Drawing Fox Step By Step

[Ilona Brownson]

Easyto follow, free, step-by-step instructions on how to draw animals, plants, and popular cartoon characters. Great drawing ideas and easy drawing tutorials. Anyone can create great looking drawings!

The concepts that I want to share with you here are also incredibly useful for understanding how to paint. In fact, they can be applied to most mediums, like colored crayons, watercolors, or other paints like gouache.

When drawing or painting, you might get the proportions slightly wrong, or mix the colors badly, but if you get the values of a subject right, you have a better chance of conveying a realistic scene, and a believable sense of light, depth and three-dimensions.

Before starting this drawing I used the See Value app on my phone to simplify the reference photo, and create a value scale image with just 3 tonal values, in black, gray and white. This grayscale reference image helps me determine the shapes of the highlights, midtones, and shadow shapes.

Drawing an accurate outline is the first challenge in realistic drawing. To convey the subject in a believable way, the size and proportions of the main shapes need to be translated into a convincing line drawing.

Use the grid as a visual guide to place the drawing lines in the correct locations. For example, look for the places where the shapes intersect the guidelines. Then locate the same position on the drawing paper by counting the number of grids, horizontally and vertically. Place a mark at these intersections then join up the points. Look back and forth between the reference and your sketch to judge the angles and position of your lines by sight.

Now with the help of the simplified value scale reference image, I located and sketched in all the highlights. Draw the highlight shapes with a light pencil line. Use your observational skills to roughly pinpoint and sketch these light-valued shapes.

After the blending step, you may find some areas look too dark. This is where you can use an eraser to lift some of the graphite off the paper and reintroduce some subtle highlights such as areas of reflected light.

When I started drawing abstract patterns in my journal, I had no idea what I was going to create. I was experiencing a lot of stress in my life, so I picked up my Blackout Notebook and Acrylograph Pens with the intention of finding an easy creative practice that I could do anywhere with out much thought. As I started mindfully drawing shapes and lines, I was quickly hooked! I could focus my attention on the simplicity of line and shape, without worrying about what it would look like or my final result. In the end though, what I ended up with was something that felt really special! This activity has become a regular practice for me. Today I reach for my blackout book and acrylographs again and again, and this practice that started out as a simple coping strategy has become a journal filled with page after page of detailed, vibrant, abstract patterns!

A wavy line is another great way to start your abstract pattern page! Simply draw a wobbly/wavy line and then using the same concept of layering lines of color above and below our wave, with this simple concept you can created some pretty amazing designs!

This is the concept we are going to use for our project today, and it is a favorite that I come back to again and again and again! This pattern starts with simply drawing a few wonky shapes, and then once again, with the magic of building out from our original lines - we end up with something quite amazing!

A quick note before we move forward with the actual pattern drawing. Remember that sticky note/scratch paper from our supplies list??? We are going to be using that throughout our project to prep and clean off our pens!

As you start drawing the main thing you have to think about for this step is space: Choose a distance from the line of your original shape, and try to stay somewhat consistent as you follow along the line, all the way around the shape.

As you start adding lines and building outward from your shapes, your lines will naturally start to connect. When this happens, all you have to do is simply keep your line spacing consistent, and treat the places where they connect as a newer/bigger shape:

To promote pen and ink drawing as a relaxing and enjoyable activity, I have extensive collection of step by step easy pen and ink drawings that you will find here. In each post I describe how you can do a pleasing pen and ink drawing in few simple steps. All you need is an ordinary gel pen and a paper (more on pen choices for drawing) and even complete beginners to pen and ink drawing can attempt them. Try them out and see how easy and fun it is to do these easy pen and ink drawings by following simple steps.

Any feedback on the content and suggestions for improvement are most welcome. I also have extensive set of additional FREE resources you can use to learn pen and ink drawing. My pen and ink drawing workbooks are also a great way to start drawing pen and ink landscapes. Additional videos to learn pen and ink drawing can be found on my YouTube page.

Interested in learning to draw pen and ink landscapes? Try my workbooks...You won't find an easier way to be successful at this wonderful activity. Check out their FREE Previews

For this tutorial, I recorded the full drawing process by scanning 213 high quality images which took over 35 hours in total just to scan! From that, I carefully selected a group of images for each step which clearly shows the intricate stages and layers of my shading process. Each step is backed up by clear explanations, shading tips and techniques.

Each step is packed with a ton of image examples. Most steps contain a clickable slideshow of 3-9 images so you can view them at your own pace, and easily observe the subtle changes from one image to the next. You can also zoom in and out of each slideshow image to analyze the details further.

This is going to be a very detailed and lengthy post where each step covers a specific area of the face such as eyes, nose, mouth, chin, etc. You can skip to any area by using the links below, but please do not skip the first 2 sections!

Proper proportions aside, it is highly important that you figure out the lighting situation for the scene before you shade the face to identify patterns of light and be able to apply the right amount of value where appropriate.

To do that, you can create a planar head/face of your subject, add a light source and shade the individual planes using solid tones or gradients relative to the direction and intensity of the light(s). You can take this a little bit further by adding cast shadows as well.

Image 1: I used a blunt HB pencil to draw the outlines for the face. Keep your under layer as faint as possible. I had to draw mine 3x darker because the scanned image showed up blank.

Image 3: On my third layer, I added more pressure, bringing out the shadows around the eyelid creases, nose bridge and eye sockets. In step 1, I established that the left side of the face would be in shadow, so I shaded the right side much lighter than the left.

Image 2: I then shaded both eyelids using the contour shading technique. It would have been difficult to shade a smooth gradient in such a narrow space using the hatching technique. The light is coming from the top right side, so for the left eyelid, I used a 4B and for the right, I used an HB pencil.

Image 1: Starting on the shadow side of the nose, I put down my first layer of HB graphite to match the shading in closest proximity to the nose bridge. This layer gradually blends into the shading around the eye and seamlessly along the brow bone.

Image 1-2: To soften the edge of the bridge, I shaded along the terminator, easing up on my pressure as I shaded into the highlights. The darkest values on the light side remain lighter than the darkest values on the shadow side.

Image 3: After outlining each tooth, I used the sharpest edge of a 0.5mm 4B mechanical pencil to go over the outlines of the inner mouth and around each tooth so that when I shade the inside the mouth, there is a clear boundary for me to work within. I shaded inside the mouth with a 6B pencil, making sure to leave some areas light for the tongue.

For the lips, I used a 4B to draw wrinkles and shaded around them using the contour shading technique (vertically). The main light source is coming from the top right, so the bottom lip is lighter than the top.

Image 1: I shaded the philtrum, leaving a narrow white space directly above the lip (HB). This indicates a soft, round edge around the lip which will later continue down the right side.

Image 4: Using a 4B and a light sweeping motion I softened out the edges of the crease to blend it in. I then took a step back and examined the whole mouth, added touch ups and softened edges where needed.

For each plane, I used the same general pattern as mentioned in the beginning of the tutorial. I started shading from the left plane to right forehead plane, darkest to lightest, while constantly referring to the values of previously shaded facial features. I softened the edge of each plane so you can still clearly see the transition from dark to light without the forehead looking blocky.

I also added cast shadows under prominent groups of hair. These cast shadows appear darkest with more defined edges when the hair is touching the skin directly and become softer and lighter as the hair moves away. A good example is the curl of hair in column 1, row 3.

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