How to Draw a Wolf in Colored Pencil

From Janet Griffin-Scott

Here is the completed picture of the wolf that we will draw in this step by step lesson. You can adapt the steps shown in this tutorial to suit any photograph of a dog or wolf, just adjusting your colors as necessary. Note that you can click on the images to see the full size image.

First, a note about my wolf reference photo. I bought the right to use this photo from an incredible, well known wildlife photographer about fifteen years ago and then never drew it until now. If you do not have access to wild wolves you must either buy photos from a photographer that allows you to make derivative art from it, or go to zoos and photograph captive wolves and scenic backgrounds and combine the two. If you do not, and just copy things out of books and magazines, you are infringing on the photographer’s copyright. There are no exceptions to this rule. If you do, you can get sued by the photographer. The copyright laws are very clear on this and can be researched online very easily.

All text and images in this tutorial are copyright (c) Janet Griffin-Scott, licensed to About.com, Inc.