This gives it more life and more believability,” explains Merien. You have to curve them around the body and around the fur. “If the cat has markings, like a tabby cat, and you randomly just draw the stripes straight down, it’s going to look a little odd. This can simplify your sketch and give the viewer a better sense of the cat’s shape and physicality.ĭon’t forget about the markings and patterns of your cat. Create fur texture by shading small sections or adding a few small lines to hint at individual strands of the cat’s fur. If you use a reference photo of a cat with fur going in all directions, you want to be particular about where you place detail to make sure the drawing still looks good,” explains Merien. This would make your drawing overly busy and hard to understand.

When you draw a cat, you don’t need to sketch in every strand of fur. Stripes on the head can stand in for eyebrows, or add dimension to the cat’s smile or stare. The markings on a cat’s face can also help you express emotion. Use the cat’s body language to give it personality and express mood. A cat with its ears pressed flat to its head could be angry or scared. For example, a cat with its tail straight up in the air is usually confident and content. The position of a cat’s tail and ears tells you a lot about their mood and body language. Animals like dogs will just wag their tail, but cats do more interesting and fun things with theirs,” notes Hutchinson. While not all cats have tails, I find that cats have very expressive tails. Show off a cat’s mood and attitude with its ears, tail, and posture. Again, if you use digital tools, keep your shading and color on a separate layer from your line art. “Shading gives your drawing more life and interest, so it really takes on personality,” explains Merien. So when the pupils are small, they look more like straight vertical lines, and when the pupils are large, they have a more rounded shape, eclipsing the colorful iris of the eye. Remember that cats have slit-shaped pupils. Finalize the facial details, like the cat’s eyes, whiskers, and markings, and layer in some color. Now’s the time to add some polish to your drawing. A thin, sleek body can help a cat look elegant and poised, while giant ears can make a cat look a little goofy. “Persians have funny little smushy faces, and then there’s the British shorthair that’s got a really round head.” Think about how those unique features can help you portray character. “Cat breeds can look dramatically different from each other,” notes illustrator Ashley Hutchinson. A great cat drawing will embody that personality and convey it through gesture and facial features. Whether they knock a glass off the table or adorably curl up in your lap, cats have character. Do a few practice drawings to explore movement and find the cat pose you like best.

“The most important thing about gesture drawing is getting that line of motion down,” explains Merien. Gesture drawings, or quick sketches that capture the movement and pose of your subject, can be a wonderful place to start when drawing cats, whether they’re at rest or in motion. They can stretch incredibly far, curl up into tiny balls, and jump to unexpected heights. You need to have an understanding of what’s going on underneath it all.”Ĭats move in ways we don’t always expect. “You can’t see the muscles, but you're going to need to learn them, because that’s going to dictate how the features and fur look. “It’s good to study the muscles and how they sit on the bones,” says illustrator Jade Merien.

Cats are very flexible, but they still have limitations. “One of the important things to study and understand is the skeleton, especially the spine. Cats’ bodies aren’t proportioned like a dog’s, and their muscle groups are different from those of humans. Take a look at the anatomy of a cat before you start a drawing. That’s right, before you draw cats, you need to watch cats. But before you can jump in and sketch a furry kitty, you need to observe the real thing. Drawing cats can help you improve your artistic skills and give you fun pieces to add to your portfolio. From their graceful movements to their adorable faces and sassy attitudes, cats make for interesting subjects. There’s a reason cat videos dominate the internet: people like cats.

Easy step by step cat face drawing