Disclaimer: I am certainly not an expert artist, and the stuff I know I've learned over a long period of time. I'm doing this to save you that time so you don't have to spend that long learning about this stuff and so that you can spend more time practicing and always improving like I do!
-The numbers here correspond to the numbers in the redline-
1. Wolves don't have fur tufts on their heads. I realize this might be a stylized thing or that a character might have one and that's totally fine, but real wolves don't have hair like that. Also, always draw the entire head before you even think about adding hair to it, otherwise the shape of the top of the head might turn out anatomically incorrect!
2. Wolves have very rounded foreheads that almost abruptly turn into the muzzle. Their head is very rounded on top due to the shape of their skull. A helpful way to figure out the anatomy of any animal and/or the shape of their head is simply to look up pictures of their skull. I've found that this has helped me a lot in the past.
3. Wolves have very boxy, angular muzzles, as do any canine. The chin on the wolf I drew is a little too pointy, and the chin/bottom jaw is typically more rounded. The muzzle is longer, and the nose is part of the muzzle and usually doesn't stick out very far from the muzzle. The nose is actually also slightly pointed at the tip, but it's subtle enough that you might not need to make a huge point of adding it in.
4. Wolf ears face forward and are actually rather small in relation to the animal's head. They are actually rounded at the top, rather than pointed. The ears are fluffy too, so don't be afraid to add a little fur in there~ Again, you can look up pictures of wolves to reference the ears. (I actually made his ears a little small here ^^;)
5. When you draw an eye in a profile view(side view) like this, don't draw it like you would a regular eye. It ends up looking a bit odd, so when you draw a wolf or any animal or human, draw a sort of triangle shape with a curve between the top and bottom rather than a straight line. ALSO wolves have black flesh around their eyes that acts a little bit like eyelashes do for us, keeping foreign matter out of their eyes. It also prevents glare from the sun! This black flesh creates a thicker black outline around the eye and causes them to appear pointed near the tearducts. The wolf's actual eye is rounder, nearly circular.
6. I know you didn't draw the wolf's neck, but I didn't want to draw a floating head, and it also allows me to give you another useful tip! Wolf necks are rather thick, not very long, and are very fluffy. Often it looks like the wolf has some sort of mane like a lion because there's so much fur around the neck. I would definitely recommend looking up reference photos so you can see just how long the neck is and how fluffy it can be.
7. Cheek fluff! Don't add too much but don't add too little. Often the amount depends on the wolf, but the fluff there causes the wolf's face to look the way it does from the front. There isn't actually that much, unless your wolf is really fluffy.
8. Wolves have whiskers, just like all dogs! You don't have to add whiskers, but I added this tidbit in just so you know~ (I did a terrible job with the dots on the muzzle that show where the roots of the whiskers are...they should be slightly oval-shaped dots positioned in a few rows on the wolf's muzzle)
Other tips:
-I've already said this, but I can't stress it enough: Always use real life photos as a reference! Do not use someone else's art, because it won't often be as accurate as you need it to be. Make sure the photo you use for reference is free to use and isn't copyrighted.
-Practice, practice, practice. Also, if you're serious about art or you just want to get better, I suggest either keeping a sketchbook or drawing on paper and keeping those drawings. Write the date that you drew the art on in the corner of the paper so that later you can look back at your art and see how much you've improved! I've gone through more than one sketchbook and it's always fun to go back and look at my old art and compare it to now~
-Also in the Oekaki program itself, it really helps to use smoothing which can be found at the bottom of the box where you change your brush size(top right corner/side) so that your lines aren't as shaky.
Hope this helped!
