How to Draw a Saiga Antelope

How to draw a Saiga Antelope

A saiga is a small antelope with an extremely distinctive face (I hate to say ‘muzzle’). Not an elephant, of course, not even a tapir, but the nose is prominent.

So, let’s draw. Let’s start classically, not with interesting details, but with a schematic drawing of the animal’s entire body in pencil. Here, I found a good, expressive photo of a saiga, side view.

It looks like a normal sketch. Now, again, with a pencil, I’ll draw in more detail:

A pencil drawing of a saiga. And then it turns out that I did miss the proportions – the neck in my first sketch was planned to be shorter than necessary. That’s why it is necessary to draw a sketch and not to stick with it, but to approach it critically, check and recheck.

So the error is found and corrected. Let us move on to drawing. Now step by step. First the torso, it’s slim and trim, as antelopes should be:

The hind legs – all the bends are very visible. Make sure these same bends are symmetrical – they should be at about the same level on both legs. Oh, and by the way, on closer inspection it turned out that our saiga is a male. All right, let’s draw it as it is.

The front legs are straighter than the hind legs, but the bends are interesting too, and it’s essential to follow them:

And then we get to the head. The horns are like a lyre (only males grow them), the ears are apart, the face is long with wide-set eyes. The nose is oddly crooked – I’d say it’s walking contemptuously crooked.

And colouring. Saigas live in the steppes and semi-deserts and their colour – brownish-beige – harmonises well with the colour of the landscape.