Today I am sharing with you my first tutorial. You will learn how to draw toads.
Why toads? Because they are so simple and you will see it yourself.
First of all some interesting characteristics that differentiate toads from frogs:
They have rough, dry, bumpy, usually brown skin. Also they have shorter legs than frogs, less bulgy eyes and can live on land.
More details with illusrtations
The main reason we are drawing toads and not frogs is that they are rounder. Circles and ovals are the key to learning to drawing elements from nature.
You need a regular HB pencil, or even better, a 1B (softer pencil). H pencils are harder and not convenient for learning. Now grab some scrap paper for practicing circles.
Use a ruler to draw two parallel lines and fill them with circles. Do as many as you like and any size.
Avoid pressing hard, also keep your elbow and wrist in the air for better drawing control. I used a 7B pencil to accentuate several steps for better visibility.
The reason you should do the exercise above is to ease your hand into drawing smooth circle without breaking the line. A smooth imperfect circle is more appealing than a perfect, but jagged one.
Now lets begin with the tutorial :D
The following toads were made without references, with very simple steps
Step 1- the base
Draw a big circle for the body and a smaller oval for the head. Try drawing softly so it's easier to erase. Also it is much easier if the head is up on the body, even though the steps are same.
Feel free to follow the steps exactly same. After the first time it gets easier.
Step 2 - face
Adding eyes- the space between the eye is like one eye. Or you can imagine the frog with 3 eyes and don't draw the middle one. Also the eye that is away from us is more of a oval or more like half a circle.
Step 3 & 4- legs and back
Now you can also add the nostrils , the mouth- make the snout little angled.
Drawing legs- use ovals to indicate their position. Front legs will be under the head a little closer to the center of the body. The back legs
Defining the back - add a straight line from the head and round it off little sharper at the buttocks just as in the drawings above.
Step 5 & 6- The fun part- adding texture and shading
This is where the toad comes to life.
For this tutorial our light-sun is from up. So the belly and the neck will be in shadow. On the legs shade the lower part touching the ground.
How to shade - draw many lines in one direction, also accentuate the toad's outline in the shadowed areas.
Texture- There are many toad textures, to make it easier, pick one from below and draw it on the beck of your toad.
Done! Now share your results in the comments! -
Also you can't go wrong as there are many toad types in nature...
Bonus
These are some old silly frogs I did around 4 years ago :D
Toad-Dragon Hybrid
Pixel art Naruto Toad
Let me know if you would like to see more tutorials and feel free to request next topic for tutorial :D
You can use the above image for a quick reference in the future. :D
If you try this tutorial and post the results in the comments or link to your post: I will follow you, comment and upvote another recent post of yours!
I will not be posting a sketchbook challenge today, but I'b sure this qualifies. This post took me longer than expected but I hope some of you find it helpful :D
Please don't forget to upvote, resteem and follow so you don't miss any new posts!
Thank you for reading!
Some toad studies
All the reference photos
