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How to Draw Animal Icons

In this section of the site, Learn how to draw animal icons featuring all the characters you love. Whether you want to sketch a simple farm animal, a ferocious wild animal, a cute insect or an intriguing sea animal, you will certainly find everything you are looking for here.

However, this section is a little bit special. Indeed, as the title suggest, this part of the site is not dedicated to draw funny or amusing cartoon animals, but it's focusing on creating basic icons.

What's the difference?

Cartoons vs icons: How to differentiate both styles.

Cartoon images can be funny, slightly realistic, simple or complex. They are usually drawn using bold outlines, vivid colors and simple shapes. Characters might have large eyes, small pupils, only four fingers and short legs. They are created to make people laugh, to illustrate comic strips (that can be funny or not) or just be part of an illustration.

Icons are closer to logos or clipart images. An icon is usually a simple representation of the character made with minimal details and almost no complex shapes. Some icons have outlines, but most don't. Icons are quite basic and are often used to illustrate a function inside an application, a website or a video game. People must be able to read this images quickly and effectively.

How these tutorials are built

Like I said earlier, these lessons are featuring adorable cartoon animals made from basic shapes and colors. First, each lesson contains a basic step-by-step tutorial to help you learn how to draw the character. You will have the opportunity to draw a guidelines made from basic shapes, add lines to illustrate the animal and then fill in this one with colors.

Once this part of the lesson is completed, I will show you a few alternatives so that you can see how a simple icon can be done using multiple techniques. For example, some images will be rendered with a 3D effect, others with a small bevel or surrounded by a thick outline.

Ready? Let's draw!

Now that you know a little bit more about the differences between an icon and a cartoon animal, let's draw some images! Below are all characters currently available in this section. Enjoy!