drawing and inking animal anatomy: Rabbit face, mouth and ear

Over the weekend I have decided to move into chapter 5. Chapter 5 is all about rodents, rabbits and ferrets. out of the many options given to me I have decided to draw Rabbits.

FACE/HEAD:

When I first started reading this chapter I didn't realize how complex a simple bunny head could be. "Some rabbit breeds have rather long faces and others have very short, round heads" (Amberlyn 126). When drawing the rabbit head I had to decide weather I wanted to have a rabbit with a long face or a short chubby one.

rabbit face/head

MOUTH/NOSE:

When people think about a rabbit they think of the cute little nose that wiggles when it sniffs, that's why it is crucial to get the nose right. "Rabbits usually have a wrinkling, V-shaped nose" (Amberlyn 128).  This is kept in mint when drawing a front face view not a side view because the mouth is not visible and only half of the nose is visible from the side view.

rabbit nose 

EAR:

Their is a piece of cartilage at the base of the rabbits ear which makes it hard and not flexible, but as you go up the ear it gets softer and more flexible (Amberlyn 129). I made sure ti keep this in mind when drawing the rabbits ears because the rabbit will then have wears that stand straight up.

rabbit ear 

mine

I like how this one came out. their was a lot of information in this chapter about rabbits which made it easy to draw. I do know that their is still a lot of improvement.

What do you think I could improve on for next time?

Will you use these tips next time you draw a rabbit?

drawing and inking animal anatomy: horse face, front leg, and ear

    Over this part of the break I continued to read into chapter 3, which is about horses. "The horse is considered by many to be a living work of art. It combines grace and power in one beautiful package"(Amberlyn72).

Simple geometric outline:

    The title of this one gives away what this section of the chapter is about, but it is just a rough geometric out line of what the head is going to look like by using simple shapes, such as, triangles, squares, circles, and ovals. "Note how the tear duct roughly aligns with the bottom line of the mouth/jaw"(Amberlyn74). 

Rough geometric outline 

Front leg:

    For this section I only drew the front leg just to get the essential understandings. "The horse essentially has one very long "finger" and is walking on its fingernails"(Amberlyn81)" This step by step picture helped me a lot when drawing the front leg and hove. 

Front leg 

Ear:

    The ear of a horse is in a teardrop like shape. "Horses can move their ears to listen to sounds or express emotions" (Amberlyn77). The ear can move in different directions based on its emotions or the situation that it is in.

Basic shape of ear 

Mine

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Drawing and inking animal anatomy: cat face, nose, body,eye, paw

In my last blog post I talked about drawing dog anatomy, this blog post I am going to be talking about cat anatomy. I drew and inked the face, nose, eyes, body, and paw of a cat.

FACE:
A cat has a very round head and a short muzzle. Cats eyes are large and face forward, this gives them good depth perception (Amberlyn 48). "Note that there is almost an imaginary line flowing from the inside corner of the ears to the inside corner of the eyes and down to the outside corner of the nose pad. These (partly) imaginary lines create a space between the cat's ears, eyes, and nose that narrows as it flows down to the nose pad. keep this in mind when drawing the cats face from any angle"(Amberlyn49). When I read this I made sure to draws the curved triangular shape on the face before adding any details.

Formatting the general shape of a cat's head 

 



 NOSE:
"A cat has a small triangular nose that can be a shade of pink or black"(Amberlyn54). Instead of a triangular shape I would say it is more of a diamond shape, But by using the step by step diagram I was able to complete it with no problem. The key is when you are sketching you need to go in with a very light hand so that if you want to ink the final like I did you can erase the pencil lines easily.

Step by step diagram of a cat's nose

Body:
"Cats tend to have a long flexible body"(Amberlyn57). This helped me draw my cat body because i kept it in mind that i needed to draw an elongated figure, if you were to draw a short and stubby cat it would look more like a kitten.

outline of the cat body

PAW:

"Cat feet appear rounded and velvety"(Amberlyn58). I used this tip when doing my own drawing, when I was doing the rough sketch I made sure to make the paw rounded but in an oval shape, I wanted all the lines to look smooth. When I started on the inking I made sure to make the paw look like it was fluffy be adding shaky lines. 

Paw outline 

All in all i got some good tips and tricks out of this chapter in my book, I will take these with me in the future.

My final product

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drawing animals anatomy: Dog face, eyes, and nose

Before a few of months ago, I had never really been super interested in art, I would do drawings and paintings but I wouldn't be super engaged in what I was drawing or painting. So I would always have these art pieces that were half done, and I would never go back and finish them. It wasn't until recently I started taking art more seriously. I started doing more human anatomy studies. I have always drawn animals, but they are little cartoon animals. Since I have been taking art more seriously I figured I should study animal anatomy.

The book that I have decided to study is called "The Artists Guide to Drawing Animals" by J.C Amberlyn. This book has made it clear in chapter one about dogs, "Getting the shape and proportions of the muzzle correct is a key part of drawing any dog breed"(Amberlyn 13). I was pleased that the book showed the progression of each picture. For example, the artist would start with a circle for the head adding a cylinder for the muzzle and triangles for the ears.

 Formatting the general shape of a dogs head

This section of the book was all about dog heads and their muzzles, Amberlyn says on page 12 "different breeds have different head-to-muzzle proportions. Some have a very long muzzle; some have a very short one"(12). When I was reading this I was thinking to myself, this makes sense because greyhounds have very long muzzles, and pugs have shorter muzzles (almost non-existent).

How to draw the dogs eyes and the nose

This next section was all about the general shape of dog eyes and noses. Amberlyn says on page 14 "Eye shapes vary, depending on the breed, but are generally round or almond-shaped"(14). The only thing different about some noses is the color. The colors can vary between a light brown to a black. The author compares the front of the nose to looking like a mushroom slice.

How mine came out

Are you going to try doing Animal anatomy some time? What are some things you could improve on for the next time you draw animals?

Source: Amberlyn, J. C. The Artist's Guide to Drawing Animals: How to Draw Cats, Dogs, and Other Favorite Pets. Watson-Guptill Publications, 2012.