How to Draw Animals (1930)

I think the difference between that meme and these instructions is that a novice could actually follow these instructions and get better at drawing.

The fundamental issue that is hardly addressed in drawing by shape recognition is that it gets the proportion right but fails to teach the inherent "3D" structure of the animal.

The litmus test for drawing is to ask someone to draw an animal. If they can, great. Follow up and see if that draw the same thing but now in isometric view or from an arbitrary viewpoint/perspective. Imagine if you have a camera with various lenses (24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 90mm, etc) which describe the amount of foreshortening you need to compensate. Now imagine taking that camera and point it to the object (animal in this case) and taking pictures from many different angles and distances. You simply cannot draw these if you haven't internalized the 3D form.

Check out Aaron Blaise (Lion King fame) who has a YT channel. His drawing skills are "3D" so to speak. He truly understands not just static anatomy, but the kinematics of how animals move and which muscles are involved. It is not by chance you get to work as an animator at Disney.

This guide fails (like 99% of the drawing guides, I've bought many books on drawing and they all sorta suck) to teach structure. It does well in teaching proportions (relative size of parts of an animal) but that's not all you need to draw. You NEED to know anatomy; even if you know anatomy, then you need to be able to internalize the 3D structure of the skeleton, muscular volume, understand foreshortening, line quality, overlap, chiascuro or shading, etc. I have mad respect for caricature artists, because they know all this and then have the license to exaggerate and modify the form.

Drawing is fucking hard, like insanely hard. I have spent more than 10 years in learning how to draw. It sounds like gatekeeping but honestly, I spent a whole year trying to draw basic shapes, doing coil exercises (See Sycra on YT), rotating objects, drawing architecture and basic geometrical scenes, etc. I would say getting an engineering degree (I have BS and MS) is wayyyy easier than learning to draw. It is one of the most difficult things I've pursued and the joy of sketching wherever I go is amazing. I still have ways to go, and I'd love to post a link to some of my drawings but I'd like to keep my account anonymous.

Also, you know why organic chemistry students have real models of molecules? Because they need to know the 3D form. Same with physicians who play around with 3D models and do real dissections.

Edit: Here is a sample of my early drawings (I did reverse google search and nothing showed up :-) ): https://i.imgur.com/e4GgxFA.jpg

Simple and fun!

This is something the tutorials at https://drawabox.com focus on.

If you, like I did, wish to have all the pages as a single pdf, I grabbed them all and made one [1].

(I just googled and found a simple site to share it on, so if it doesn't work or you have a better suggestion let me know.)

[1] https://docdro.id/FFIBIrU