Cartoon Animals

I love drawing cartoon animals.

There's all that white space that you can use to your advantage. You only need to add a few lines and the result is a great cartoon drawing.

Once you start practicing, you end up with these (mostly) happy little critters staring up at you from the page.

This drawing of a cartoon dog, for example, reminds me of a dog that was in the cartoons on television when I was a child.

Once you try to copy these simple cartoon sketches, do you get the feeling it doesn't really matter if it's not exactly right? You should.

If the cartoon looks good to you - after another critical viewing by you tomorrow - then it's fine. Don't sweat it.

Since there is a cartoon dog, I just have to include a drawing of a cartoon cat! No bias shown here.

Sometimes, if I'm copying a drawing, I use my pencil as a rough gauge to measure the subject.

This is a very useful trick. Otherwise, I just draw and erase until I think it's right.

You'll get a lot of pleasure watching your page fill up with little cartoon characters.

I decided to do a bit of shading on the cartoon buzzard.

I used the cross-hatch method. This suits me because it has so many different effects.

Have a go at cross-hatching. You'll come up with lots of great ways to use it in your drawings.

Cross-hatching is when you draw closely spaced lines together then go back over that with lines going in the opposite direction.

Up and down, or, on an angle, it doesn't matter.

You can vary the length of your lines and how close they are. Then, you can use different pencils for varying thickness, light or dark. Fun, hey?

After I did the cross hatching, I used a cotton tip to smudge the area. You have to take care when you do this, so you don't smudge outside your lines.

The cartoon bull doesn't fit in with my description of happy cartoon characters.

But I love this drawing.

You can make cartoons more fun by drawing in some symbols to add to the illusion of clouds of dust, or whatever.

This dragon drawing would be classed as cartoon fantasy.

The cartoon dragon is breathing fire and smoke. Visual effects are marvelous.

I would love it if you copied the cartoon animals on this page.

Avoid putting your hand on the drawing surface. You can get around this by turning the paper around at different angles when you make changes to a drawing.

Another alternative is to place a clean scrap piece of paper under your hand.

If you use cotton tips on your cartoon animal drawings, be careful to stay within the lines or you could cause smudging. If you accidentally go over your lines, just use a kneaded eraser to dab at the smudged area.

So, there you have it. Simple cartoon sketches for everyone.