How to Draw a Golden Retriever

Last Updated: August 6, 2020

Golden retrievers are some of the best family pets around. They are beautiful, playful, gentle dogs who are very loyal to their owners. This tutorial will show you how to draw a realistic Golden Retriever.

Steps

1
Sketch the head. Draw a vertical oval with guidelines, with a smaller circle inside the oval, towards the lower part. This will become the snout of the dog.
2
Make the neck and the body. Draw two lines coming down from the head. Connect these lines with a semicircle, which will serve as the neck. Add a large oval at his left side, connected to the neck by an overlap with the semicircle.

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3
Add in the legs. Each one is different, so be careful about your technique--
- Draw a circle over the body and neck shapes (only for the right-visible-leg). Draw down from the circle a long tubular shape (the left leg should be drawn straight from the dog's body). Finish each front leg with a small oval for the paw.
- For the back legs draw a big oval over the body and another one showing only under the body. Sketch a vertical tubular shape down from each of these ovals. Finish each back leg with a small oval for the paw.
4
Shape the head and neck. Outline the shape of the head and add facial features. Draw hanging ears, small eyes, a big nose, and an opened mouth with a tongue sticking out. Draw some fur on the dog's neck.
- You may want your drawing to have a different personality than the dog shown here, so alter your personal details to accommodate that.
5
Make the body. Continue outlining over the sketch. Finish up the body with a fuzzy tail.
- Don't draw one smooth, hard line for the outline; use short, light strokes that suggest hairs (look at the illustration for reference).
6
Carefully erase the sketch and strengthen the lines. Don't erase lines that depict fur, unusual as they may look--your dog would look much stranger without a single tuft on it.
7
Color in your drawing. Use bright colors, like the golden yellow seen here. Make your Retriever's coat lightest on its stomach, darkest on its back, and remember to give its tongue a lively pink coloring!