different. It's got all of the same bones, see the fingers.
We can see the claw, or say -
scale, scale, scale. Anyway, I'm regressing here.
So, we take from here now, we can see
coming down,
patella on the end.
Doesn't make any difference if we're talking about horses, cats, or dogs.
Double bone coming down here.
Now here's the difference.
Notice that the heel
comes out this way.
Now, so our muscles are taking and coming from in here,
and here, come down and attach
to here. There's very little mechanical advantage here.
Here they're coming over to this point
and are going over to here.
So, that makes a big shift
because the joint is at this point, which is an important
point to keep in mind though. For those who are involved in animation
that they tend to think at the end of the heel, that's where
it changes, that's where the joint - that's not where it's at. It's at
where the actual bone is, here. Okay, same thing here. The muscles
that going - our muscles are taking and coming down and attaching
on here to here. We got the muscle
coming down from here to the patella and then we got
stuff coming from underneath in there. And our gluteus muscles
are pulling off in here. Well dogs,
cats, horses, their gluteus's are only going to bring short distance in here.
The muscles that are really doing the work
are coming from here, down to here.
So when you're drawing this, then
we get also, we get the stuff coming from here over into here.
So, there's incredible mechanical
advantage. But if you think of the shape
that you're working with and then where these things have to attach.
It really helps you to draw it. And like I started out with talking about,
this is the point where I look at. So when you look at the back
what we see, ischial tuberosity here
the corner of the pelvis here, I look at, I see these things
coming down this way and coming
in. We see this coming in, it's right here.
This point here, the gap between there
and there. We start to
see how these things work. In this
gap in here, we're talking about the extension
of the heel that comes through, that's a major
point when you're looking at the drawing. And that's the thing that you really have to
look for. So, now that applies also then to the
elbow. Now, not as much of an extreme
but it's the same thing. We're look at this is sticking out.
Now our elbow barely sticks out at all, it doesn't stick out.
It's really all just wrapped around that bone there.
So the mechanical advantage that takes place
then. Now, notice here that the
scapula, the ridge is in the center.
Well if I had a scapula here, you'd find that it's not
that way at all. That here it's almost equal.
Because of the way the orientation
where the muscles are pulling from here
pulling down, coming across, going over into here,
coming through. But they have all the same, they have the muscles that are coming through
in here, going down. They have the pectoralis muscle
are in front. In fact, when I'm drawing I bring that up quite often
when I'm talking about pectoralis muscles that are coming round
pulling off the front of the chest, turning down. So this is again
these are major elements that we always look for. Now
this is, what we're going through here now
is just something to make you aware of what you need to know.
Much of what my job is,
is to take and let you know what you don't know.
And to give you a general sense of how to go about it.
And so let's take and talk a little bit now
more about how you go about it.
(paper rustling)
(paper tearing)
First
and foremost, everything to start with
is capturing the gesture. That's the
life. And there's no one medium, here I'm drawing with a charcoal.
I draw with a pen, I draw with pencils. I work with
wash. I do a lot of my drawings working with the water brush, and you'll see
that in the drawings as you look through that as we go through the drawings.
And, part of the thing is now, when you're drawing
out in the wild, like what I'm doing,
is that the animals don't
sit still for you. They're gonna be moving, they're gonna do
and as you'll see, often I will start
be doing many drawings at the same time. Now
I do a lot of drawing on the iPad. Same thing, doesn't matter.
But what you do is the
capture of the action of the animal
And then you build on that in construction.
Now, what you are doing a lot of the time, as you're taking and
you're drawing from life, you're capturing reference material.
I'm not against using the camera. Use the camera.
It'll give you what something looks like. But it's
deadly in terms because it will have a tendency to
have you copying what you're looking at. And that
creates a stilted drawing. So
what we have to do, is we have to take into
the thing, be interested in bringing the animal to life.
And then you can back in and you build on that.
Now the first step in bringing that thing out is
taking and
just feeling the flow.
How does it go? This should be
done as freely and as directly as you can.
Following the pattern
(drawing)
(drawing)
(drawing)
No matter what the animal's doing, you're taking a start,
(drawing)
capturing a sense of what's
going on. Now, this is absolutely no different than
what I do with the figure.
Same thing.
You capture the action, you capture the gesture. Now once
you've got that, then you come back in and once
I've got this then I'm taking, saying okay now
what's the basic volumes. Now
in this, don't start out thinking in terms of detail.
You're talking about very, very general
volumes that you're working with. And then you slowly,
we will build on that. Often when I'm sketching, and you'll see me doing
this, is I will take and actually do this part here
working with wash, because it's a really convenient, really fast way of working.
So that as you're building these things then,
you're taking and you look for that,
and I'm taking, coming back. Simple construction.
Taking a look in here, saying this is...
Feel the volume. Making the corners, I'm always
looking for these corners. I'm looking for
the scapula, where it comes across. Now
this is just -
it's evident whether you're looking at an elephant or a rhino,
it's still there. We look to that, you'll find it.
So now we build from that, so then
the next cylinder coming up. And then
what is this shape, what are we drawing? Everybody -
same elements we're looking for.
Take different ears,
whether it's a dog or a cat,
and whatever you'll find that the different configurations, everybody's
eyes. Now the predators, like dogs and cats, eyes are
facing forward. A goat's will be facing to the side.
So, that takes into consideration. So then you're thinking
down, think of the elbow, am I drawing the elbow,
that's not the joint, the joint is here, coming through.
Trying to feel the way it follows
through. You're building.
So, once you understand the basic fundamentals
then you can take and build
and work with that. That's the start of what we do.
Okay, so now when you're taking and drawing from the
animals. You know one of the things
that I've done in the past, which is I think is something you can do.
I remember a class I used to teach animal drawing, I've been teaching animal drawing
fifty-
five years or so, sixty years. I
didn't start out teaching animal drawing to teach
animal drawing. The whole point of the animal drawing
class I was teaching is how do you approach something
that you don't know anything about. And that's what I'm trying to do here.
Is to take and give you a logical
way of elements that we look at and think about
that are constant and consistent
and from that basis then you can
look at something and say, "Well here's the eyes, here's the nose,
here's the muzzle, their ears are in the same place, what's the difference?"
And so there you go, and you start to build.
Looking for the differences. What kind of body shape it is, a tube,
a bowlish shape, a
triangular shape. You look at the basic elements
that you're drawing. So you're analyzing, so
it gives you the foundation to take
and go from there. So you build on this
foundation. You look at, you're analyzing. So you end up
having to study more. So I've acquired
all of this stuff just out of curiosity,
and wanted to know more about how it's
all put together. I study and I'm always learning. So it's
a whole process that we go through. So anyway
look at the drawings, use your drawings, and then build up.
Even if you use photographs, take and
analyze the photograph. Don't copy them please. Build on that thing.
So we're taking and going from that point. Okay
let's have fun drawing.

Okay before we go out and draw the dog to start with, I'm gonna tell you one thing.
Not everybody has all these animals floating around
their backyard. One thing everybody can do, they can have mice.
Take Beatrix Potter.
She had these little mice that she drew all the time. And I've gone
having a class and given everybody in the class a mouse. This is a good
place to start actually, drawing mice. And just put them on
some kind of a pedestal. They're very cautious, they're not gonna try to
fall. You can go hamsters, these are things
that everybody can have, you can get them, they're accessible.
And if you have your own dog and cats, those of course, then
you can go from that up to the other animals or farm animals,
you can go to the zoo and it's a beginning process.
But it's something you can do all the time. But starting with
something like that. So what we're gonna do now, we're gonna start with the dogs.
And that's a good place to begin with. Usually they're pretty
accessible, so let's have some fun drawing dogs.
Basically now I'm gonna take and draw the gesture that I want.
She's not being real cooperative right here
but you can get a sense, in other words.
What you do is you go for the gesture
Now I'm basically drawing
from imagination here. And I'm using her as a reference.
Coming through and -
she's not sitting up but I'm gonna take and draw
her as if she's standing. She's sitting.
Okay so I'm coming through. See if you can get her rear end to get up so I can see
a little bit more. There we go.
(drawing)
She's wanting to take and sit down, the tail's wrapping up,
but I'm gonna take and draw it going out.
So obviously now you're seeing what
I do is not copying. And again I want to get these
into the ground plane. She's going in
this way. So now
as I build the drawing
coming through.
These are rather, you should notice that these are
rather quick drawings. They're not long labored type of things that you would do
if you were copying from a photograph or something.
As I take and...
First is the gesture coming through. Now
what I'm going through, exactly the same way I did the other drawing,
now I'm coming through. I search for the structure
and
come like a box of the pelvis. We're not getting
quite as much of a foreshortened view, but still
we're getting some where we would come through, so I make a
point of going over the surface,
take and give the overlapping, coming in.
We want to feel the scapulas on both sides now, we can feel this
lifting up and we get
a little bit more of a pull here. This should come down
a little bit more now. Okay, now we get the scapula
coming out on this side, coming through.
Feel the forms coming underneath. And I pull
through. Feel the elbow coming.
Let's get her up a little bit here.
Come on puppy, come on. It's okay. It's okay, it's okay.
Oh that's perfect right there. Okay now I can take
and study that a little bit. Coming through
and I already -
the basic stuff going there. I just wanted to see the
relationship of the other leg in here as it comes down.
And they can feel where - this'll be the ischial tuberosity sticking out,
back here. You can see where the tail is coming out. And
coming through. Now
rather full, the muscles are almost
exaggerated because they're all sort of cramped
in. And feel the ribcage.
Sort of overdid that waist a little bit. Feel
the chest, got the elbow
Now going back, the head - now what I'm
drawing here, I'm consciously thinking that the base
of the skull, back here. And
I'm coming through, and I'm thinking where, like the
corners of the eye socket. She's turned away
and that becomes a, we really
feel the plane, them going out of the masseter muscles.
Coming through, the nose, going out.
Now underneath
we pick up the curvature
of the
ear and picking up the ear on the other side.
Now I've got it pretty well sorta of blocked in.
Not a lot of detail, I just have
the general sense of what's going on.
Now, I'm gonna take and, just like the last drawing,
I'm gonna take and come through.
Use the wash
to take and - now in doing this
I'm emphasizing the three dimensional qualities of -
I wanna get a sense of the coordinated.
Feel this coming in, feel
the roundness through here.
Scapula. Since you're leaving
the light hitting the end of the scapula, this is all in
shadow, this is this coming through.
Particularly now, the plane and
since we're actually seeing this in more of a silhouette
underneath, the pull of the tail.
(drawing)
Okay, now I'll go back in. And like I mentioned in the last one
the water actually works almost like an eraser, so I can take
it and pick up a little bit of the
creating a tone behind. Also it works as
a light against dark, dark against
light. You get a sense of the shadows,
taking and going through. Now,
first I go back in
with pencil
to take and get a little bit of the dark.
(drawing)
Now I'm constantly focusing on
the structure. Corners, elbow,
you know this coming around.
Feel the pull, the base of the skull
and actually you get a very good sense
of the trapezius muscles as they come back.
Under, behind, elbow,
through.
Now,
in.
Corner.
I'm actually using the
core as a way of taking and
helping us to see. Corner pushing down
(drawing)
And this.
In this drawing he looks a little short
I think. Okay, now just like I did in the last drawing, use a little bit of
dark pencil to take and
emphasize a little bit.
Now
we wanna take and we're gonna draw two other
or three other dogs right here. So
here and it's going through, pushing
a little bit.
(drawing)
Alright, now
one of the things that we need to take into
and do a little studying: the foot. So
maybe we can come over here and hold her. I wanna draw the
foot. You want me to pick her up and bring her close? Yeah. Okay, hold her just like
that. I'm gonna do a very quick drawing
of the leg. Because there's - they
tend to be rather unique.
And this is, again, what you need to do when you're drawing animals,
is to take and study the parts
so that you are understanding
what's going on. Because in these drawings I've been doing, I had nothing
there that took and actually showed us very, very clearly
what was going on. So now you can see, I'm taking and getting a bit of the
shape of the form here now. So they come through
where the knee is, in here.
Coming around, want to feel the
joint now. We got the tendons are pulling down into
here. The joint is actually behind, in here.
And then we're feeling the leg bones coming down
and then here. Taking a look at
the pattern now. Okay, we've got four
toes.
We're seeing the underside of
the pad coming through.
And feel - notice that it's sort of a
gnarly shape to everything that's going on.
Now, if we take and - I wanna
hold it and draw the other leg there a little bit so we can see
knee.
Okay, feel this whole thigh coming down, pulled it
down. Now this is what you do, is you take
and you really have to take and study. Study the parts.
You get the whole, you get the gesture, but you need to
understand the pieces. And so coming through.
(drawing)
Now, next thing I would do with this would be,
and I'm not gonna at this point do that, but I would take
and come through and actually look
at the
bones that I could. It's a resource
just to really become an idea of what the bones
actually are doing. You can feel the
pad. So the dogs take
and this is the pad, you'd really be down here
but...So we wanna feel
coming through. We can feel the angle of the
bones as they come down. Okay now I'm going over that, sort
surface again. Notice that as I'm doing this I'm constantly
drawing around, over the surface. So
this is animal drawing. But it's not just animal
drawing, it's drawing. So we're taking
and - so look at these lessons
as not strictly animals that we're talking
about the whole means of
drawing itself.
Coming through, I want to clarify that pad a little bit. The foot coming
down, with the pad underneath. The
pad in here and what I'm seeing on this side.
I'm actually only seeing - and we got another and then there's another
behind that. Then we get the pads underneath.
Coming through, okay.
Now, keep focusing and we got the elbow
back, or actually that's the
heel. Taking and coming through,
and down, coming around.
Okay, I think that'll do it. Let's take
and amplify on everything we've been talking here when we're
looking at the other dogs.

Now this drawing I'm starting, I'm starting out with a wash
or water brush.
And so the point here now is, you're doing this -
I don't draw any different. Okay so
first taking and
spending a little time taking and discovering what this dog looks
like. Now, notice that
same pattern that we're going through, drawing the dog. No
different. Now she's a standard
sort of, wanna say a mutt, but
her proportions are quite different now. So in other words,
it tends to work out a sort of a squarish
form. Look at the legs, coming through,
you know here. So all I'm doing now is just a
discovery process in doing the drawing.
Not worrying about any kind of detail. I'm just taking and getting a sense
of what the dog looks like. And
again, ground plane. Now you're gonna
see that drawing horses, drawing dogs,
not gonna change very much. It's all pretty much
standard. You take and first you get the whole
sense of the thing. You take some time taking and trying
to see what the overall thing is.
So, as I go through that now
we can take and maybe
we can turn her a little bit so we can get the little different angles.
Sylvia look out this way, yeah. Come on girl.
That's good.
(drawing)
Getting a little bit of action there.
Now
in doing something like this
often, particularly when I'm working with a wash,
it's
very conducive to taking and being able to go back
into the wash drawing. Okay, slightly turn
her a little bit more please. Towards me? Yeah.
Okay, that's good right like that. So now
(drawing)
Just feeling.
(drawing)
Okay, so you can see I'm just getting the thing.
Let me take and show -
start with how we can
actually go into this and
work with the pencil on top. In other words, I've gone through
all this blocking in. Now
I can take and go back right in to this.
And
one particular thing I like when I'm doing this is
that I like the overall sort of a
texture of a drawing.
In other words, the wash underneath.
Notice now I'm coming through thinking of the basic elements,
then
eyes forward. That hasn't changed.
(drawing)
A slightly different shape of ears.
Not quite so large. I still come back and I look
into the corners. We think Sylvia
has probably got a little bit of coyote in her.
Full, lot of fur.
She's not getting fat, this is sort of her winter coat.
Our dogs are not house dogs. They
rarely are in the house. And same basic
pattern, thinking where the corners are, coming through.
Come down, feel the fullness of
the chest. Scapula coming in.
And now we're
feeling the fur. Here's where I use the fur,
going around and focusing on the volume.
And now feel the scapula coming through,
comes back behind. I'm looking at the whole fullness
of all of this where we get the trapezius muscles
going back, we can feel all of triceps,
everything coming around behind. Sort of a fullness.
You can see how already she's
quite different than the Dachshund that we were drawing.
You can see the look already is
quite different. Come down, we can particularly in the legs -
when you come down you can see the change, we can start going
into the feet. There's a much longer
line, cut through.
You can feel the pull coming across.
Okay.
I'm sticking with the way the leg was obviously she's not in the same
position. It doesn't matter.
This got up a little bit higher, a little drop, a little bit more.
What I do is I'm looking at the proportion of the parts here.
Now, we come around
feel the - this is actually the pectoralis muscle coming around
and fitting into the ribcage. The ribcage
going around and over and
then coming up. We can feel the corner
of the pelvis, coming through.
And this, going back.
So again you notice how I'm constantly modifying it.
Coming through. You can feel the way there's a pulling,
fitting in, coming across.
The knee is right here.
And we can feel the pull down,
and we're coming down. I'm drawing at a slightly different angle though.
Also, I'm really just looking at the dog as
a reference. So I'm not copying
what I see. Coming down
I got the gesture, I blocked that in.
I was working with the wash. Now she's got a
rather bushy tail.
Through, see the other side.
Coming in.
So now, I can go back into this and
since this is a water soluble, I'll take and -
now this is blending in
with the sepia tone that I had to start with.
And so I'm using this now just like I did before.
Is to give us a sense of dimension
emphasizing the 3D
(drawing)
Now again, I'll take and come in
with the black to take
and push it a bit more.
Now in this point I want to try and bring a little bit of her
expression, where she's take - going up,
as sort of a bit of a
give her her look, looking at me.
So I'm adding a little bit more attitude to the drawing
which is something that you should try
to do, is to bring a little bit of personality to
into the animal's - Charles Darwin by the way
took and wrote a book right after The Origin of the Species
talking about the expressions of animals to man.
A lot of people don't know about but it's a
really useful researching element that you can use
to taking and thinking of
in terms of animal's expressions.
Now
I'm adding a bit more
(drawing)
Now you feel a bit more of the fullness, I want to give it a round -
She's got a lot of fluff, but the
leash is creating a bit of that. So all of this
is actually, coming down a bit more.
So even as I'm doing this, I'm always focusing on
the structure, coming around
building. So you can see how the...
(drawing)
Under mine I used the wash
as a tool to get us started.
And then building
on that as we go forward.
Now here,
I'm making this, which we want to feel the corner.
Here I'll go back in and I wanna pull
cause we want to see the corner of the pelvis is up here, the muscles are coming down here
so we feel there's a pull coming through.
Then the muscles are coming down to the end of the knee,
and then we're pulling down from there.
You can feel the end of the pelvis in the back.
And so
through
and just
a bit of local color.
Coming through. And she's actually got a
dark stripe. Now
I'm starting, I'm putting this pencil in here. I'm gonna take
and then come back in with the water to take
and carry out that tone a little bit farther.
So, the back end
of this.
(drawing)
Giving a little bit more clarity to that
back leg.
And
we got going here
(drawing)
Okay, now making a point out of trying to get the -
when you're going from one dog to another.
Rear end so. When you're going from one dog to another
it's all, much of it's interchangeable.
So we can feel - and what we started
out with with the Dachshund is a very clear
sense of the bony structure.
Here we got a pretty good shot too. Now, in the dogs that we draw
next, that's not the case. You won't
be able to see a lot of the structure. You got a lot fur.
And we're coming down. Notice how he's going bones
structure, you know from the knee, coming back.
So I'm taking and grabbing a little bit of detail here
while I can. Okay, so the other leg
is stretched back, coming through.
Tying it back in here. Now,
we can pull through, this is going down.
So the overlapping, we're getting a foreshortening as we talked about in the other dog.
Taking and going around the
surface and fitting in. Consciously going
underneath, through. Now I pick up the head
and the back.
Looking at the eye socket is the
element that's going away helps to give us a sense of the structure.
Ear.
Okay now,
more on legs, again the ground plane,
coming through, going in.
I keep emphasizing it as ground plane. Okay that's
one of the areas, first of all if you're in the
animation industry, you're always taking and drawing figures to
in sort of, in real space type thing. And you need to have a clear
idea where they are. And also for painting
and drawing. Let's see, it's one of those basic mistakes
that a lot of amateurs take and make
in the beginning is that they're not very
clear about the spacial qualities of what their drawing.
As I look at this, it looks pretty
squished up. So what I need to do then in the drawing
here is to take and give more
of a sense of structure. The pelvis.
What I'm doing is now we're going down and
this is going in
so we need to really feel this,
so when you do come through, feel the scapula on the other side.
Coming in, so again trying to get the overlapping.
Now she's pretty full.
(drawing)
Now she's actually
looking in a totally different direction, which doesn't matter so much
because now I can still see the essential elements.
And I do know my anatomy a bit, so
it's not such a big deal.
So we come through.
Okay,
in the first sketches that we got going, we got pretty much
a sense of
(drawing)
the overall shape of where things - she was stretching that one leg out a bit.
(drawing)
Now, come back, but I wanna really emphasize
the 3D here. So we're going around
over the collar and I go back up. I wanna feel
now she's turning a little bit here, so
we wanna take and feel where the base of the skull is up in here.
And so I'm constantly adjusting. And this is again,
this is something that we do with the human figure. You have to look
at the drawing and trying to visualize
look at it as a real thing.
And so that's
where we're not copying, we're analyzing, we're
building the thing.
You know the
collar, or the ear on the other side.
Now, when I come back down and I wanna
feel the elbow
pushing in, feel the muscles
coming down. And
through.
(drawing)
Now I'm gonna use the wash again,
come through and give a sense of dimension to the drawing.
And so, in doing that I want to
focus on getting the feeling through the corner
here. And this is going
behind. And also as we come through now
the corners, we have a back plane
here. And we can feel there's a sense - well we get the dark.
I'll come back in with the black and
I'll bring out.
Well,
now the
belly underneath and we go over the
shoulders. And again, point out now that
I'm using her as a reference. I'm not taking and
obviously not copying here because she's not looking in the same
direction I'm drawing. And so this is just
a bit of a reference.
Coming through. I'm really relying on
just the gesture and in a sense this is what we
do is that you're taking and you capture an action.
You actually get a gesture and then you take
and use your subject, even if it's a subject
only as a reference. But you start out with getting a gesture.
So now I'm gonna take and add some of the local color.
For instance she's got this pretty strong stripe down her back.
So now I know from experience
that the black that I'm putting down
is gonna take and
with the water soluble pencil, it's gonna get spread out a bit more.
And so we can take and turn her around to the back a bit more.
Okay. Sylvia, Sylvia.
Okay, there I can get
trying to see the pattern of the dark.
Okay the tail is pretty
much black all the way. So this is fairly
heavy now. And they come down,
it'll vary, and then I'll come down and get the dark at the tip.
(drawing)
Coming through
(drawing)
Now, come back into this with water
and you can see now
I do it to both to get the local color but also to
take and help to give us a sense of dimension.
(drawing)
Pulling
and picking up some of that dark.
Going over.
(drawing)
Really feel
the Achilles tendon coming down to the end of the heel.
Then feel the bone.
In fact, that the -
doing this section right here
that's one of the first things I look at when I look at people's animal
drawings. If they don't understand that then chances
are they don't understand much else about what they're drawing.
(drawing)
Get that
elbow, feel the pull.
Shoulder pushing out.
Now, trying to get
a little bit more of that foreshortening by just taking and
going over the surface.
Feel the pelvis sticking out.
So this is just drawing now. Coming through,
round,
and over the surface.
(drawing)
Well she's been really
nice and quiet there sitting down. Maybe I'll just take and do a little bit more.
Let's take and see if I can draw a little bit more of her
face and what have you so we can get a, not
necessarily a portrait, but we can get a sense
of a little bit more. You can go
ahead and cross the structure. Feel the muscle coming out.
Now this is gonna find, a lot of this is the basic pattern
of what we're gonna recognize, even when we're taking, looking, and drawing
sheep and goats. It's
all the four legged animals will tend to have a lot of the same
qualities about them.
(drawing)
And she
has a way of taking and bringing up her,
lifting her eyebrow.
Coming through, notice I'm consciously thinking now when I'm doing it, I'm consciously
thinking of the bone underneath.
Thinking where the corners, the bone, the eye socket
coming through. Going over the muzzle,
feeling the cheekbone, coming around.
Feel the pull,
the mouth comes forward.
(drawing)
I'm taking and I'm really focusing on the structure.
I want to feel the lips,
mouth,
tongue coming out a little bit. Through.
Particularly here now, there's the feel
all of this fur coming around. And you can see what I'm doing
I'm wrapping around, over the surface. Now, I wanna
get a...
(drawing)
We have our local ravens. We've got hundreds of ravens
around here. As you're picking up the
sound. Okay, this is just, you
can see how quickly this came through now. So
I'll maybe take and feel a little bit more in the pattern of that ear.
And
then again I'll use the wash as a quick way of taking and
blocking in, giving a sense of dimension.
Going out of my way here to
take and be using the light, coming from back
so we get a strong 3D quality to them.
(drawing)
Basic planes, coming through.
Here.
(drawing)
Move around Sylvia.
(drawing)
Okay, now I'm gonna
pick up with the black.
(drawing)
Now I'm being fairly
sparing with the black here because
when I come back with the water
it will take and get stronger.
(drawing)
Feel, going over.
(drawing)
If you notice now that
I'm working with this basically white
and I'm not adding any white. I've got white paper
but with the black and the sanguine.
A very traditional, very, very, very, very, very traditional drawing.
And in the next drawings that I do, the next dogs, we're gonna
take in very quickly. You got another dog and
I'm going to use a very, very traditional
media. I'm gonna use the actual Renaissance
sanguine stone to take and do drawing. So now
getting a pretty good sense of what's going on here.
(drawing)
Add a bit more tone
(drawing)
See constantly, see I go over
the lines, I'm going over the surface of the form.
(drawing)
Now I'm gonna go back in. Now notice I
did put very little black here. So now, when I come back in, it picks
up and becomes stronger, like I said. Coming through.
So you have to control the amount
when you're working with the water soluble pencils, you have to control
the amount that you put down.
(drawing)
Okay I think that'll do it. Let's get ourselves another dog.

Since we have basically a black and white dog here,
again, going through the whole process now.
He’s being a little bit more active.
He’s looking for attention here.
This is a Siberian Husky.
He’s called Buddy.
My son has one just like it.
Again, the basic proportions are—
it’s essentially a square when you look at it in profile.
I’m going to do what I do an awful lot.
I take and start several drawings and you keep jumping between them
as the animals are moving around.
We’re probably picking up a bit of wind noise here.
Trying to capture a little bit of the look with all the fur.
Now, these dogs, what you’ve been seeing is that they have their winter coat.
They’ve got a lot of fur.
He has pretty much a wolf look to him.
Okay, now I’ll go back.
Big bushy tail.
Again, I’m following the pattern.
Now, as I’m doing this I’m really thinking, again, structure, cheekbones.
Come through.
Feel the pull.
Come through.
He actually has like a seam down the middle of the muzzle.
You can see it as I’m developing this.
Constantly changing.
I’m using lines going over and around.
Now, I’ve added so much black here that I’m not going to be able to do too
much with the water.
I have to be fairly careful now in that what I’ll do with this is sort of cross-hatching.
I want to feel the way that it’s coming around the ear.
I want to feel the pull of this.
We’re giving a sense of dimension so I’m
not putting in heavy duty water on it right now.
I’m taking and thinking of where the jaw, coming through.
I need to feel.
Okay, now, pull.
I have a very light touch so it’s important to not take and get too heavy handed when
you’re doing this now.
I’m going to go back up into this and work into it.
Now you can see as I work into it I’m constantly—I’ve said this many times—
I want you constantly adjusting, changing it.
I don’t worry about all those lines that are there.
Just part of the texture of the drawing.
This reminds me, since we’re having this guy wandering around.
How all the famous animal drawers, what they would do is go out and shoot the moose and
stuff like that and drawing the animals.
They would go out and shoot and then hang them up so that they could be posed so that
they weren’t moving around.
Of course, you can do that with a camera today, but I really prefer not to use the camera.
Although, you can.
If I had to take to take and do something very, very detailed rendering type of thing
I would use a photograph, but I would take and
already have worked out the composition,
so I was only taking and using the photograph as a reference.
Coming through.
Okay, again, really focusing on
the structure and the form.
Feel the fullness of the chest.
Okay.
Let’s take and bring one of the other
dogs which are a variation on this.

Handler: Stay. Stay there.
Glenn: There you go.
Handler: There you go.
Glenn: Okay.
Again, I’m starting this out with a wash.
They have a really strong—this is a male.
The female the muzzle is not quite so strong.
Even with all this fur, and this is where I purposely are using them sort of last in
this cycle of animal, dogs, is that we sort of need to hunt for all of the structure.
Now, they have a lot of fur.
Besides the dogs being in their winter coat.
These are still—I should stay we have two.
This one is still a bit of a puppy.
Not a puppy, but I should say teenager.
They go through.
Quickly taking and thinking of the scapula coming in, pulling down through.
One of the reasons I use a wash is that it tends to be quicker in taking and approaching.
You can leave him sitting.
Leave him be the way he is.
I’m thinking of coming through.
Pelvis coming through.
Already at this point I can take and come through and start getting a large feeling
for overall volumes.
Feel the elbow come through.
The wrist.
LIttle darker than I wanted.
I’m using some cerulean blue with the sepia.
It’s a little bit more—I’m not getting quite so black.
I know it’s a little bit too much there.
You need to see him.
The dog is very mild mannered even
for a dog that’s raised to be protective of livestock.
He’s very, very—around family and what have you—
he is incredibly mild and even tempered.
He spends most of his time sleeping and lying around.
As they get older they sleep with the livestock, the goats, the sheep.
A lot of the smaller animals they just jump on top of them
and use them as a gymnastic thing.
So now what I’ve got is a rough blocking in of it.
Now I’m going to go through and then continue to work with the brush.
I’m trying to really emphasize all of the fur here.
What we get is, again, the basic element here
is I’m drawing fur over the surface to take
and describe…Now, you have to be careful that you don’t obliterate the shape
of the scapula.
Slowly start to emphasize it more structure coming down and feeling through.
Now here I’m taking and going underneath to pull out the leg.
Then I’m going through, over.
Now you’ve got that back knee which is bending.
You’ve got these huge paws.
Like I say, these guys are still, this guy here is still just a teenager.
He’s still growing and he’s going to end up being 150, 160 pounds.
I’m starting to get a little bit of the feeling for the fur.
We see that we get a strong compression now for all of this.
All of this creates a shadow of the leg and you can feel the heel.
It’s a little too blue.
Okay, that was the dogs.
Dogs come in all kinds of varieties.
Take and look at different dogs.
I started out with a dachshund because I could see the structure a little bit.
It was a different kind of shape.
Learn to analyze the animals and then as we’re dealing with it we talk about the way the
fur goes over and describes the form underneath it.
Let’s go on to the next animal.

The next thing we’re going to focus on is horses.
Everybody wants to take and draw horses.
How do we take and deal with the proportions on a horse?
That’s a critical element of it.
And so I’m constantly drawing horses.
I have them in my backyard.
So anyway, let’s do some horses.
Okay, now in drawing horses they are no different than drawing the dogs or anything else.
We start first with the whole sense of the action, the gesture of the horse.
As I was talking about this guy, now all of a sudden decided he wants to yawn.
Now, one of the things with horses is that
for people who have horses they are really particular.
They recognize everything.
They can tell what kind of horse it is, what kind of condition it’s in
and everything about it.
One of the elements with humans, one of the ways of taking and dealing with the proportions
is to take and use head lengths.
With horses we do exactly the same thing.
The horse, we take the length of the head, go from here to here is 2-1/2 heads long.
It is also 2-1/2 head high from the withers.
We go from that, the length of the horse from here to here and another half unit which would
be about here.
That gives us our basic rectangle.
As I’ve mentioned drawing dogs, most of your four-legged animals are rectangular in
proportion and shape.
And so we find the horse is no different.
You’ll find that most of your antelope, pretty much all of your four-legged animals,
except for the giraffe, of course, and maybe the gerenuk, fall into this square format,
and so we take and we use that as the beginning point.
Now, I look at what I’ve got here, it feels a little short.
In other words, if I take from here—no, it’s a pretty much on the money.
I’m going to take and come back a little bit farther.
It doesn’t take very much to make it look off.
I want to come through, build up through here.
The spine actually goes down like this.
I was saying withers.
Those are the vertebrae that are sticking up in back.
So now.
Head lengths.
We take the head length here again.
Take this head length.
That’s going to pretty much come from there to the scapula, which is coming through here.
We get a pretty good tool for taking and helping us.
Again, the zigzag pattern, come across to the corner, come to the heel,
and then we start going down.
You can see with just these very, very basic elements now we’re starting to get a pretty
good thing.
Now, I come through the belly here, coming across the front.
Notice the way the line carries through underneath.
That’s the pectoralis muscle.
Then the ribcage.
The horses don’t have really much of a waist.
In fact, the horses can’t and don’t bend at the waist.
Notice what we’re getting here.
We’re really seeing the corner of the pelvis.
We see at the back here is the ischial tuberosity.
Okay, now one of the shapes of the horse when you look at the way the head, the back of
the neck here, and drop it a little bit more.
Come through.
This is actually, we have a ligament that comes through.
The horse to take and eat it has to take and pull its head down.
Horses generally sleep standing up.
We have what’s called the nuchal ligament.
Humans have the same ligament.
Coming through.
The eyes are one third the distance of the head.
Now, this is an Arab so his head is pretty flat.
This is an Egyptian Arab.
It doesn’t have the real disc type of thing like this.
Going to get the ear.
The ear is in the same place as everyone else’s is.
Feel the nose.
Down.
They have lips.
They have a chin.
In fact, we have chin straps for our horses.
Come around.
We can feel the hair coming down, coming through.
Now, what I made such an issue with in dealing with the dogs is the scapula.
Okay, it’s the same thing.
You’re taking and looking at the line.
There are several lines.
The line here is another line here, corresponds to the spine.
And then it’s underneath here.
There is also an extension of cartilage that goes back up.
Then we start to take and from there you can see the muscles taking and coming down to
the elbow which is in here.
You can really—now when you look at the horse you can see the muscles coming down
and pulling through to that point.
Now, basically halfway down to the bottom of the hoof.
We take and you can see what would be, what we’d call sort of the knee.
This is really the wrist.
Coming through.
You try to very clearly establish that—now I’m taking and adding a little bit of rendering
here as I go around because we’re seeing very clearly the way that muscle, this would
be your triceps in the back and then the forearm muscles.
What you’re seeing in the background is our typical high desert winds.
There is a joke about living out here that if you don’t notice the 40 knot wind in
the afternoon you’ve been living here too long.
I can really feel the pull.
Now I’m taking and emphasizing the waist a bit.
Coming through.
Getting the fullness of the rib cage.
We come down here.
The knee is right here and so we pull through.
Feel the knee coming in.
It’s the tuberosity back here.
We want to feel the corner because of the edge of the scapula.
Coming through the center we can feel it is raised.
Come down.
Now, from here come down to what we would consider the heel.
It is up here.
We can feel the pull.
Come down through here.
We want to feel the muscles coming across, through.
Keep in mind that the part that we see sticking out here is not the joint.
The joint is in here.
We need to take and be conscious, that’s what you have to be conscious of.
The bone is coming across this way and then going down.
Then we pull down.
You have to pay attention to the angles that you’re looking at here.
This is going to come through the hoof on a well-conformed horse.
This is all pretty much a straight line coming through.
We can see the horse, the leg on the back side is coming back a little bit.
It’s stretched back out.
If this were taking and moving around that tail would be sticking straight up, which
is, again, the basic characteristic of an Arab.
Now I’m going to go back and spend a little bit more time with the head.
My master of horses, Eleanor.
Notice how I was taking and making a point out of the bone.
Come around, feel the cheek.
We have what’s called the bar, which comes down inside.
Now they have a lot of the same muscles that we do, coming through.
You can feel the pull.
They have the masters.
We can feel the cheek, the shape here is a prominent element in looking at the horses.
You also have to right away notice from here, you need to feel, this would be the esophagus,
all the elements that come down.
Now, coming through we’ve got the nose coming around, through.
Like I said, they have a chin.
Now, the pull with the hair coming around
where at the same time they’re building up.
Okay, they’re sort of moving around which actually gives me the opportunity to take
and, one of the unique things about a horse is the nose.
If I can take—he just decided he didn’t want to show me that.
Eleanor: Do you want to show the front?
Glenn: Yeah, I thought I would take and do a detail of the nose there a little bit because
they have what’s called a false nose.
They don’t breath so much, or they do breathe through the nose and not the mouth.
If you look at the nose on the horse, what you see, the shape is like this.
They have a curl coming through this way, and then this goes underneath.
You can literally put your finger inside there.
We can pick up.
There is the big nostril.
Notice now as I’m just doing one side that we can see the basic lips.
This section in here.
Come through.
We’ve got the same thing above it and then below that.
This is very squared off.
They are nibblers.
Then we’ve got the chin underneath that.
If you take and analyze that head a little bit more we can take and see that coming down,
you can actually see that the bone stops here.
Then some opening coming through.
Then we come down to where the teeth would be in here.
The eye socket then is up here.
What you’re seeing then is those nostrils are taking and coming from that.
We can feel this coming around on both sides so we can feel the center pulling down and
coming from that, coming forward, and we’re building things.
You can see the bone, feel these elements taking and coming out, and then we take and
pull to the back.
The cheek coming down.
Now, the distance here, this distance at about the eye here, from here to here.
In other words, you can see that that will be about half the length of the head.
This is another guide that we use a lot in taking and drawing things.
Let’s see if we can see him from a different angle.
This is just a straight back shot.
Next I’m going to do is a straight front view.
What you become conscious of is the fact that the horse is really quite narrow especially
Arabs.
I’m coming down, going in.
We can see the way the muscles are pulling off of the scapula.
When I first started drawing horses, I really didn’t know anything about them.
As I studied these, I used to think that all of this back here was the buttocks muscles.
Actually, the gluteus maximus and minimum and all that are just a small portion up here.
All of the stuff coming down here are your semimembranosus and semitendinosus, the muscles
in the back of your leg.
They come down.
We can feel, then, this becomes your calf fitting in.
Here let me do another shot here that we can see, and I’ll go back between.
Okay, that’s pretty good there.
Coming around, we can feel these muscles coming down.
Then the basic, which is the Achilles tendon here, and then we can feel it pulling alongside.
You have to try and be careful about this.
This is not the joint.
That’s the end of the heel.
Then we come down through here.
That is the part—in other words, if we could see the bone we would see, in profile you
would see this is as really something that sticks out like that, at this point here.
Coming down and going through in here.
Okay, I’m going to do a slight different angle here so we can see a little more clearly.
Coming in.
I’m always saying what you’re doing is studying, you’re analyzing.
Come through, around.
Now, I’m pretty focused because we’ve got a really good view now of this one leg
coming down.
This horse has got pretty good conformation.
The legs are fairly pretty straight.
If they go in or if the knees where bending in this way they would be called a cow hocked,
which would not be too cool.
Come through.
You can see the drawing from over here.
Feel the muscles come down.
Different layers.
Achilles tendon coming in.
Now, I’m getting a little better shot of this.
Keep in mind, this is like your calf as it goes in.
You can feel the bone coming out.
You can feel the muscles on the side here pulling down, fitting in.
Here is the joint.
Try to visualize this.
What you get is you got two layers of bones coming through.
Since the horses come down to just one toe, although they started out with there, so on
the back here what we have is a residual, referred to as a splint.
We look at the hoof and we’ll see we’re going down and the background, going through.
We’ve got this, this is a clear-cut corner coming through.
So now we can feel the shape there.
We can come down.
The knee, remember is over here,
and so these muscles are coming down to the heel or down
to the knee over in here.
Now you can see the eye going in.
Now I’ve been taking and pretty much focusing on here, and right here is where you would
get the ischial tuberosity coming around, pushing out from underneath.
You can feel the pull in the way these muscles are taking and coming through the calf.
Now, in this angle that I have I can take and see—
now, this overlapping, he is holding fairly still
so I’m going to take that opportunity.
When we were drawing dogs I was talking about the foreshortening.
Here we’re getting a pretty strong overlapping volume, coming
one on top of the other and back.
The withers are now way back in here, coming through.
We can feel this coming around.
Coming through.
The scapula now is at angle going through here.
We’ve got that building down.
When we draw the goats some of this stuff is going to become very, very obvious.
Goats are fun to draw because they are so obvious.
Come through, come across.
If I go too far here then I’m going to take and
turn around because I want to emphasize
looking at the contrasting of the front to the back.
Coming in, through.
The horses have their winter coat and are just getting really getting ready to start
shedding so we can’t see too much in here.
This guy here has got a tail that is coming all the way down to the ground.
Now, what we’re seeing at this point is the head is right here.
Now, when you’re drawing the horse’s head from the back, you have to keep in mind the
cheeks of the horse, in other words, the jaw.
This is a plane that’s coming down.
If you look you can see the light.
We can feel this plane all the way down to the chin coming through.
The view we’re getting right now, actually we’re seeing a lot of the hair coming across
the back of the pole of the head.
Ears going up.
A little bit here I want to take and talk about sort of a standard formula for drawing
ears, which is, again, very typical of many of the four-legged animals, mammals, basically.
Now, we’ve got the cheek coming in.
They are hidden behind a lot of stuff in here.
Not getting too good on that.
I want to feel the plane.
Nostrils up here.
I’ve got to pull this out a bit farther.
The hair is coming over all of this.
Feeling the nuchal ridge.
Everything is going over, coming through.
Things are building up from there.
Just seeing the profile of a nostril, the mouth and chin underneath.
Now this gives us, I’m getting a sense of what we’re looking at here now.

Now if I can take and get a front view
(drawing)
Now what I want to emphasize in this front view is
that how narrow the horse is. It's
incredibly - and this is a big surprise to a lot of people -
that horses are not very broad.
Unless it happens to be bread like the quarter horses, are pretty broad.
But
without disparaging the quarter horse -
A lot of your
people will have rather pointed comments about the
thickness of a horse and the resemblance to certain other animals.
But anyway,
so again, notice how I'm just
blocking in this. Now if we can get his head -
just turn him the other way a little bit more. This way?
Like that, okay you got it
there.
Through. Now, I was talking about the ear.
Okay, the eyes and the ears are coming out of this
place here. Think about the ears, visualize
it like a cylinder to start with.
And then, take it's like an iris
that opens up and
has a curve like this. In fact
if you look at the horse, you'll se that
we end up with almost a point coming together
this way. Notice that. Okay so now we -
I'm taking this and I'm following through.
Coming in. Now, we have to be careful if you
take and make the horses ears too big, you're
gonna be showing a mule.
So you have to take into consideration the length, the size.
Now, I'm coming back down and the main thing
I was starting talking about was the
shallowness of the horse in front, or how narrow.
Coming through. Now, I'm just gonna block this in here,
very quickly here. Through.
The shoulders across here.
The neck is a cylinder
coming through this way. And the scapulas
are taking, going alongside. Now this is a
sort of a box shape that I take
and talk about an awful lot. Now as I'm drawing this
we can see that this is the scapula, is coming down along the front
Now we're dropping down to the center.
Now this would be the sternum as it comes down.
Now, so what get then is the
shoulder is full right here.
We can see clearly how this is - but notice it's pretty
narrow though. So, we come from here, then the bones
are then are going back in. Going back this
way. And then this becomes your elbow in here. So
much of what we see in here now, is that leg comes forward.
Is
big shapes in here, coming
through, these are your pectoralis muscles, coming across.
Coming through. And this becomes a big
complimentary, big compliment of the whole horse. Then we
start to feel these shapes. So now we can see this is coming
in front. So the horse has a
ascending and descending pectoralis muscle.
Okay so now the next ones are going back along
in here. Going back in and then
this view here now we're getting the
pulling down and feel his
withers up here. But we're going down, and this now
is almost like a triangular shape, is your trapezius, it comes down.
Then we start overlapping. So I'm pulling in
and now coming across from here.
Going down. Okay, from this
view we're seeing the front of the pelvis here.
Should have started this a little farther over, but we're okay.
And we feel the belly coming down.
So we can take and come down. So what we're getting then is
this corner here. Getting, feeling this.
Scapula is going back in this way
and then the muscles that are coming down through. And then
we're fitting into the ribcage, the pectoralis
muscle coming across and then we're building into that.
I was taking and drawing the nose
before we put this shape coming across,
coming around. So, now this is
starting - what I'm giving is a sequence
of points to look for.
For instance, taking what I was talking about the nose over here,
I was talking about the bones. The bone is stopping about here.
And then all of this is opening, so the nostrils then are going
along the side, into that opening.
We get the pull through here.
(drawing)
Okay, I mentioned we got the bar
coming alongside, so we want to fill all of this. The cheek coming down,
hair coming over.
And we're starting to build around.
So, this is a reasonable start.
Pick up that, coming through.
Now, coming through, I mentioned the
squareness of the knees. And so you
gotta really, it really is quite square. You've got two layers
of bones, just like we do in our wrists.
All the same basic elements.
Now, remember we were talking about the head length
but take this and from there should be about a two
and a half. So it's about right.
Now everybody has a tendency to take and
certain proportional things, certain
elements that they sort of miss. I have a tendency to make the legs on horses short.
So I'm very conscious
of taking and making that measurement. And we
feel, coming through, we cross.
We're getting a lot of hair here so
I've sort of skipped over, I'm just focusing on the structure.
Coming down
(drawing)
Okay, I'm gonna take and - let's see if I can
come back into this with some wash and
take and expand on it. So as I'm using the
wash as a way to take and -
the wash is in other words -
I'm just using the
tone that's created by the paper, or by the pencil. Water soluble
pencil. See right about what that does,
we're getting a strong three dimensional quality.
Just by using, taking the basic
shadow side, light side. But I'm focusing more on the
corners of the form, I'm really pushing the idea of the box.
And we got this, so that I come down, going over and going
down. So now we're
building on these elements. And we go through and we're drawing.
Over, feel the rhythm
the barrel. So now
what I'm gonna take and do - okay before I
I was gonna take and start doing some drawings with ink. But as I look at the
picture, I just notice that I had really
had this too late, that this really has to take
and come up considerably higher here.
That was a little bit off. Now that looks a little
better. Coming through and
we feel the tail coming out of there. We got the
corner. Okay, that's a little better. Now
when I said I was gonna change grounds here, or change directions a little bit
here and draw with a pen.
Now, I've been drawing,
I drew it exactly the same way. I focus
on the overall gesture or shape.
Alright, coming through.
And I will take and -
(drawing)
She was standing perfectly still until
I started.
But again I'm looking at head length, head length from here and here.
And
I'm doing this, I'm taking again, feeling
the overall. Now this is the other horse,
this isn't a pony.
(drawing)
We got her because of her
big brown eyes.
(drawing)
Okay, head lengths,
here to here.
Take and check, here, here.
I'm a bit short, actually looking at this that the head
is a little large.
(drawing)
So come through, this to coming in.
(drawing)
And the pelvis is going back.
Okay, length, head length going down.
One, two, and a half.
Pretty much on there.
(drawing)
Feel the flow.
(drawing)
There's a lot of wind blowing through here.
And of course the minute I started to
draw her she decided that she wanted to put her head down and eat.
Okay so now, doing that.
A horse actually has to take in,
pull its head down. So I'm taking and pulling.
And I was talking about the cheek
bone. Okay, you can see we're picking
up the underside.
(drawing)
Now, going through this, I started out
very loose. Now
I'm coming back in and
I'm making that scapula
withers. The scapula is pulling up into here.
And
here we're feeling the shoulder.
Muscles coming down.
This is the elbow.
(drawing)
One of the things that you'll notice, that from the way I
approach my teaching animal drawings,
I'm not taking and
explaining a lot of the time on making pretty pictures. I'm focusing on
basic structural elements. So then you
know what it is you're drawing.
rather than just copying it.
(drawing)
Feel the muscles underneath.
We can see the, through -
(drawing)
Now this is the spine
up here, full. The actual
corner of the pelvis is here. So the center part is
raised above that. And then the tuberosities are here.
The tail's coming up from behind,
blowing underneath, there's a pretty strong wind. The knee
is in here.
So we can see the pull
and looking to where I'm going
here.
Often people ask
what is the pen I'm using. This is a Namiki
Falcon. And
generally they come in black.
I got this one in Japan,
it has a super fine point
that then it also has a brass bearing.
So it's a bit more
expensive, but it has survived
somebody stepping on it, which my last one didn't.
(drawing)
The reason I like the Namiki
is that it's very reliable.
(drawing)
Now this is more
of a quick sketch now.
(drawing)
Scapula, coming back to
the elbow.
Get the ground plane.
Wrist.
(drawing)
They spread their legs like that when they're eating
it helps them to get the head closer to the ground.
(drawing)
As you can see I pretty much
draw from joint to joint.
Going through.
Now he's turned a bit more
so I still have got to maintain the first angle.
(drawing)
We've got lots of birds here
in the neighborhood.
(drawing)
Okay.
Alright, we had a great session with the horses. When I started out
drawing horses I knew nothing about horses. I had to learn.
Don't copy photographs to start with. Start with trying to draw the horses.
See if you can get access to some stables.
Even taking, watching videos of horses.
We had a great session and let's take and go on to the next
animal now.

Now, let’s try goats.
Oftentimes, when I take people to the zoo we start out with the goats.
They have such an exaggerated sense and there are lots of strong personalities.
They’re fun to draw.
You’re always analyzing them.
Look at them.
Try to figure out and follow the pattern that we go through.
So, let’s draw goats.
Okay, now goats.
Let’s just take and really jump into this.
These guys are going to be gone in a minute, probably.
I’m bribing them with…Now, goats have almost and exaggerated triangular head.
We feel this and really full, coming back, pick up the waist and the pelvis.
The scapula comes across and really clear.
Now, I’m going to take and, which is really the strategy so often, we take and start many
drawings and then come back so I’ve got…
Notice that pattern again, zigzag.
These are Nigerian pygmies.
It’s a very, very popular breed.
The babies are maybe 6 weeks.
No, they’re actually not even that old, roughly around there.
The goat handler is my nephew, Ethan.
I’m drawing really quick because they’re really moving around and liable to be gone
before I get a chance to do much.
We’ve got the little babies running around.
Let’s see if I can grab onto that.
Once I’ve taken and gotten a bunch of things going here, then I’ll go back in
and build on it.
Now, a typical feature is—notice the heads are basically a triangle.
Again, most of your grazing animals, the horse is basically a triangle.
Most of your grazing animals tend to be a triangular shape and the ears work into the
same sort of pattern that we had with the horse.
One of the big differences is that when you come to the way the neck comes through, on
the horse it was a pretty straight line to the withers.
On the goats and say in cows and stuff, we find that this is, you can see that this is
sticking up, but we still have the same configuration.
The scapula coming through, corners coming in, and then coming back.
Feel the muscles.
Pulling into the elbow.
Coming in.
Now, they tend to spend a lot of time on their knees so they have really knobby knees.
Also, they’re different from the horse in that they have a cloved hoof.
In other words, split.
They get pretty feisty over their food.
We have nursing mamas there.
Notice how strong the—go back to where the heel is, down, strong, strong shape.
You can see I’m going back and forth in the drawings as the opportunity presents itself.
When I teach my animal drawing class with the animation students at UCLA, one of the
first live animals we draw is at the petting zoo at the Los Angeles Zoo,
the petting section for the children.
The goats become the main thing to start with.
Again, it’s sort of exaggerated sense of the
different elements that we’ve been talking about.
We’re building these things.
You can see the small goats, the babies, are already, they’re really fun to watch because
they have such a comical way of taking and jumping around and working.
Like all children.
Not that developed, yet.
The belly is not anywhere near big enough.
It still hasn’t developed, let’s put it that way.
Not big enough.
The torso tends to be a little straighter.
Once you have a basic gesture then you can come back in
and pretty much develop it.
Goats have a way of sort of pointing their ears forward.
I’m not getting this anywhere near the triangular shape it should be.
I’m sorry I’m not talking very much.
I’ve just been so wrapped up in capture these guys that are running all over the place.
See if I can pick up from different angles here.
They have that, like I mentioned with horses is the cowhock.
It is bad in a horse but which is standard for the goat, where the heels tend to come
in on each other.
If you have a group of them like this, it really keeps you moving.
Often when I’m drawing them I will just sort of sneak up,
sit down while they’re just grazing,
and they will allow me to get something done
without them running around too much.
I have a feeling this wind is keeping them pretty active.
Here, let me take and break this system down a little bit more.
We have the head.
Come across for the eye sockets.
Come through.
The muzzle coming out.
Now, from that, I get a really clear sense of the neck fitting in to this very, very
box like—now, when I say boxlike, it is the ends of the shoulder.
The scapula is going back.
They are actually narrow at the top.
Then we feel the vertebrae sticking out.
So you have this fitting into, this box form fitting into this.
Then the rib cage is this really round form coming through.
That’s what makes drawing the goats so clear because they are so obvious.
The we have the waist and then finally to the pelvis,
which is another box form going back.
These are the basic elements.
These are true for almost every four-legged animal, mammal,
and even some of the non-mammals.
But you can see how the pattern, zigzag pattern that I keep talking about.
We come into things and so…
Where are you guys going?
Stay here.
Like I say, I’m going to see if I can grab some different angles here.
This is what makes drawing from life fun or I should say, it’s fun but clearly challenging.
The box of the pelvis and waist, then the roundness of the barrel of the chest, scapula.
Notice how similar that is now to the horse.
Taking and doing back of the elbow.
Let’s see if I can develop this stuff a little bit by taking and using some wash
to clarify some of this stuff.
One of the things that you notice is that they really have a rather flat rear end, and
the way the bone comes back,
notice how the wash takes and starts to clarify that right away.
Use the wash to draw, not just to put tone down.
We get the side, pelvis, tail coming up.
Then we build in the roundness.
Through.
Elbow, knee.
Underneath the chin.
Same thing here.
Build.
What I’m doing here is I’m drawing planes.
Feel the side, the box, round, corner.
Now we come back here
and it gives me an opportunity
to take and do a little bit more drawing.
These guys are butting heads here.
I want to do is take and try to draw the shape.
Start out with the essential sense of the triangle this way.
From that I break it down and look at the eyes.
Now, goat’s eyes are really oriented to the side.
They’re not predators.
They are more preoccupied with who is going to take and go after them.
The eyes will tend to be to the side so that they can see behind them.
Now, we’ve got these guys.
They have horns, those that were going to have horns have already had them removed.
You can feel the nostrils going to the side.
Ears are going to be in the same place.
Now, we have the cheeks come down.
You can see how I’m building all of this on the basic triangle.
Coming out at me.
That’s pretty much your typical goat.
Maybe it would be a little straighter.
They tend to go from that too.
Sometimes we refer to sort of a scrawny neck.
That’s mainly because it seems like that because of the way it fits into the way we
deal with the scapula.
In other words, we feel the spine coming through in here, and then the scapula coming forward.
Notice again, it’s a box form that I’m drawing.
Then I go from there.
Once you pick up the basic pattern, you’ll find it’s pretty possible to take and do
a lot of drawing from imagination, which is, of course, when you’re drawing live animals
rather than something that’s been shot and hung up to pose or a photograph, you pretty
much have to draw from imagination a very large percentage of the time.
We’ve got a rather windy day so they’re pretty active.
We have goats crawling around my legs now.
Not very good for the camera.

(drawing)
I'm gonna take and do some
stuff with the pen here.
Now -
I take it back. I'm gonna go and add some color
to this. I'm gonna start with my
brown and then come back in and
build on this.
(drawing)
And I'm gonna take and
do several angles at the same time.
(drawing)
Well, they've all decided
they wanted to sit and come
under the porch here.
(drawing)
Excuse me for not talking, I'm just
(drawing)
wrapped up in trying to capture everything as well as I can.
(drawing)
Now let's see if I
can use the wash and get this a
little bit more clarity into this.
(drawing)
There's one goat that's being fairly...
in here, but that angle that I'm seeing here now
is the way the pelvis, feeling the waist,
and then the fullness of the ribcage.
Looking forward, and the scapula -
feeling the scapula coming down.
In the corners, then this under the
neck, fitting into the box.
(drawing)
And we're getting the horses
coming back in here.
(drawing)
I'm really going all out, speed-wise here, trying
to
capture.
(drawing)
Now I can come back
(drawing)
What we did here, push the corner of this pelvis
a bit.
And the
waist coming over and then really
a full...
(drawing)
About as tight as it goes.
(drawing)
Goats! That was a great session.
I try to draw them all the time, since I have them in my backyard.
You got to see how I took and I develop it and how I build
it. Those are the beginning and taking and doing a little bit more
develop, rendering later on.

Okay in this next group of animals here, we're gonna be
doing chickens and llamas. I'm gonna give you sort of a basic, simple
approach. I use sort of almost an animation approach, but
it's a very, very practical way of dealing with the chickens
without getting too wrapped up in all the subtleties that happen there.
Now the llama, really a different - but
in the face, you know you look at the llama's head, with the long stretched out
neck. Lots of hair falling down and so
I treat the overall sense of the pattern and the shape
of the animal. And that's a critical element with all the animals.
I'm looking for the overall - almost a silhouette that we look for.
Okay let's take and draw.
Now let's see, I'm gonna start out here. We're taking and doing a little exploring with this.
(drawing)
Same kind of configuration of course.
(drawing)
Pretty shaggy, looks like he's got all of his -
these really sort of delicate
legs coming out. So I haven't really drawn the
these guys very much, so I'm doing a bit of exploring here.
(drawing)
Same general configuration
throughout the whole thing.
Looks like I've got the head a little bit. Let's take and and try another couple variations
here and we're doing it.
He keeps turning his head to see what the heck is going on.
We got this great flip in his ears as they come out.
(drawing)
Now, I'm working with the water brush again.
And
really just trying to capture sort of a silhouette again.
(drawing)
Really shaggy.
(drawing)
The way
he stands, it almost looks like he's only got three legs.
(drawing)
Now, I'm gonna take and
jump in with the pencil. This is the water soluble pencil again.
And I can get a bit of a sense...
(drawing)
Now at this point, he's really
turned completely around from where I'm
at, so what I'm functioning on is just sort of using him
as a resource now.
(drawing)
Scapula,
be in the same place as everybody's. Same zigzag pattern.
Except we get a really
large, bulky
torso and like goats,
they tend to spend a lot of time down on their knees.
(drawing)
The legs tend to come fairly close together.
Understanding -
and if we can see the body it would be going up like this, but what we're getting
is a lot of the fur, taking and coming down
(drawing)
He is not so convenient, gone behind -
(laughing)
Well our
llama has disappeared. Let's do some
chickens here.
(drawing)
Now.
(drawing)
Can't really...
(drawing)
Okay, now I'm getting a
pretty good silhouette of him down there and I can take
and get a little bit of a feeling.
Again I'm just
trying to block in a little bit with the wash
here.
(drawing)
Again, the essential
triangular pattern for -
notice that the eyes are really
forward facing quite a bit.
And you got this great curve
taking to the ears.
Every time I
mention the ears he takes them and
lays them back where I can't see them.
Okay, now with him right over here, he was twisting
so we're gonna feel pull
and again we come around and
really the neck,
coming around, the bulk
of the fur is really coming around
the legs here, so we really see
large mass.
The scapula in here,
going through.
Now I'll come back to this because what I'm getting now is looking at
him, is a
strong, sort of a front view where we can really...
I'm gonna really quickly
drop in the
mass.
(drawing)
You can see the way I'm blocking this in
that there really is a huge feeling
now he's got the head coming back up this way. Let's just take
and...
(drawing)
Now,
from here -
now he's quite a ways off
in the distance from me.
(drawing)
Now the pencil is
reacting with all that water I put down,
which gives us actually sort of a nice feeling
and definitely gets the characteristics of
what we're looking at. The spindly legs
are coming down, knee, coming through.
(drawing)
And...
(drawing)
Now this gives me a little more insight, seeing from this angle.
(drawing)
We get a sense of the volume now, of all of this
stuff on the shoulders over here.
It almost feels like
he's got
pants coming down part of the way.
(drawing)
I'll come back into this and
add, just adding water to it
that'll give it a little bit of the feeling.
(drawing)
Ah, there we go
Now we can actually see a little of that.
(drawing)
Got really, sort of, delicate feet.
These are
used as livestock
guards.
And keeping coyotes
and things like that away.
(drawing)
Now this is a
dirty spring, so he's really molty.
(drawing)
A lot of...
(drawing)
They have this flip in their ears.
Very distinctive
look.
(drawing)
Cheeks.
(drawing)
Now the pelvis will have a similar
kind of thing, except again, we have to
try to indicate it by how we work
with the fur. Is it very, very full.
Pelvis will be the same kind of arrangement.
Now
if we look at it from the back, what we can see -
I'm
gonna again work with the wash. A quicker way
of taking and capturing.
(drawing)
Now I have to take advantage of the chicken here
that's taking and coming up.
Curious.
(drawing)
Now this guy is -
has got really puffed out
here. You can really feel
the volumes.
Getting these guys here.
You can see the pull.
Most fall they actually have
extra layers of fur, hair - or I should say feathers -
that go over the top like a cape. Particularly
here, waterfall. Now we're coming through.
Okay, think of a
a fine drumstick.
Coming through
(drawing)
Okay, maybe getting a view
of the llama back here again.

(drawing)
Really you're regular now,
when you're feeling all of this fur.
Coming down. We can feel the belly underneath and then
all of this stuff hanging down.
Quite a large mass on the shoulders.
And comes forward.
You can figure the scapula again, coming down to the elbow in here.
Through, cross, you zigzag standard
(drawing)
Now you feel this coming down towards the knee.
(drawing)
Now, since he was turning there, you need to -
you actually have to take and draw the twist.
And we can feel all
the fur coming out. Feel this is pulling in.
(drawing)
Back to the chickens, as he's
sort of gone behind, back there, I can't really see him.
(drawing)
These are
the kind of chickens I had at home when I was a child.
I think, it looked like this
the same - Rhode Island Reds is what I used to call them I'm not sure of what they
are but...
Now
here's the very simple way of thinking about drawing
chickens. Let me take
and I'll go back into this later. The idea is you start out
with just the simple sphere,
and then you attach the
legs. Okay, when you're doing that you think
the chicken - actually let me
take and do a variation here. Visualize this as going
through and the opposite going back and this is the rear end
here. Okay so, what you get,
if you can visualize like where the pelvis would be, we have a
thigh,
a drumstick, and then the legs.
Okay and
visualize this on a plane going in this direction. Now
from that point on, then you take - and
birds can have any number of
neck bones. So we visualize just the sphere,
another sphere coming in. Now from there -
and then the tail is gonna take and come out of here
It comes out of the back. And then the wings - scapula, they have a
scapula, a wing, that goes through the same pattern. Scapula
through the elbow coming out
and doing a z. So what we're
seeing up here is usually the end of
of like the wrist. The elbow is way back and then this comes out, so it's the feathers
then are taking and coming off and the fullness
up here is the shoulders. Okay so we get this
whole thing. And then, lots of feathers and stuff
building up in this fullness of the neck, taking
and coming through and we can feel a little bit of the leg
and then coming down. And the head,
the beak, eyes, and then we'll start getting into the
all the waddles and the different variations of it. So it's basically the same. So
what you have is a situation that if we start out with
the idea of this and if
you got the leg and you can look at this from any
angle. Maybe a little bit more egg shaped here then -
but if the head goes down, tail goes up.
So you get this sense of pivoting that takes place,
and then we can start to build these elements taking
and going up, legs going back, coming down.
Then we can feel all of this fullness. Now, chickens are,
besides being raised for
the eggs obviously,
the large fullness in the front is
that they're actually bred for these very, very
large bones, the chest muscles,
that would normally in a bird would be used for flight,
are really expanded. So now
you can see what I'm going through, and I'm just building on this shape
that I've got coming down.
Feel the - and the wings and the back
here then we can be feeling the shoulder
here, coming through, the tail coming out.
Flatness across the back, you've got to visualize -
visualizing the thigh, the drumstick, and then we come
down from that into foot. And the head
is really quite small.
In here and then we
would get where the waddles would be underneath.
So you're building on this very, very, very, very
simple format. So now
what you try to do is to take and
to give dimension to them. We try to see, we actually have these shoulders
coming through. So I'm giving you a symmetry
here, coming across. The feathers we work
in a way to work around, over the surface
and through.
Depending on if we got a rooster or not,
rooster would really be building up. And we build this up underneath.
Think of the large chest
coming through and we start to then
build, overlapping
forms that take and the tail
they're rather short, on this bird particularly,
rather short. So you can see how quickly we get
sort of your standard chicken.
It starts coming through in effect.
Now, the configuration in the back here of course
is the feathers, this tail goes up and we can get all kinds
of plays in here and they start to pull.
(drawing)
One of the ways I take and talk about
these is to take and think about the
turkey on the table where you can see the back
where you'd put the stuffing. So that becomes
your basic, big shape. Then you can see again the
thighs, now I've turned to back normal size.
In here, the tail there's actually a thing here
on the end if you look at a clean, plucked chicken
you'll find that you actually have a thing coming out and that the feathers
then will start to build on this. And we're coming up
and around on that.
And then again, the wings create a
sense of a shoulder in here.
And it's just where the wings are coming back.
Again, you have a scapula, very narrow, so if you look at
dinosaur bones you'll see that. But if you come back
it comes back to the elbow, and then it comes back out. You see for the shoulder
then is really the wrist. And then we figure
the fingers and the feathers going off behind that. Now
(drawing)
you can see how quickly the whole -
it's all in how you think about it. But
we'll take and help you to understand and be able to draw
the chickens. We're not getting much cooperation
with this llama back here. I really can't see his head.
Other than
getting a sense of the shaggyness, it's
in some respects, it's the dog shape.
The nose, coming out, and
configuration of the nostrils. I'm not quite sure how that works.
But since its feels rather squarish on the end.
(drawing)
The jaw, coming down,
pull through.
(drawing)
And usually these guys got all kinds of fur flying.
I can get a bit of
the feeling for that by
doing here. Now, this guys are
actually a black...
So I'm taking and adding, creating sort of
a blackish tone. I don't use black as a color in my
palette although it's part of the pencil.
(drawing)
I'm going purposefully,
trying to give it a sort of a mottled feeling because that's really what we're
seeing.
(drawing)
Now again, I'm
seeing it from a very different angle than I'm drawing. And in fact I'm really not even
seeing it. He's gone behind a tree back
there.
(drawing)
I'm trying to get
in here the feeling of how the belly actually goes up.
(drawing)
Okay.
(drawing)
Go back to our chickens here. When the head goes down
the tail obviously goes up.
(drawing)
I'm just drawing the rear end
of the chicken there.
(drawing)
Now let's see if I can
delineate that a little bit. So in other words, what I'm seeing
is the tail feathers coming
up. And then the larger
bunch of them coming around. And the fullness
of the shoulder coming through. And
the little puffiness down here, coming around.
And the leg, coming out from behind,
and the spot where the eggs
coming out. Shoulders,
the head, this little tiny
thing back here, coming in.
(drawing)
Now the more I look at the llama, the way that you
see all his fur. it's coming way down,
really hanging. I can
barely see him, he's 75 feet away from me.
Maybe 150 feet.
(drawing)
He hasn't been very cooperative this morning.
Okay
the chickens and the llamas. Chickens are pretty good. They're always moving
of course. And the llama, unfortunately, he decided
all of the sudden to get shy. But I think we got a good sense of the overall
sense of the pattern, the size, and the proportions. And we even,
just in simple silhouette. But anyway, this was a good session
so let's take and move on to our next animals.

Okay, this is our final animal. We're dealing with sheeps.
Sheep are a lot of fun. So they're a variation on
a sort of a goat shape. Analyze the form,
Analyze the form. Even if you can't see it. Okay now let's go draw a sheep.
Now, what I'm
drawing with, this is actually a Renaissance
stone. So, I'm
gonna take and this is what - it's a natural
sanguine. It's taken and mined
in Germany actually. So now, if I
can get a shot. I'm sorta looking at some of these guys.
(drawing)
Well this particular cut is not
working too well on this paper. I'm gonna have to take and go to the -
I'll start like some of the other ones. Start with the wash.
(drawing)
This is a sepia.
(drawing)
That black face.
We got one ram here that's really got a
huge rack of horns here
and long
furry coat. So I take
and -
as always not it's the -
you think of the basic structure, shoulders coming down.
(drawing)
And they have not been trimmed for
the summer yet, so we've got a full rack
of fur.
(drawing)
I'm gonna
focus on this, on the ram to start with.
(drawing)
I'm not sure how long he's gonna hang around.
(drawing)
He's got a
curved
thing. Horns thing.
(drawing)
Ears come up
just like everybody else's. Here
(drawing)
That horn actually
has like a biblical look to it the way it
pulls around.
(drawing)
Now I can see in this case, you have the big
mass of fur
coming down. You
have to still - even though you have what appears to
be almost totally covering up everything, you have to take
into consideration the scapula, coming through.
Take and look for the shoulders because it'll still be there. And
there's a - the way the hair actually falls creates a
center and we feel the pull
coming over. So what I'm doing
is I'm visualizing where the scapula would be.
And then the withers up here and then the barrel
of the chest coming down.
And then if we pull through
we can see that we've got, where we come
down, the elbow would be under here. Then coming down to
the knee.
Through.
You've got to think of the pelvis coming across
going over the surface.
(drawing)
Think of the bone, knee, the back
(drawing)
I'm drawing a lot of what I can't actually
see. Now let's
take and pick up on some of the others here while we're at it.
(drawing)
We've got some of these guys that are really,
really young.
(drawing)
Really woolly
(drawing)
Now in
contrast to the ram there, these are
are really - have very, very, very
curly hair and...
(drawing)
I think what sorta of our most
character of what you think of a lot of times is
sheep -
(drawing)
oh actually
I'm not sure if these are -
(drawing)
if they're all the same breed or not
but there's a real distinct difference between them.
I'm really focusing on getting the
scapula, the neck,
and in between we can feel just the bit of tone, there's a
enough to kinda start sensing that. Now I'm coming through, visualizing where
the bones are. Coming through, think of the knee.
Coming down then,
hooves.
Taking the pelvis behind.
(drawing)
Now as I continue to take and draw these, I'll be taking
also at the same time trying to get some of the
rear end shots in here. Okay we're going through.
(drawing)
Of course the minute I sit down they all start facing me.
Here we go. Okay
so now this is not - it has the same basic
feel as the goats. I'm using
a darkish one here because
it's actually a black.
(drawing)
So we've got curlies here.
(drawing)
Scapula, it's always
going through the patterns, you know, pull, pelvis
around.
(drawing)
Okay, that's a little bit of blue there.
It's meant to.
(drawing)
Follow
the pattern, follow the pattern.
(drawing)
Now I'm getting as much of these guys
down here really quickly, then I can take and go
back into this. You can see the pen,
the brush really allows you to take and
work a lot faster.
It's like what I do in the figure
classes using chamois.
(drawing)
Actually I want this one's head down.
(drawing)
Okay they just sort of got spooked from something
and just decided everybody's off.
(drawing)
They're all going off into the...
Now I can go back in
and as I'm drawing - I can see them off
in the distance and so now they're reference.
(drawing)
Ah we just tempted them with a little bit more
food.
(drawing)
Okay we've got them all coming back.
(drawing)
Scapula, elbow coming down,
through,
pelvis,
waist, ribcage, legs going back.
Pelvis coming down.
(drawing)
So you're constantly just following,
following the pattern and
big floppy ears
that are coming down.
Nose.
(drawing)
Now okay this one's a little bit more coherent.
Scapula.
(drawing)
So he's really woolly.
(drawing)
Pelvis.
(drawing)
Now, in
contrast to the goats, sheep actually have
a tail that they don't stick up, they hang down.
And so - and this is
little characteristics of each of the animals.
(drawing)
Feel pelvis, knee, coming down,
heel.
Same basic configurations
(drawing)
And we start to work over the surface,
there is a waist, even with all that hair there is a waist.
Then we start to build, around the barrel
of the ribcage, shoulders,
through.
So in this it's what I
did start with, it was just to capture
the basic gesture.
(drawing)
Our ram is back here, let's see if I
can pick up a little bit more.
(drawing)

(drawing)
Now with this -
very quick here, the ram's coming right up next to
the fence here.
Gone.
They're all gone.
(drawing)
Now, sheep
are like goats. Their eyes tend to be more to the side
because they're more concerned with who's gonna eat
them than who they're gonna
eat. They're grazers obviously
and so the eyes are placed
so that they come out to the side so that they can see, literally,
who's behind them.
(drawing)
It's time to put out some more straw there I think.
(drawing)
A little cascading there.
(drawing)
You have an interesting - when you look at some of their
heads, they come down.
The -
I'm just paying a little attention there while I can
now, but
the fur comes out
and it looks like they've got a bonnet on.
(drawing)
Drawing the horns
are really tricky. They have all these angles that are
particularly coming around.
(drawing)
I almost forgot this guy's ear.
(drawing)
Like I keep saying, I'm very, very conscious
about the - all of the basic structural
elements, through. I'm constantly -
even if I can't see them, I'm drawing them.
(drawing)
Now, I wanna point out, the basic proportions
they pretty much fall into the square category
again.
(drawing)
Now, I'm trying to make a bit of an effort here to
get a sense of how
the fur, it's actually like hair,
falling over the surface.
We're going back...
(drawing)
Thinking of the scapula, thinking of the waist.
(drawing)
Waist, pelvis, knee,
heel.
(drawing)
Full belly
Okay.
Okay, we just took and dealt
with the sheep. And also we got a ram in there. Taking, spending a lot of time
in dealing with the horns and that. You have to bring to it what you
know as well as what you see.
And the more you know, the more you're going to see. So this has been a
great session on drawing animals and I think we
have got a good start. Just keep studying yourself.
Keep analyzing, keep looking. Be curious.
Go through the sessions again, many, many times. Because every time you go through it
you're gonna learn something new. Thank you very much, and this has been
like I said, this really has been a lot of fun. Take care.