People who are interested in learning how to draw will often start with simple images. Often this leads to the desire to draw animals, even though they are not always easy to draw.

Some animals have simple structures and lend themselves well to being drawn, but there is such a wide variety of animals that will be more difficult than others. If you use shapes only, then you can learn how different animals are put together and gain a strong understanding of how many animals are built.

If you draw different animals with standard shapes, like squares, triangles, rectangles, dots, etc., which are all arranged in different ways to create body parts and features, then you will have an easier time drawing.

This can be good drawing technique, although it may seem a bit juvenile, because it gives you a simple technique for assembling different sections of different animals. With practice, you will come to understand the shape of each animal that you draw, and how each section is put together.

Using shapes when drawing animals will not create realistic pictures, but it will give you a result similar to animation characters or cartoons. If this is your area of interest, then that is all that you need.

Artist Ed Emberley has published many books that show a number of different ways to draw common animals using nothing more than a handful of different shapes. His books are basically drawing tutorials but they can help a more serious beginner to gain a structural knowledge of drawing.

After you have spent some time just using shapes to draw animals, you should next focus on adding a sense of realism to the animals that you have drawn. This can be done by erasing any lines that indicate a separate shape, and producing an image with a single line that connects to itself.

This is an easy process to learn art, by starting with the building blocks of an image and then erasing the parts that are no longer needed to support the structure and design of the animal. This is something that is done by most people when they draw both inanimate and animate objects.

If you are interested in learning how to draw animals, then you have a number of ways to learn, but drawing through the use of standard shapes is one effective and fun method.

It can be good practice drawing simple shapes to restrict yourself to a certain process, and after you have finished with the simple shapes, you can move on with the knowledge of how animals are put together.

This will help make you a stronger and more competent artist.