Note: Sorry adding watermarks as art theft of my stuff has increased recently

Learned SOOOO much doing this it wasn't funny.

But this is basically 3 hours worth of research. I must say that Ken Hultgren has made such a difference in my art that I cannot ever recommend him enough. I have therefore tried to do the art in a similar style.

Oh and yes wolf hind legs = chicken!

Some tips, as you can see it's bad to assume that your construction will be perfect. Even if you use the recommend basic shapes and try to follow them as best as you can you WILL mess up. This is why I usually do NOT spend a ton of time getting the underlying construction as perfect as possible but instead feel the shapes.

First before drawing visualize something. How do you want your wolf to look? This is very important as when you draw "dead" your animal looks dead (I am guilty as charged at times).

Next draw a line of action from the hind foot to the head, and then use the skeleton to create an accurate position. Usually after this step, I start to chisel and equalize the parts. Understanding the skeleton and the basic forms is most important during this phase

In the 3rd of 4th step I chisel the forms and start to use indirect references as close to the pose as possible. If this is impossible, then I sometimes draw and sketch from other viewpoints to get a feel for the wolf. This freeform gestural sketching is extremely important! Even though I am notoriously bad at copying photographs to every painstaking detail (hence why I will never be an animal illustrator), I traded this for general anatomical knowledge.

If you are able to read an anatomy book and use what you learn to study the underlying structure of an animal then you are going to be able to build your own poses easily

Anyways in the 5th step I switch to a very thin pen and start to line. References are used heavily here, and again if they're indirect that is fine. You are trying to see the structure not create a carbon copy of the animal. This is also my absolute favorite part as the realism and your hard work will REALLY pay off here.

In any case this is why, even though some artists have beautiful and clean walkthroughs and initial lines I hesitate to use them. The reason is because, rather than focusing on the pose or the liveliness of the animal you try to get it as exact as possible before the construction is done. I know because I've used such tutorials before and found myself so frustrated I stopped using them.

Perhaps you can use it to your benefit but for me chiseling anatomy into form is better.

And last but not least working in steps gives you the advantage to see if a step before looks better than what you're drawing now as well as learning.

There is nothing better for learning anatomy than rinse and repeat, and working in steps like this FORCES you to draw and redraw anatomy! mwahahaha.

hope this helps!