This is the fox that looks like a fox: tall ears, a narrow muzzle, sharp eyes, and fur that runs in the right direction. It is a pencil sketch, not a cartoon, and it takes about half an hour with one 2B pencil. Most of that time is fur.
The walkthrough follows Cartooning Club How to Draw on YouTube, shot straight down over a sketchbook so you can see every stroke. The structure is a circle with a few guidelines. Everything after that is placing features on the guides and then building tone with the side of the pencil.
What you need
One soft graphite pencil (the video uses a Staedtler Mars Lumograph 2B), a kneaded eraser and a sketchbook. A 4B helps for the darkest fur inside the ears and around the eyes, but you can get there by pressing harder with the 2B.
Why it works
Two things. The guidelines put the eyes the same distance from centre, so the face stays symmetrical without measuring. And the pencil changes jobs halfway through: the flat side lays down fur in soft patches, and the sharpened tip goes back in for the eyes, nose and crisp fur edges. Switching between the two is what makes the sketch look like fur instead of scribble.
Where it goes wrong
The construction lines show through. Draw the circle and guides with the flat side of the pencil and barely any pressure. They need to erase clean before the fur goes on.
The fur looks flat. Strokes all going the same way. Fur on a fox radiates out from the nose: up the bridge, out across the cheeks, straight up over the skull and outward from the base of the ears.
The eyes look dead. No highlight. Leave a tiny white spot at the top right of each iris before you darken the pupil, and keep it.
More animals to draw
The same circle-and-guidelines start works for a wolf, which is this fox with a wider muzzle and a heavier brow, and for a dog or a cat. For the fundamentals underneath all of them, start with how to draw.
