Grid for drawing animals and wildlife

Why animals need a fine grid

What makes an animal read as the right species is its proportions: the head-to-body ratio, the length of the legs, where the eye sits on the skull. Get those wrong and a wolf starts to look like a dog. On top of that, fur and feather patterns sit in specific places, and a marking drawn too high or too far forward changes the whole face.

A coarse grid leaves too much inside each box to place all of that by eye. Twelve to sixteen columns gives the eyes, nose, ears, and limbs their own small group of squares, so each one lands where it should.

Setting up the grid for fur and feathers

Use a fine grid with square cells and labels on, since it is easy to lose your place among many small boxes. Place the main landmarks first: the eyes, the nose or beak, the ears, and the joints of the legs. Note which squares each one passes through and mark the same crossings on your paper.

Only once the shape and the main markings are placed should you think about texture. A label like F9 lets you find a marking's square again quickly when you come back to it.

Block the shape before the texture

Get the silhouette, the features, and the pattern placed correctly with the grid, then rub out the lines and render the fur or feathers freehand, following their direction. Drawing individual hairs before the shape is right is the usual way animal drawings go wrong.

For a very detailed wildlife piece, you can scale a small reference up with the same method; the enlarge with a grid page covers that.