Hello, Evils Master, and welcome to our drawing tool, and how are you doing tonight? Great job on your first ever attempt to drawing your elk, but I'm still not getting enough of that holistic quality of that elk yet. How would you like to loosen up your hands of 6 minutes of 2 minute mammal sketches, all flipped horizontally? As a result, your perceptions of mammals and elks will become less stiffer and the most dynamic, fluid and flowing than ever, and the make your perceptions look or seem a lot more easier. For most details, please look into the Betty Edwards books, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and Drawing on the Artist Within, they can help you out on the psycholigical aspects on perceptual learning in art and design. Good luck to you.
As someone who drew a lot of horses as a kid, I feel your pain. My best advice would be repitition. Draw the same thing over and over again, and eventually you'll see progress! Another tip is to make a light sketch first, look at a picture of an elk, and try to see the lines and shapes that make up the animal. Try videos on YouTube for animal anatomy and don't give up! That drawing has promise and the fact that you can see the mistakes is really important! It is important to see what can be improved. I hope this helped!
A little tip! It seems like the back legs are smaller to accomodate for the paper size. When you do your next animal drawing, go for a larger piece of paper. This will provide enough room so this doesn't happen. You can definitely fit a whole animal on that sketchbook size, but it will be harder and you wont have enough space to capture smaller details.
Im going to try to give a small piece of advice rather than a paragraph, since Im no elk drawing expert.
I think you over shot the proportions a little bit, the head and body are just a little too thick. Next time you draw some quadrapeds, try warming up with some gestures first, using just one line for each limb, neck and spine and a circle to depict the Skull, pelvis and ribcage. Its a great way to practice basic proportions before you take your time with a longer piece. And remember that animals are hard to draw! Good luck!
As a reponse to both the drawing and to some other comments. I recommend starting small as to going big (make the drawing smaller is what I mean), practice elks first, like gestures, as oppose to trying to fit all the details without knowing the anatomy first. For gestures focus on the poses and anatomy not the face, you can do portraits of elk to focus on the face. Also better up your line quality, you can do line practices for that. (Peter Han has a good series for improving lines.) I've gotten lost in my own comment so hopfully you understand.
