How to Draw a North American Buffalo: Simple Steps to Create a Realistic Buffalo Drawing on Your Own!

Looking for a North American buffalo drawing? You've come to the right place as we are going to learn how to draw a North American bison using easy to follow professional drawing techniques in this lesson!

Since the overall shape of the American bison is different from all the other types of buffalos, it will challenge your ability to see unique bumps in the animal's anatomy.

As well, this is an opportunity to see how well you can transition from hairy textures to skin textures as only half of the animal has fur.

Therefore, this lesson on creating a North American buffalo drawing should build up an important artistic foundation for transitioning between different types of textures.

From there, what you learned in this lesson will allow you start drawing almost anything immediately as you are able to see textures more easily!

So let's start up a new layer on your digital art canvas and begin!

1. Gesture drawing

Like all the digital illustration lessons on this site, you should always begin your North American buffalo drawing with a good gesture sketch!

Even before that, familiarize yourself with the entire animal. Take what you learn about proportions and use it to measure the overall form.

Ask yourself a few key questions like how many heads or limbs to measure a section of the body? What is the animal's natural position? What are the basic geometric shapes that make up this section of the body? What are the ranges of motions of the bones and how are the bones positioned inside the body to give it its unique shape?

North American buffalo

As you do this, you might also need to consider three types of texture in your initial sketch: the horns, the hair, and the skin of the body.

Once you are familiar with this, go ahead and create your gesture drawing! Always draw a buffalo with general shapes and then move towards the specific features of the animal.

As long as you are actively thinking about the overall form, you should be able to create an accurate free-form image of the animal with minimal references.

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2. Filling in a base color

The next step in learning how to draw a buffalo is to create a base color that you can work with.

To do this, create a new layer underneath your gesture sketch. Then, use your digital brush at 100% pressure and fill it in to the shape of your North American buffalo drawing!

North American buffalo

Once that is done, go ahead and merge the layers together so you get a solid shape to work with.

Now that you have your base layer for the buffalo, go ahead and preserve the transparency of the layer to work on the details. This will allow you to paint within the isolated buffalo drawing layer.

At this point in time, you can even start blocking in large pieces of muscles or fur to help you out with seeing the form.

3. Painting in the details

For the details, you will need to use different sized chalk brushes. First, use a large chalk brush to block out any large details like the shape of the head, the limbs, and the belly region.

Then, switch over to your smudge tool. You will be smudging your gesture lines and rough forms to create muscles and areas of fur.

Stick with the chalk brush head for the smudge tool as well since as you will be surprised by the types of textures you can get while smudging.

When you are done with that, switch back to the paint brush and begin to work on the little details of fur and hair.

Remember, you are painting where the light will hit rather than focusing where the shadows are.

North American buffalo

Sometimes, you may have to repaint certain areas more than once as you adjust your digital illustration to show the proper features of the animal! For example, the horns of your North American buffalo drawing will have to be repainted as you work on the fur around the face.

Constantly switch between whatever digital tools as you continue to draw a buffalo on your computer. Make sure there is a clear distinction on where the furry parts are in comparison to where the bare skins are.

Once you are done this step, it's time to finish it off by adding some lighting effects.

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4. Bringing the North American buffalo drawing to life

Even with the details in place, the buffalo is still a bit flat. To fix that, you will need to finish it off by painting where the key light source will hit.

The great thing about the entire process is that you can decide where the light source is even at this stage of the digital illustration.

So, to paint the light, start up a new layer and turn it into a clipping mask if you're using Photoshop for your digital illustrations.

From there, change the opacity of the new layer to 50% and start glazing in large areas where the light will hit with a large smooth brush.

If your digital art software can't support clipping masks, then duplicate the North American buffalo drawing onto a new layer, preserve the transparency of the duplicated layer, paint in your shadows and light, and then adjust the opacity to reveal the buffalo underneath.

Of course, you can always merge your layers together, repeat, and refine as necessary.

In the end, this lesson should develop some important skill sets for transitioning different textures on the same object. This is a skill that professional artists use all the time and one that I am glad you have learned!

Use it to create a profitable portfolio to showcase your artworks to clients for opportunities of extra income!

I hope you enjoyed this North American buffalo drawing lesson! I look forward to your creation in the gallery section so make sure you submit your work!