As ‘man’s best friend’, the dog is a very popular character to draw. When I was a kid a dog actually was one of the first things, after stick figures, I liked to draw the most. In this blog I’ll give you tips on how to draw a dog step by step and I’ll show you how you can apply these steps to draw other animal characters.

Let’s draw a dog!

Because practice makes perfect, the best way to learn how to draw a dog is by doing it! Draw this dog by simply follow the steps in this image.

When drawing characters, it’s really good to start with some basic shapes. Here, I started by drawing a flat circle. In step 2, you can see I drew an ellipse inside this circle and this makes the circle appear to be three dimensional. In step 3, I added a horizontal ellipse. The dotted line is to emphasize that the line is going around and back of the other lines. Notice how this gives an angle to the sphere.

With the next step (4), I start adding shapes on top of the ball. Try to think as if you’re using clay to sculpt the basic shapes. Start with the biggest shapes first; in this case, the mouth and the eyes. At step 5, I add the ears, jaws, and cheeks, and it starts to look more like a dog now. The smaller shapes, like the nose, eyebrows and beak are added in step 6. Now you have a final sketch you can use to make the final drawing and you can start adding the colors.

Other characters

The method of using basic shapes can also be useful to create other kinds of characters. Try to draw these characters by using the same steps I’ve shown at the tutorial of how to draw a dog. Pay attention to how I build these characters with really basic shapes. It can be quite hard, but try to draw in three dimensions.

Draw the dog’s body

When I’m drawing the whole body, I follow the same principles as when I drew the dog’s head. Now, I start with a line of action, (see step 1). The action line is simply a line that represents the pose. Most of the time, it has a simple S shape. I use this line to give the character some flow. Without the line of action or flow, the pose will look stiff. On top of this line I draw the limbs by building a construction with basic shapes.

Other poses

The use of these basic shapes makes it easier to draw a character in different poses. This is because it’s easier to imagine how a sphere, cylinder, or cube look when they are shown at different angles.

Practice with these techniques by drawing the examples and follow the steps I’ve shown you. Draw all the different shapes in each step. The significant thing is that everyone can start practicing this. Just use a pencil and paper.

Do you like to learn more?