Find out how to draw a dog of the Boxer breed in profile and in front view with the help of a few squares to map out his body proportions.
So have a ruler at hand to draw these squares.
The first part of this lesson covers the side view and the second one the frontal view. You can click here, if you want to jump to the second part right away.
Map out the proportions of your boxer with the help of three squares:
(The actual size of the squares I used:
Big Square's Side Length: 16cm ~ 6.3 inch
Small Squares Side Length: 4cm ~ 1.57 inch)
Start by drawing a big square with the help of your ruler on the paper. Divide it in the middle with a horizontal line.
Its upper part will be filled with the boxer's torso, while the legs will fill the lower part.
Don't draw the square to the very right of your paper, because the hind legs and the tail will reach out of the square on the right side.
Take a look at the overview picture above, to get an idea about this.
Add two little squares on top of the big one.
Their side length should be a fourth of the big square's side length.
Draw the first sitting to the very left of the big square and the second one hovering left beside it.
These little squares will contain the boxer's head.
Split the upper part of the big square in half with another horizontal line. This gives you the points where the chest and the hind end of the boxer are touching the sides of the square. This line will also aid you to draw back and belly properly.
Also make a little mark for the chest's lowest point into the middle line of the big square. Place it exactly below the right edge of the small square above it (red dotted line). With that you have five marked points (shown in red) which will help you to draw the torso.
Now you can finally start to draw it.
Begin at the marks on the left side and connect them with a line that bends slightly inwards. Then let it curve down to the next mark at the lowest point of the chest. Afterwards the chest transitions into the belly through sloping up steadily. At the highest point the belly transitions into the hind leg. So let the line fall down again in the end, since this is already the upper part of the thigh.
The line for the back starts from the right edge of the small square.
Sketch it falling slightly downwards. Close to the hind end, it goes slightly up again and forms a bulge for the base of the tail. Then it arcs down to the mark on the right side. From there it falls almost vertically. It just has a slight drift to the right and reaches a bit over the square's border.
Now let's draw the boxer's head into the small squares.
The right square just contains the boxer's neck, while the left one contains the whole face. The lines for throat and neck continue smoothly where the torso's lines ended.
Let the line coming up from the chest continue for a short distance and reach slightly into the left small square. Let the line coming from the back go steeply upwards, make a little bow and then continue all the way to the top of the boxer's head. This top lies just on the division line of the two squares.
Draw the boxer's forehead by letting a line reach down from the top of the head into the left square. Make it straight and not too steep.
When it is has breached just over the half of the square, it makes a sudden and short step downwards. Afterwards the line continues for the snout.
Draw the nose as a rounded shape, which touches the left side of the square and sits a bit higher. Then finish the face by adding the boxer's typical hanging cheeks and its chin. Both should reach below the bottom of the square.
Let the tail grow out of the upper bulge at the boxer's hind end.
Lifted it can reach as high as the head.
To draw the legs, split the lower half of the big square in the middle with another horizontal line. This will help you to place the ankles correctly. Note that the ankle of the front leg is sitting just below this line, and the ankle of the hind leg is sitting above it.
The lines for the front leg start "inside" of the chest.
Draw the front leg broad and with a rounded shape at the top. Make it a bit narrower and straight below. After the ankle, the leg is pointing slightly forwards. Add the paw to its end. It consists just of a flat bottom and three curved lines for toes.
The hind leg connects smoothly with the torso. Draw it also rather broad at the top and make it narrower towards the ankle. Its upper part is pointing backwards and reaches out of the square. Its lower part goes straight towards the ground. I only used two toes for the hind paw, because it is pointing directly to the front so that the other toes can't be seen.
Add nose, eye and ear to your boxer's head.
Just separate the nose with a curved line from the rest of the snout. Draw the eye as a triangle with a rounded left side. Place it very close to the border of the forehead.
The ear lies partially in both squares and reaches slightly above the top of the head. Draw only its outer shape for now, because the inner lines look still a bit messy in this picture. In the next one you can see its shape more clearly.
Also extend the outline of the jaw where it meets the neck. Let the line of the jaw continue with an arc that curves up towards the ear.
You won't need the squares as guidelines after this step any more. It is best when you erase them now. Of course you will erase parts of the boxer too, while doing so. Cut out a sharp edge of your eraser with a scissor, to minimize this. Then redraw your dog at the places where it got erased and move to the next step.
Draw the pupil as a thin, black oval, which touches the left side of the eye. Then draw a line running closely along the right side of this oval for the iris. Further add two slight lines for the eyelids above and below the eye.
Here you can see the shape of the inner ear clearly now.
Draw the fold inside and the outline around it.
To shade the nose, press the pencil down hard while filling in the top and the bottom of the nose. Then press it down rather lightly when you are filling in the middle part.
The wavy lines on the head are outlining the fur pattern.
Each closed area has another color on the real dog.
We leave everything black and white in this lesson, but just to outline the colored areas gives the dog a much better, realistic look.
Below is a quick description of each pattern.
1. There is a small rim along the upper part of the forehead.
2. A big shape goes all around the eyes and reaches down to the hanging cheeks. You have to be subtle when drawing the outline above the eye, because this will have a strong effect on the expression of your boxer's face. A boxer usually looks as if he is sad. That's because the fur outline is low at the outer corner of the eye and rises at the inner corner of the eye. So take care to draw it this way.
3. Draw a curved connection from the upper end of the jaw to the backside of the neck.
4. Finally add three rows of little dots below the nose.
The fur pattern of the body is quickly drawn.
Add a line that starts from the left top of the front leg and reaches upwards to the point where back and neck meet each other. Then separate the feet with curved lines, so that it looks like the boxer is wearing socks. It is common that the "socks" on the front legs reach higher than on the hind legs.
Your boxer is almost ready to run, but he still looks like he is made of paper and doesn't have any substance.
For that reason we'll add outlines of muscles, bones and wrinkles to his body, to give him a solid look.
Draw these outlines rather loose and with several strokes of your pencil, so that they don't look as clear and firm as the borders of the body.
Below are enlarged views of each body part. The lines are shown in red for better visibility. Keep in mind that you should draw them as lightly as shown in the picture above, though.
Draw two long folds into the cheek and a short one above the eye.
Sketch two lines running along the sides of the ear and sprinkle a few smaller ones in between them. Then add a few small curves behind the ear. Draw four lines into the neck: two short ones at its backside and two long ones at its front.
Let two long lines reach down from the top of the back. Outline the upper thigh and the chest with a few curves. Hint at the bone structure of the leg with straight lines and a small bulge at the ankle. Also add a little claw to each toe (not shown in red).
Draw two more lines arcing down from the back into the torso.
Of the muscle outlines below, the one that is sitting more to the back should be drawn with a stronger stroke. You can take a quick look at the uncolored pencil drawing at the top of this step to see the difference.
Let two lines curve inwards at the transitioning point of torso and hind leg to form the rounded top of the thigh. Then sketch in a few rounded outlines into the let. Draw a long line going down to the ankle along the right edge. Bring out the ankle bone with a little arc. Finally add one short line to the front of the thigh, and one along the right side of the paw.
This is the last little step.
Draw the two legs in the background as copies of the legs in the foreground. Yet you can hide large parts of them behind the later. Just take care to set them a little bit higher. That is important for the 3d effect.
No big deal, right?
And as far as the gender of the boxer is concerned, I added a couple of teats to make it a female.
Below you see what a male boxer would look like.
This concludes the first part of this "how to draw a dog" lesson.
Following is the second part, were we'll draw the boxer with the same procedure in frontal view.
To draw a boxer in a frontal view, we first map out its proportions with a rectangle. Then we divide the rectangle into three parts for head, torso, and legs.
(Height of my rectangle: 25 cm to 9.75 inch
Width of my rectangle: ca. 8.125cm to ca. 3.2 inch)
Draw the rectangle so that its width is a third of its height.
Then separate its upper quarter with a horizontal line.
This upper block will be reserved for the head.
Take the block that is left below and divide it exactly in the middle with another horizontal line.
The upper one of these new parts is reserved for the torso and the lower one for the legs.
Also draw a vertical line through the middle of the whole rectangle.
This will help you a lot to draw the boxer symmetrically.
Since you have mapped out the proportions of the body, you can start to outline the boxer's shape now.
(If you want an overview of the whole body outline before you start to draw, scroll down to the fourth picture below and return here afterwards.)
The shape of the head is symmetrical. It fills the upper square from top to bottom, but doesn't reach to the sides on the left and the right. This is important, because the ears still have to fit in there.
Draw the forehead as a flat plateau along the top of the square. At the sides, the plateau transitions into diagonally falling lines. After a short distance, these lines change direction to run straight downwards. At the temple they bulge slightly inwards and at the cheeks they curve outwards. Draw the two typical hanging shapes at the sides of the mouth and the chin in between them. Then add the neck, making it slightly narrower than the head.
The torso of the boxer fills the whole width of the square.
Let the lines curve outwards from the neck, so that they touch the sides on shoulder level.
Roughly below the middle of the torso, the lines are curving slightly inwards and outwards again to form a little bulge.
Going to the base of the legs, the lines back away from the borders of the square.
The base for both legs should be so broad that another leg could fit in between them.
Draw the bottom of the chest as a flat "U"-shape that connects the base of both legs in the middle.
Draw the legs with a rounded muscle at their top. Make them narrow and straight below. Add a little bulge for the ankle, before you draw in the paws at the bottom.
The leg on the right side is seen directly from the front, while the left one is seen a from a side angle. That's why the paws have a different shape. On the right side the toes are standing straight, while on the left side they rather look like ovals that overlap each other.
Below the left ankle, there is an additional fifth toe, hanging at the side of the leg. Include this one also on the right side. I forgot it here and added it only in step 2.8, as you can see later.
For the sake of a better overview I show a picture of the whole body outline in one piece.
This is roughly what your boxer should look like right now. Make any necessary corrections, before you go on to the next step.
Add ears, eyes and nose into your boxer's face.
The ears reach up to the top of the rectangle and are hanging down to the level of the cheeks. It is okay if they slightly reach over the borders of the rectangle at the sides.
Draw the nose right into the middle of the rectangle as a broad oval with a flat bottom.
Snout and Eyes:
Elongate the lines from the hanging sides of the mouth, so that they reach upwards to nose level. Add the eyes as two small circles right above the ends of these two lines. The bottom of the eyes should still sit higher than the top of the nose. It is very important that both eyes are on the same height and have the same distance from the middle axis.
Erase the rectangle and all other guidelines now, because we don't need them any more. You will have to redraw some parts of the boxer afterwards. Cut a sharp edge off your eraser with the help of a scissor, so that you erase with a very thin surface only. With that you will only erase very small parts of your dog.
Draw another line running along the inner side of the ear.
This gives substance to the later, so that it doesn't look like thin paper.
Add the inner and outer eye corners as triangles to the circles.
Set the inner corner of the eyes very low and the outer eye corners very high.
Then fill in the circle with grey and draw another small, black circle into its center.
Outline the big oval shapes of the nostrils in the nose.
Color them in deep black and give the nose a grey tone.
Then split the lower part of it in half with a vertical line that also reaches below the nose.
Draw an arc above the nose to define the upper border of the snout.
Let it start steeply beside the nose, but make it flat at the top.
Draw a spear like shape that is pointing up the middle of the forehead. Then add the outline around the eyes, which goes all the way down to the jaw. It is important that the outline is low at the outer corner of the eye and arcs upwards at the inner corner of the eye. This gives the boxer its typical, sad look.
A few more things:
Draw three rows of little dots, which are running down the snout on each side. Also outline the lower lip at the top of the chin.
The fur pattern of the boxer's body consists of a large shape on his chest and a socks-pattern on his legs.
Draw the former starting narrow under the chin. Give it uneven borders and make it broader towards the bottom.
Just add a curved line into each leg for the socks-pattern.
A boxer's face has a lot of folds and wrinkles.
They are the finishing touch for head.
Draw a couple of folds above each eye.
That deepens the impression that the boxer looks worried.
Add a few of them on each side of the arc, which reaches over the nose.
Sketch a bunch of lines on the surface of the ears.
Then outline the cheeks on each side with one more line.
Finally add two wrinkles to the bottom of the hanging sides of the snout and the chin.
To bring your boxer's body alive, loosely outline the muscles on torso and legs with light sketchy strokes.
Below you can see these lines shown in red, for better visibility.
Two folds reach down from the base of the neck into the torso.
Sketch a few lines that are running along the border of each shoulder.
Opposing them are two other lines, left and right from the fur pattern in the middle. They bend in the opposite direction.
Also outline the shape of the upper leg muscle and the muscles on the chest.
Bring out the muscle of the thigh with a few lines that run along its sides.
Add some more lines, running along the side of the leg.
Then sketch in the sinews, which are curving upwards from each toe, and add a little claw to the later.
The frontal part of the body is finished, and now we'll draw the hind body in several small steps.
Start by drawing an arc around the right shoulder.
It starts at the base of the neck and reaches down to the beginning of the first leg muscle.
This arc is the little rest of the boxer's torso, that you can see sticking out there.
Now draw in the back end of the boxer.
Make it so slim, that its breadth is just about a third of the width of the front body. The line for the back starts just above the arc around the shoulder. It makes three bulges. The first one at the top is for the base of the tail. Below it follows another small bulge for the structure of the hip bone. And below this one there is a long stretched bulge, which is already the first muscle of the leg.
Also draw the two short lines that you see below the shoulder.
These define the lower border of the body.
Draw in the hind legs.
You can conveniently hide one of them behind a front leg, so that only a little part of the paw and the heel is visible.
On the right, where the whole body is shown, you can see how large the hind legs are in comparison to the front legs.
Place the hind paws much higher in the picture than the front paws.
They touch the ground slightly below the middle of the front legs.
The outlines of muscles and sinews on the hind body are shown in red on the left, for better visibility.
Draw them in with several light strokes of your pencil, so that they look like in the right picture.
Finally add a little claw to each toe and your dog drawing is complete!
Congratulations for finishing this drawing lesson!
Don't get upset if your boxer doesn't look satisfying to you at the first attempt. It took me actually quite a while to make mine that "perfect" (a while being hours). The main point is that you are practicing and enjoying it, because then you'll achieve the results you want sooner or later anyway.
Stay tuned for more drawing lessons to come.