How to draw a wolf face

Hi and welcome back to Art A la carte today .

I'm answering a viewer's request on how to draw a wolf .

Drawing animals is a lot of fun and it's cool because a lot of them have some very similar features .

When you learn to draw one like a horse , you can take what you know from drawing that and apply it to drawing another animal like this wolf .

So let's look here .

I sketch this one out .

I use a reference code of course .

Um If you're not sure about how to draw things , reference photos are an awesome thing to use .

So I use my shapes obviously a little bit different in the build-up um in the detailing , then a horse but a circle for the head , a circle for the chest and then a circle for the hip area .

Also , you can see I used my leg bone lines and pivoting joint areas to help build this in just like I do on a horse .

It really helps when you're going to draw something .

If you get some anatomy pictures , see how the bone structure and the muscle structure work on different kinds of animals .

So let's look at the wolf's face .

When drawing the little face , I'm gonna start with an oval shape on its side .

Then I'm going to add in a cross section .

I'm gonna bring a line straight down .

This will be the center between the , the two wolf's eyes .

And then I'm gonna cut this over in half .

This will be the eye line in the center here and then coming down just below the circle is where I'm gonna put the nose at .

If this is , if this wolf is looking straight at it .

So right below my oval , I'm gonna put in a circle shape for the nose and right below it , I'm gonna put the uh upper lip .

What we're doing right now is just pretty much blocking in what we see with the wolf .

I'm gonna take from this point here and I'm going to make a B shape just like the letter V and this is gonna help me know where the ears are gonna go .

I'm gonna take that V shape and I'm gonna go straight up with it .

It , it looks like he has antennas .

Now , I'm gonna round that off to a triangle shape .

If you want , you have this blocking in , then we're gonna go back down here to the mouth .

I gonna bring , cut this up a little bit , that's gonna be his little bottom lip right there or his , his top lip .

And I'm gonna put his chin right below that two is actually gonna go hide underneath his muzzle and then we're gonna pull this back along here , but not for too far .

It is almost like a really wimpy w shape .

It kind of comes down , but it doesn't go up very high .

Now , I'm gonna take right about here and I'm just gonna kind of put in just some gesture lines .

We're probably just blocking him in right here .

Depending also if it's , if it's a colder month that you're drawing him , he's gonna have a thicker coat .

They're always pretty shaky .

So there's kind of our block in of our walk .

Now , let's look at his eyes .

Animal eyes are amazing .

I love to draw them .

What I'm gonna do is actually gonna lower his eyes just a little bit and I'm gonna actually put him in as circles and I'm gonna start down here in the corner here going like if I'm going down towards his nose and I'm gonna put a small triangle that gonna darken that in .

This is the tear duct for his eye , I'm gonna fall around the bottom here and I'm gonna put another tear off to that side and then I'm gonna kind of make almost de up here at the top .

It's very rounded down here , but I'm gonna , gonna flatten that top part off just a little bit and there's kind of the shape will find the behalf , ok ?

Now , this is the fun part to put in his iris , not as I risk his people , I'm about to put in his people , I'll put his people in , but I'm gonna take it and make a half moon shape very lightly in there .

So there's a half moon shape and I'm gonna shade that in just slightly .

And what that's gonna do is that's gonna put depth into his eyes .

The eye is actually clear and so it can cast a shadow , um from his , from his eye lid , cast a shadow down to the actual um to the actual eye risk creating that really cool shadow .

And you can add some , you know , some flecks and things in his eyes there and you can , you know , erase and put in a if you wanted to do that , but there's your basic .

So let's do it over here to this side .

Now , when you're putting in your other iris , now when you're putting in your other people , you want to make sure that he's looking the same way , don't put his people over here and have one I look in this way .

And this way that can be kind of the hardest part in drawing eyes is making sure they're both looking in the same direction .

There's our two wolf eyes and I'm gonna take my gummy eraser .

I'm gonna , can I clean up some of these lines here ?

That's why when , when you're doing your blocking lines , you want to sketch those in really lightly .

So that they're easier to erase .

Now .

He's looking more wolfli that someone angry .

All right , let's look at his nose .

The top part of his nose is gonna be kind of a rounded square shape .

But as you come down to the bottom part , it's gonna open up for his nostrils right in here , they kind of almost remind me of all of this .

I don't know why , but just think of his nose as a three dimensional kind of box shape .

And then of course , you're gonna shake that in to kind of give it some dimension .

You can kind of shade in the sides and the front a little bit more than the top and you can also add a little shine mark on the top of this now .