Drawing A Cerberus Creature From Greek Myth

I've tried several attempts at drawing Cerberus. Once on camera when I don't feel I was ready to explore the drawing of it. (although I got the heads right) The drawing below was done last year 2014 and it is the best representation of Cerberus I have ever done. I like the whole dynamics of the illustration really and so I thought what about breaking down the steps and showing how you could draw this yourself.

A slight close up of the 3 Hound heads on Cerberus

Of course I'll be doing a slightly different drawing from that drawing above, but it still will be a good Demonic three headed hound that guards the underworld of Hades from the classic Greek legend.

Lets start by planning the full drawing from scratch. Often I like to gesture draw the whole thing in sketch form first to get an idea of the heads, proportions and anatomy etc. Gesture drawing is were you sketch loosely by not starting to draw perfect lines to begin with, but it really helps to give your drawing some energy and finding a nice pose for all of your creature or character designs.

The gesture sketching and drawing stage really helps just serve the guide lines for later on in the drawing process and it helps you explore the creature from the very beginning of the concept stage.

Now we have a very basic framework to sketch on we can start to explore more of the creatures look by filling out the figure and the heads and whatever you choose along the way.

Now you can see the 3 heads starting to take some shape and it is about trying to draw each head not identical to each other, but with some similar features to unify the creature design. Still needs some work

Always as we go on with a drawing we have that little doubt in the back of our minds "will this work?" and I always like to say "Lets see what happens!" Right now the legs are looking a bit off, but I can get away with it somewhat as I want the focus on the heads and maybe the tail.

Defining and refining previous pencil lines is like sculpting really, once you learn to adapt your way of thinking about sketching and draft sketching, you can pretty much learn to improve on pencil line drawings in time.

Adding in some rough pencil shading and thicker lines help ground your creature design and prepare it for inking at a later stage. I like the look of all the Hound heads, even the central design as each has their own personality.

As with all of my blog posts on drawing creatures I'll update with new material to try and make these comprehensive and highly useful for any aspiring Artist like me. Maybe I'll draw some more hellhound heads to show for inspiration - Look for new updates and I'll date and mark any updates, so you know I've added any useful updates.

Edit: 19/05/2021 Here is another re-draw sketch of the three headed creature I did very recently - Cerberus Creature  Re-draw