We are dedicated to excellent animal drawings.
Yes many of us have made attempts on sketching that favorite animals of ours, and more often than not it has made us frustrated that it looks not even close to what we had in our mind. I finally learned to get the right proportions and make the sketches not look like it was a pile of garbage and instead make them look like a cat sketch, dog sketch, horse sketch or whatever I try to make it look like.
What you need to do is to look at the outward lines of the animal, try to get a shape by simply trying to sketch a few lines. Then compare that to your reference animal picture and simply fine-tune the lines little by little without erasing the old lines.
My best advice is to leave the eyes while you are sketching the lines of the animal. Why you may ask, well simply because the eyes are usually the hardest part of animal sketches.
Then when you are starting to get satisfied with the general shape of the animal drawing, try drawing the eyes.
How long does it take to do a good animal sketch then? Well it is very different, depending on how the perspective of the car is. Usually getting the right proportions should take between 2-5hours. Then fine tuning it is what takes lot of time, I can spend easily 10 hours on an animal sketch before starting to shade it! So it all depends on how much patience and time you want to spend on this sketch of you animal drawing!
The kind of pencils I use is different from every drawing, but try some different ones and you will probably find the best ones for you and your technique.