Drawing Practice: Let's learn to draw elephants that don't suck!

I'm feeling unfunny and uncreative today, and whenever I feel that way, I like to draw a bunch of hideous shit because it makes me feel like no matter how unfunny I am, I am still a terrible artist, and that's a great comfort to me.

So today, we're going to learn to draw elephants. I draw elephants all the time, and I am SUPREMELY awful at it, so I think it's about time I learned how to do a less shitty job of it.

We'll start be recalling just exactly how badly I draw elephants when left to my own devices: 

It hurts my heart to look at this.

Alright, so elephant-drawing could use a bit of a boost. No problem.

Here's the first drawing tutorial I'll be attempting to copy:

How did I do?

You can do side bends or sit-ups, but please don't lose that butt.

I made a GIF of my progress on this one, so you could see exactly how much of a pain in the ass it is to follow these stupid drawing tutorials:

I'm feeling pretty good about this elephant, except for the fact that it has a bubble butt bubble butt bubble bubble bubble butt. Other than that, it's fairly elephant-y.

But can I top it? 

Here's the next drawing tutorial I'll be copying:

Oh f***. This one looks hard. That elephant's all realistic n shit.

Well, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so ... drumroll please .......

HERE IS MY ELEPHANT!

He looks pretty good! I mean, he apparently has face cancer and lost his front leg to diabetes, but other than that he looks great!

But that tutorial was super involved and definitely not likely to be something I'm going to follow step by step in the future. So what happens when I try to freehand draw an elephant now?

THIS HAPPENS:

That tail is NSFW.

Damn! My elephant-drawing skillz have improved dramatically! But for the final exam, I need to see if I still remember how to draw sharks and birds. Because learning new things is useless if you just forget it all the next day.

The shark:

And finally, the bird:

They're like the A-Team! Except they're not. They're more like the F-team.

Ugh. I'll show myself out.