There was a famous artist who used to paint highland cattle. Trouble is he found the feet and hooves somewhat tricky to draw.
Fortunately for him, there’s a lot of rain in the highlands of Scotland, which resulted in very lush and long grass - perfect for hiding cattle hooves in. I couldn’t track down the name of the above artist, however, I’m sure he’s not the only one who’s been tempted to hide animal feet so that they don’t have to go to the bother of drawing them.
Today we’re going to look at drawing cartoon dog paws. I’ll give you some tips to make it easier and a few exercises for you to try yourself.
Dog Paw Anatomy
Before we get started, what parts of a dog’s paw do you know already? Have a guess before you scroll down and check.
How did you get on?
Now let’s look at a few tips.
How Much Detail Do you need?
Cartoons give you a licence to adjust and simplify, so how much detail do you actually need when drawing a paw?
Let’s enlist the help of Dotty here to show three different ways of drawing the same paws.
Here the paws are more or less lifelike with the nails shown.
The paws have now been slightly simplified by omitting the nails.
finally, the paws are more rounded, with lines showing the toes
Over To You
Try trying three different sets of dog paws, going from lifelike to super-simplified.
Drawing Paws From Different Angles
Next we’re going to practice drawing some paws from a range of different angles. Time for a terrier to model the next exercise!
Here I’ve used a fairly simple dog paw for the example.
Over To You
Using the ablove example as a guide, try drawing some dog paws from different angles. You can use the sample level of complexity as the above or try adding the individual toe outlines.
Breeds Apart?
Dogs come in many different shapes and types - and so have different paws to match.
Have a look at images for the following popular breeds and notice any differences between their paws.
German Shepherd
Golden Retriever
Greyhound
St Bernard
Yorkshire Terrier
Over To You
Now try drawing some paws from different dog breeds.
Summary
Play around with how much detail you want to include on your paws. Remember it’s a cartoon, so you’ve got room to simplify.
Notice how the paw shape changes from different angles
Paw shape can vary quite a bit between different breeds.
