Reddit mentions of The Art of Animal Drawing: Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature (Dover Art Instruction)

If you can draw people, you can draw animals. It's the same process- draw the bones, put on the meat. The skeletal structure for four-legged animals is pretty similar, from chihuahua to elephant. All you need to know are the proportions.

Here's a book that really helped me. Maybe you can find a PDF somewhere

I did this real quick on a work break. /u/186394 is literally covered in (reddit) gold and /u/Anitaxjffdskjarizard is a paintbrush (for obvious reasons) on an epic journey to draw the sunset. Not as creative as butterflies and steaks but GODDAMMIT IT'S A STRESSFUL DAY AT WORK. ):

I would rather be surprised but since it's in the rules, this is a $4 book i need. :D

I spent most of the day yesterday doing this exercises, so maybe like 6 or 7 hours... I didn't use any other resources, there's a great book that I have, and I have read in the past about animal constructions:

I'm using Uncomfortable's aproach on the exercises, but there are some great constructions there. One difference is that the guy from that book masses the whole shoulder area together.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Animal-Drawing-Construction-Action-Analysis-Caricature-Instruction/0486274268

In some time I plan on giving that book a re-read.

Jack Hamm, How to Draw Animals. I have this one and recommend it highly.

I've also got Ken Hultgren's book The Art of Animal Drawing, but it's skimpy on the how-to aspect of things.

Are you currently sketching animals? You learn by doing, so go ahead and sketch. It's totally fine to get proportions wrong as you are improving. My sketchbook is daaaaamn ugly.

If you're familiar with drawing humans, you know that we measure the ideal human body in "heads", like the distance from the heel to the crotch is 4 heads, for example.

When you grab a picture of an animal, you can do the same. Measure the length of the head with your pencil, fingers or whatever and then measure out the rest of the proportions. For example, the legs are 1.3 heads, the body is 3 heads and so on. It doesn't have to be precise - no need to be more detailed than 1/3rd of a head.

I hope this helps! Sketch animals every day, save all your scribbles and show us the before-and-after later ;)

Edit, I also own this book (Amazon link). You could check your library for it.

That's not too bad. I wish I had your skill at that age. Stay humble, always strive to learn and keep at it. You'll be really really good.

Since you seem to like drawing animals, here's two books that can really help understand their realistic form. It helped me at least.
Weatherly Guide to Drawing animals
and
The art of animal drawing

The Art of Animal Drawing:... https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486274268?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf
This is a book on drawing motion and emotion of non human characters and its also pretty useful to have and study. It will teach you to make an artistic goal for an image.