The same principle applies to your animals. Add fur, feathers, or scales to your creatures using short lines and shading. Pay attention to the direction of the texture—fur on a deer’s back, for example, should flow along the contours of its body. Adding these details will make your forest creatures appear more realistic and help them blend seamlessly into their environment.
Step-by-Step Guide: Draw a Forest with Animals for Beginners
Imagine creating a beautiful forest drawing with animals that transports you and others to a serene, natural environment. In this step-by-step guide, we’ll walk you through the process of creating a captivating forest scene with animals, even if you’re a beginner. By following these simple steps, you’ll soon have a piece of art that not only showcases your creativity but also brings the beauty of nature to life.
Setting the Scene for Your Forest Drawing with Animals
Before we dive into the actual drawing, let’s set the stage for your masterpiece. This involves choosing a theme, sketching the landscape, and adding background elements. Each of these steps will help you create a solid foundation for your forest drawing with animals.
Choosing a Theme for Your Forest
First, decide on the overall theme or mood you want to convey in your drawing. This could be anything from a peaceful, sunlit forest to a mysterious, moonlit woodland. Think about the elements that make up a typical forest scene, such as trees, bushes, and rocks. Your choice of theme will help guide your decisions about which animals to include and how to arrange them within the scene.
Some popular forest themes include:
- Tropical rainforest: lush vegetation, exotic animals, and vibrant colors
- Autumn woodland: colorful leaves, crisp air, and animals preparing for winter
- Winter wonderland: snow-covered trees, icy landscapes, and animals in their winter coats
Sketching the Landscape
With your theme in mind, it’s time to sketch the landscape for your forest drawing with animals. Start by drawing a rough outline of the main elements in your scene, such as hills, valleys, or rivers. This will give you a sense of the overall layout and help ensure that your drawing is well-balanced.
Remember to vary the size and shape of the elements in your landscape to create visual interest. For example, if you’re drawing a hill, you could have one side steeper than the other, or include a small stream winding through the scene. The goal is to create a natural and dynamic environment for your forest animals.
Adding Background Elements
To further set the stage for your forest drawing with animals, you’ll want to add background elements such as trees, bushes, and rocks. These components not only provide depth to your drawing but also create a more realistic environment for your animals.
When adding these elements, consider their size, shape, and placement in relation to your theme. For example, in a tropical rainforest, you might have tall, thin trees with large leaves, while an autumn woodland could feature shorter trees with colorful foliage. Be sure to layer these background elements—placing some closer together and others farther apart—to create an illusion of depth in your drawing.
Drawing Forest Animals
Now that you’ve set the stage for your forest drawing, it’s time to bring in the stars of the show—the animals! In this section, we’ll guide you through selecting the right animals for your forest theme, sketching them in a way that’s approachable for beginners, and placing them within your scene to create a harmonious composition.
Selecting the Animals for Your Forest Drawing
When choosing the animals to include in your forest drawing, consider the theme and landscape you’ve already established. Think about which animals would naturally inhabit the type of forest you’re depicting, and how they might interact with one another and their environment. This will not only make your drawing more realistic but also give it a sense of life and movement.
For example, if you’re drawing a tropical rainforest, you might include animals such as:
- Monkeys swinging from tree branches
- Colorful birds perched on leaves
- Butterflies fluttering among the foliage
On the other hand, an autumn woodland could feature animals like:
- Deer grazing on fallen leaves
- Squirrels collecting acorns
- Raccoons foraging for food
Sketching the Animals
Once you’ve chosen the animals for your forest drawing with animals, it’s time to start sketching them. Don’t worry if you’re not an expert at drawing animals—there are some simple techniques you can use to make the process more approachable.
Begin by breaking each animal down into basic shapes, like circles, ovals, and rectangles. This will help you capture the overall form and proportions of the animal without getting bogged down in details. For example, a deer’s body might consist of an oval for the torso, a smaller oval for the head, and several rectangles for the legs. Once you have these basic shapes in place, you can refine them and add more detail—like fur, facial features, and texture—until your animal comes to life.
Positioning the Animals in the Scene
With your animals sketched out, you’ll need to place them within your forest scene in a way that feels natural and balanced. Consider the size, shape, and behavior of each animal when deciding where to position them. For instance, a large, lumbering bear might be better suited to a clearing in the forest, while a nimble squirrel could be perched on a tree branch.
As you arrange your animals, pay attention to the overall composition of your drawing. You’ll want to create a sense of balance and harmony by distributing the animals evenly throughout the scene. Additionally, consider how the animals interact with one another and their surroundings—maybe a deer is grazing near a stream, or a family of birds is nesting in a tree. By placing your animals thoughtfully, you’ll create a captivating and dynamic forest drawing with animals that tells a story.
The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Drawing Animals: More than 200 drawing techniques, tips & lessons for rendering lifelike animals in graphite and colored pencil (The Complete Book of . )
With helpful tips and easy to follow step-by-step lessons, The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Drawing Animals is the perfect resource for artists looking to hone their drawing style and technique.
The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Drawing Animals starts with a thorough introduction to the essential tools and materials artists need to get started, including different types of pencils, sketchbooks, papers, erasers, and more. This helpful resource features dozens of comprehensive drawing lessons designed to teach aspiring artists how to draw a variety of animals, from lifelike pet portraits to zoo and safari animals. Artists will discover the fundamentals of drawing and techniques for rendering realistic animal textures, such as fur, feathers, whiskers, manes, and hair; creating volume; shading; developing a composition; and mastering perspective, all with the goal of drawing dozens of lifelike animals in graphite and colored pencil.
About Rendering
Rendering converts animal by-products from the meat and livestock industry into usable materials. Our members process 18 million tonnes of by-products each year to make it safe, stable and suitable for reuse.
Up to half of every animal produced for food is not suitable for human consumption so it is a by-product. Without proper management, meat and animal by products can become hazardous, rendering prevents this. The rendering industry is underpinned by strict veterinary principles to prevent the spread of animal disease and zoonoses, these include:
Rendering produces three main products, water, protein and fat. Water is treated and returned to the environment. Protein and fat are used in a range of products including feed, fuel and fertilisers.
Which by-products are rendered?
The short answer is animal by-products from slaughterhouses and fallen stock that died on farm. The longer answer is that within Europe, animal material falls into three categories; depending on the level of risk it is processed and used in different ways.
Processing is done on segregated lines to prevent contamination between different categories of waste and between different species.
Did you know.
Rendering uses heat and pressure to sterilise and stabilise animal material. Sterilisation kills harmful microorganisms thus eliminating disease risk. Stabilising prevents any further decomposition of by-products and makes them suitable for storage and reprocessing for other uses.
A key step is removing water. From 18 million tonnes of material taken in by EFPRA members, only around 6 million tonnes of material are produced, the rest is lost as water which is treated for safe return into the environment. From the process two main products are produced, fat (known as tallow) and protein.
