Animal Studies

Figured I'd share some thoughts about studying a subject you're unfamiliar with, in my case, particularly animals. Firstly, I do have a fair bit of knowledge about human anatomy, which makes the task  of getting a good handle on animals a lot less daunting, and helps me structure (what I hope is) an effective plan.

Another thing particular to animals is the fact that once you get a good handle on one kind of a quadrupedal mammal, you have a fair grasp of most kinds, and a fair idea of other classes, like reptiles, for example. As I continue studying the subject, I predict it's going to become exponentially easier, since I'll have an ever-stronger foundation and all that will be left to study are the differences in proportion and shapes across animals, rather than actual anatomy.

I picked dogs as animals to start working on - this was fairly arbitrary and could have been any other mammals (like cats or bovines). I like dogs and think that I'd like to draw them frequently, so I chose them first. The species is more of a placeholder/starting point from which I can expand, since I gotta start somewhere.

This is how I'd structure an ideal study session: 

-anatomy - theory - learning about the particulars of anatomy, starting from the skeletal structure, and then working on the muscles. In the images posted above, I worked on the general skeleton, since I'm just getting started. This should be a fairly small chunk of the whole session, since you can't really absorb a lot of information at once.

*note: I would not suggest an approach that focuses on the particularities of anatomy if you don't already have a firm grasp of drawing fundamentals (such as form and gesture) and a bit of experience in generally drawing animals (like constructing mannequins from reference and having a general idea of how quadrupeds are structured)

-anatomy - practice - applying the theory you acquired to drawings from reference - in this case, drawing skeleton constructions based on reference pics. This should be a fair piece of the whole session.

-drawing from reference - just drawing animals, trying to internalize what you learned in the first two bits - in this example, trying to imagine the skeleton and focusing on where the bony landmarks show on the surface.

-drawing from masters - studying other artist's drawings - in this case I used Terryl Whitlatch's stuff. The merit of studying other people's art is that, instead of translating information and coming up with solutions for a drawing, you're already seeing the solution and the distilled information. You can see how this is useful, but also how it's pointless without studying from pictures/life, since you wouldn't know what information's being distilled, and you couldn't take other's solutions because you wouldn't know what problem they're solving.

-drawing from invention - trying to invent believable animals without reference. A big part of this (for me) is accepting the fact that they're most likely going to be colossally crappy (as mine are) when you're just starting out, and believing in the process without burning yourself out with frustration. 

-making final stuff - this isn't so much about studying, as it is about drawing the stuff that you're studying. It wouldn't make much sense to study dogs, and then not draw dogs. When creating your art (as opposed to studying), I think it's just fine to have as many references as you like, and I see it almost as a sort of passive studying. As you progress and get more familiar with dogs, for example, you will need and want less and less references because you'll start finding them limiting, instead of helpful. 

Now, obviously, most study sessions you have aren't going to be ideal. Perhaps you'll be short on time, or you'll be impatient, distracted, frustrated or in a bad mood. The idea isn't to get the ideal session every time, or to get all of the parts of the session in one sitting or day (sometimes you'd have to break them up into multiple chunks or days), but just to have a clear guide or plan as to how you'd go about tackling a big subject. I think this could apply to anything you're trying to study. 

Hope that was helpful/informative, feel free to ask me/comment on anything I wrote here!

I'll hopefully be doing studies based on this plan daily, and some creature design work informed by those studies as well!