How to Draw a Crocodile
Did you know about this animal living in the murky waters of warm countries called the crocodile? These reptiles have a fearsome jaw and a scaly body, somewhat like a snake but with limbs for moving around. By the way, feel free to check out the article on how to draw a snake, explained step by step ;)
And today I have decided to teach you how to draw it. Before we start drawing anything, we will take a brief detour to learn about the anatomy of the reptile in question to understand it better for drawing. Before we begin on this topic, it is possible to distinguish several types of crocodiles. We will look at just one of their species.
ANATOMY OF THE CROCODILE FOR DRAWING
GENERAL APPEARANCE OF THE ANIMAL
The size of crocodiles ranges from 1 to 1.5 m for the smallest crocodile species, to 7 m for the saltwater crocodile, which weighs more than 1,000 kg. There is great diversity in the shape of the snout and teeth. They have a robust body, which resembles that of a lizard, with an elongated and flattened snout and a laterally compressed tail.
Their limbs are short and laterally attached. The front legs have five digits and can be slightly webbed; the hind legs have four webbed digits and a rudimentary fifth digit. The skeleton is typical of that of tetrapods, although the skull, pelvis, and ribs are specific to this order.
Thus, the uncinate processes of the ribs allow the thorax to compress when the animal dives, and the structure of the pelvis allows the animal to store large amounts of food in its stomach, or more air in the lungs.
The eyes, ears and nostrils of crocodiles are located on the top of their heads. This enables them to watch for prey while keeping most of their body submerged. A crocodile's pupil contracts in light to form a narrow slit, while it becomes completely circular in dim light.
This characteristic is typical of animals that hunt at night. While their vision is highly developed in the open air, it is significantly more limited underwater. The eardrums are protected by flaps that can be opened or closed through muscles, which helps protect them from water infiltration during dives.
Their ears are adapted to perceive sounds both in the air and underwater. They perceive sounds over a wide range of frequencies, with a sensitivity comparable to that of most birds and many mammals. The tongue cannot move freely and is held in place by a folded membrane.
While the brain of crocodiles is relatively small, it is capable of higher learning than most other reptiles. Although they do not have vocal cords like mammals or a syrinx like birds, crocodiles can produce vocalizations by vibrating three flaps located in the larynx.
Let's now talk about the crocodile's skeleton
THE CROCODILE'S SKELETON
SKULL AND JAW
The skull is relatively flat and elongated compared to other reptiles. The eye sockets are located far back on the skull, towards the forehead. The internal bony nostrils have fused over the course of evolution and, as in mammals, present a single oval choanal opening on the skull, leading to a secondary palate. These nostrils are located right at the front of the skull.
The jaw articulation connects to the atlanto-occipital joint, allowing it to open wide. The shape of the snout of current crocodilians varies between species.
Alligatoridae have a wider snout than Crocodylidae, and even wider than that of Gavialidae. The musculature for closing their jaw is very powerful, one of the strongest in the animal kingdom.
The extremely elongated jaws of the gharial are relatively weak and more adapted to a rapid closure of the mouth. The muscles that close the jaws are distinctly more powerful than those that allow it to open.
Like mammals, crocodile teeth are set in sockets, but they are homomorphic, conical, rootless and regularly replaced like those of sharks. Hence they are capable of replacing each of their teeth up to 50 times during their lifetime. The teeth are replaced on average every two years.
Crocodiles have three types of teeth, two groups of maxillary teeth and one long row of mandibular teeth, and most specimens of current species have between 51 to 84 teeth.
The number of teeth depends on the species, but can vary within each of them, without any ambiguity about the species arising from the examination of dentition. The teeth are of various shapes, either blunt or sharp and needle-shaped.
Species with a broad snout have teeth of various sizes, while those with a narrower snout have more uniform teeth. The teeth of crocodiles and gharials tend to be more visible than those of alligators and caimans when their mouths are closed.
The easiest way to distinguish crocodiles from alligators is to look at the sides of their mouths. In alligators, the teeth of the lower jaw fit into corresponding cavities of the upper jaw, so only the teeth of the upper jaw are visible when the animal's mouth is closed.
The teeth of the lower jaw of crocodiles fit into grooves on the outside of the upper jaw, and are therefore clearly visible when the mouth is closed.
CROCODILE SKIN
Crocodile skin is thick and keratinized, and is made up of non-overlapping scales called scutes, arranged in regular rows and patterns.
These scales are continuously produced by cell division in the lower layer of the epidermis and the scutes on the surface are regularly replaced. The outer surface of the scutes is made of beta-keratin, which is relatively rigid, while the hinges between scutes are made of alpha-keratin, which is more flexible.
Many scutes are reinforced by bony plates, the osteoderms, which are the same size and shape as the outer scales, but grow beneath them. These plates are more numerous on the animal's back and neck, forming protective armor.
Osteoderms often have prominent ridges and are covered with beta-keratin. Most of the skin on the skull is directly fused to the skull. The skin of the neck and flanks is loose, while that of the abdomen and underside of the tail is tight and protected by large flat, square scales, forming a regular mesh.
Scutes contain blood vessels and can absorb or release heat to help the animal regulate its temperature.
CROCODILE SKELETON
Here is the skeleton of the crocodile that we are going to study.
We will talk about its mode of transportation in water and on land. Indeed, crocodiles are excellent swimmers. Their tail sways from side to side to enable the animal to move forward, while the limbs are pressed against the body to reduce drag. When the animal needs to stop or maneuver in a different direction, the limbs are extended. They generally move slowly underwater.
But when they hunt, their speed is much higher. On the ground, their movement is much slower. There are two modes of movement:
- Either they crawl with bent legs and their belly dragging on the ground
- Or with the legs fully extended and the body elevated.
The ankle joints bend differently from those of other reptiles. One of the bones of the upper part of the ankle, the astragalus, is attached to the tibia and fibula.
It is articulated with the calcaneus. The legs can be held almost vertically under the body on the ground. The feet can pivot as the animal moves with a twisting motion at the ankle level.
And finally, here are the different species of crocodiles that exist:
Now that we know all the essential information about the crocodile, we are going to move on to practice. To do this, we will take this image as a reference to learn how to draw our crocodile.
DRAWING A CROCODILE STEP BY STEP
To start, we will need to define a line that provides a reference point to be able to construct our reptile. Without further ado, here are the guidelines for our drawing. It is a sinusoidal line that represents the spine of the crocodile and two other curves for the limbs.
Without the reference image, this is what we have, which will serve as our base.
DRAWING THE BASE OF THE CROCODILE
We will now begin placing simple shapes on the guidelines. First, we start with the body of the scaled beast by drawing a slightly rounded cylinder.
To then draw the neck and head of the crocodile, we are going to draw a rectangle which we will divide into four to later place its jaw. This results in the following:
In the first part of the rectangle, we will place a sort of oval followed by a very long rectangle for the upper jaw, and a sort of diamond with three triangles that will form the lower jaw. And a final triangle for the crocodile's throat. (They are numbered on the drawing)
This gives this result for the reptile's jaw.
Let's move on to the limb we will draw using small cylinders. We will use the structure drawn at the beginning of the article, they will be parallel to it. And later, perpendicular to the construction line.
We will represent the "hands and feet" of the crocodile as shaped like duck feet. This is closest to a fairly wide and slightly distorted triangle shape.
Let's move on to the last part of the body before moving on to the animal's details. We come to drawing its tail. It's a long cylinder that we will divide into several segments. Like a snake or mermaid.
Let's go back to the head of our animal to be able to place the mouth in detail as well as the eyes. This involves making new rectangles that are somewhat deformed and hollow.
The eyes will be represented in the form of a diamond overlapping the beginning of the upper jaw. We can even add a triangle on top. Starting from the tip of the diamond and ending once again on the upper jaw.
We continue by adding another half-circle to finish the jaw. We can also represent the hidden foot with two triangles.
And finally, we will place triangles between the upper and lower jaws allowing the crocodile to open and close its mouth.
Let's move to the back of the animal which consists of several humps that we will represent by circles and curves. The two circles will be located at the level of the front legs and the curves at the end of its back and belly.
The crocodile has 4 digits on each hand and foot which we will shape into rough ovals like this:
ADDING DETAILS TO THE CROCODILE DRAWING
Once the construction is finished, we will create curves to draw the outline of the crocodile by following the construction lines.
Our dear friends have webbed feet so once again we are going to round the toes and put small sharp triangles at the ends.
Now let's move on to the detail of the eye. We will draw several triangles nested within each other while keeping the curves flexible!!
The inside of the jaw crudely resembles lines of a slide, whether on the upper or lower jaw. The monster's nostrils are once again represented by small triangles.
Now we move on to the details of the back. We notice on reptiles such as the crocodile, that there are bumps that make up their skin. We will represent them with small elongated circles. Like this all over the back of the animal. For the tail, we will find them at the ends. We will make vertical lines appear that we can see on our reference photo. The teeth are simple sharp triangles to trap their prey.
Here is the result:
One last detail before concluding this article. Crocodile skin sometimes has scales and that’s what we're going to draw now by making curves. We envision them as a relatively straight grid, like the scales of a snake. They are located all over their body, from the opening of the jaw to the tail, including the legs.
Conclusion
To conclude this article, we learned how to easily draw a crocodile using cylinders, triangles, rectangles and other simple shapes. Once again, observation is a crucial point to be able to understand and recreate what you see.
Illustrator and Writer: Laure-Hélène