Sketching Animals and Creatures

This course will take you through the process of learning how to sketch creatures both real and imaginary. Instead of learning how to simply replicate a drawing or photo, this class will teach you how to utilize reference and break down complex subject matter into basic forms. We will also cover skeletal structure, rendering textures, and capturing movement/poses to bring your sketches to life. We’ll be exploring a variety of exercises to design creatures, using real animals as a foundation to maintain believability.

I will also be going over how I use pen and ink, basic sketching principles, and rendering techniques to create dynamic illustrations. In this class, I will be working directly with ink in order to build line confidence and practice line economy. It can be intimidating to go directly to ink without a pencil sketch underneath, but this method will train you to be more intentional with your lines.

Through this course, you will learn how to break down animals into simple forms, giving you freedom to draw subjects from multiple perspectives. The class missions will help you bridge the gap between drawing from observation to imagination.

You will also learn how to start drawing directly with ink, to render your sketches, and to compose layouts for presentation. The course is project based, and will take you through the steps to design your very own creature!