What Is The Best Way To Draw Animal Pictures

[Mr. Meerkat]

I am trying to learn how to draw good animal pictures.
There is so many methods and ways to do it i just wonna know what is the way you do it?

[Toboe13]

I've been doing some animal portraits for a while.... in fact here's a couple of links:
http://berakou.deviantart.com/art/The-Bliss-of-Cubhood-75678517
http://berakou.deviantart.com/art/Snarling-Exotic-Cat-Pencil-75128100


I've found that starting out with a 4H pencil and lightly getting all your shapes and basic lineart first is a great way to start, then go in with a 2H and makes some more prominent lines darker, then i go thru with a 0.3 HB mechanical pencil and start drawing from the nose of the animal and work my way out with all the details, i also found that although its time consuming, it looks the best when each hair is drawn individually. After all this is done, i go back thru and make some of the darks darker and the lights lighter with a kneadable eraser, then it should be ready to sign and hang on the wall!!
Hope this helps a little!

[NalaFontaine]

check some biology books and anatomy books, draw skeletons, and most importantly find some reference to draw from life.

Life drawing is SO important for practice

[Pan Hesekiel Shiroi]

Life drawing is indeed very important and you should do it as often as you can. (This helps you understanding and drawing movements and shadows, for example)
But as you can't draw mammals every day (I guess), take a look for reference photos photos in the internet. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page <- this site contains a lot of photos that are under a creative commons contribution (I hope it's correct to write it like that, sorry for my bad English.).

Some hints in general are:

- look at the animal you want to draw in different angles to get a better understanding of its anatomy (it's just simple studying)
- make really rough sketches (such that only take a few seconds or a few minutes) of that animal with the help of your reference photos, try not to use your eraser
- when you think you understood the forms of the animals you want to draw you can finally start to do a rough draft of that animal that will be the base for your final drawing
- even if you understand the forms of your animal, keep on using references for some details such as fur length and direction, as well as the basics of shading
- take your rough draft and fill in the details, take your time, there's no need to hurry
- practice
- practice
- practice even more (as often as possible if you want to improve really fast)
- most importantly: never give up

There are countless techniques for drawing animals, just try to look for one that suits you and your style best (there are countless tutorials on DA).
Just a few examples:
http://panhesekielshiroi.deviantart.com/art/Losing-my-reflection-85011278 <- I did this one about one year ago without any photos for reference ... As you can see, it's not very good and doesn't even look like a snow leopard (it's slightly anthropomorphised).
http://panhesekielshiroi.deviantart.com/art/Grey-autumn-106509917 <- I did this one last December. It's not perfect but it looks way better than the snow leopard portrait. I used a photo a friend of mine took as reference (I got his permission) and anthropomorphised it slightly.
As for wild life illustrations I have only one picture to show:
http://panhesekielshiroi.deviantart.com/art/Alopex-lagopus-105428649 <- Again, anything but perfect. But still not thaaaat bad. I used no reference photos for this one, because I was studying the specific characteristics of arctic foxes before (oh well, I guess I would have done a better job if I was using references).

I hope  that my long and boring text is able to help you a little bit. Good luck and feel free to ask more questions if there's anything you don't understand.