How to Draw a Cat

Hi everyone, and welcome to this tutorial video. In this video I'm going to be showing you how I draw a cat. For this example, I'm using a mechanical pencil with HB leads on smooth Bristol board paper, but you don't have to worry about the equipment you're using. As long as you have maybe an HB or a 2B pencil, I think you'll be fine. I also used a blending stick and an eraser. If you don't have a blending stick, then you can blend the shading with your finger. To start off, before we draw the outlines, I recommend drawing a horizontal and a vertical line. These help with symmetry and keeping everything aligned with the drawing. And then I went on to sketching the outlines of the eyes. And they are just over an eye width apart, and the lower eyelid is much more circular, and they're flatter along the top. They also are kind of diagonal in alignment towards the centre of the face, so the outside corners are higher up than the inside corners. And make sure to add two small lines for the pupils. And then from them, I drew two small lines downwards so that I could get the alignment of the nose. And this really helps when you want to keep everything aligned and symmetrical. And then just below that, I added just a faint outline of where I wanted the mouth. Once those were sketched, it was time to sketch the rest of the outlines around the outside of the head, including the ears. Making sure to use the horizontal and vertical lines to keep everything aligned and symmetrical. After all of the outlines were laid down, it was time for me to move on to the shading. I always like to start off by shading the details of the eyes, and so I started off by adding some really thick, dark lines to the bottom eyelids, and I added some dark lines around the top. I made sure to add some smooth shading by using the blending stick, with the darker shading sort of focused around the top of the eye and around the outer edges, making sure to leave some highlights towards the centre. And I added a highlight above the lower eyelid to help add that realistic, reflective effect, and I also added some extra highlights towards the corner of the eye. The contrast between the darker shaded areas and the highlighted areas really helps to add some depth and make the eyes seem realistic, especially adding the large highlights towards the centre of the eye. Moving on from the eyes, I then added some shading to the nose. I kept this nice and smooth as well to add that kind of skin texture, and then I added some darker shading around the bottom of the nose for the nostrils. The hairs at the tip of the nose are extremely fine, and so you just have to use really small, quick strokes with the pencil and build them up. It takes quite a long time, but I used the help of the blending stick to help speed up that process and just build up the layers. I blended it and then I added some more hairs over the top. And then the hairs get longer and longer as you work your way up the nose. It's always important to consider the direction the hair is flowing, and in this drawing, all of the hair is flowing outwards from the eyes. I left white hairs around the outside of the eyes themselves, but I also left some darker shading from the corners of the eyes to show that kind of ridged effect of the eyebrow. And then I added some darker layers of hair just underneath the eyes and blended them across with the white hairs with the blending stick. When you consider that all of the hairs are flowing outwards, it makes the drawing a lot easier because you know the direction in which you've got to create the fine strokes of hair. And it's always important to consider that you don't have to worry so much about the hair placement. Hair is always moving and changing and so it's very relaxed and you've just got to use quick, fine strokes with the pencil and not overthink the process. So just build up the layers with the pencil and maybe use the blending stick over the top and use some more strokes over the top of that. And you can even add in the effect of the eraser to add some white hairs where you think they're appropriate as well. So I continue to add the layers of hair going outwards from the nose and the eyes, making sure to create the same pattern on both sides of the face, using that initial vertical line to help with the symmetry. And remember that the patterns don't have to be exactly the same on both sides of the face as the hairs are always moving and changing. I left some lighter hairs going from underneath the nose and around the mouth and I marked off some areas where I wanted the whiskers to start. And then to help contrast the lighter hairs around the mouth, I added some darker shading from underneath the chin. Contrast like this is hugely important when you want to make a drawing look 3D and realistic. For the whiskers themselves, I started off adding some dark whiskers with quick, fine strokes of the pencil and then I added some lighter layers of whiskers by using the sharp edge of an eraser. After that, it was time to add the details and the shading to the rest of the head and so I started off by adding the hairs going upwards from the eyes towards the top of the head and towards the ears. These hairs are much longer than the ones on the nose, so that makes this much easier. And I also tried to keep the same rough symmetry, initially starting off by adding the quick, fine strokes of hair with the pencil and then using the blending stick over the top of that and maybe using the eraser to add some extra white hairs in between. And the effect of blending between the light and the dark hair with the blending stick is really helpful at this stage. And don't worry too much about adding details to the top of the head. You want to keep the viewer's attention at the eyes and the face and so adding too much detail at the top of the head would take away from that. For the insides of the ears, I started off by adding some lighter shading and then I used the eraser to add some light hairs. I can't stress enough how useful the eraser is for adding light hairs across this whole drawing where you want to add the light hairs around the eyes and around some of the details on top of the head. The eraser is hugely important for that and so it's really, really helpful when you want to add some lighter hairs to the inside of the ears at this stage. After that, you can add some darker shading to the ears and help to build up the layers of hair. This is especially helpful at the base of the ear when I added some extra highlighting with the eraser. After that, the drawing was finished. I really hope this video was helpful in some way and if you've worked on anything similar, then feel free to show me on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. If you enjoy drawing videos, then be sure to subscribe and any likes or shares on this video are hugely appreciated. It really means a lot to me and it helps the channel out a lot. If you want to follow me on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram and follow along with the progress photos throughout the week, then be sure to check out the links in the description box below. And once again, thank you so much for the support on here. It really means a lot to me and these videos are so much fun to make. Thanks for watching this video and I'll see you all soon.