Video version (with a bonus video in the end card):

Text version:

Have you ever tried to capture the cuteness of your pet with a drawing?

 

Has a friend requested a portrait of their pet from you?

 

Drawing pets of all kinds is fun, whether you’re a beginner or an advanced artist!

 

The goal of this tutorial is to show how you can quickly sketch down the animal body using simple shapes and curves, and how to stylize the drawing to capture the cuteness and personality of your pet!

I’m going to explore several examples of pets, from fluffy to feathered to slimy to non-animal pets, so stay tuned!

🐈 Poses and expressions

Generally, pets look the cutest when they’re the most comfortable, especially when they’re napping (closed eyes are simply irresistible), eating, or grooming themselves, or when they’re excited from playing.

Try to find a pose in which your pet looks the most true to themselves, a pose that’s unique to them and comes to mind whenever you think of them.

 

For example, I had a guinea pig who would nap on the roof of her house, and accidentally fall off. I’d spend nights drawing her on my laptop (the drawings on the left are from back then).

Another way to depict your pet is to show their peculiar quirks and traits. Did you know that neritina snails’ radulas look like cute vampire teeth?

🎨 Techniques

The technique is up to your preferences, but if you want to underline the cuteness of the pet and the scene, I suggest using light pastel colors in the warmer spectrum and textured brushes.

 

Light and warm colors contribute to the relaxing feel of the picture, and hints on traditional media add nostalgia and friendliness.

🎇 Use features in Clip Studio Paint to draw easily

I recommend sketching and drawing on vector layers. Not only can you scale up without losing quality of the lines, they allow you to modify the strokes with the various Correct line tools or even change the brush tip.

 

Artwork on raster layers can be tweaked with the Liquify tool.

 

Both layer types can be deformed with Mesh transform.

🐱 Cat

Cats may look difficult at first, but once you know how to see simple shapes in their bodies, they’re actually one of the best animals for practice drawing.

 

A cat’s body can be simplified into three circles, one forming the back of the body, one the chest and shoulders and the third the head. All the three circles are positioned along a curve that extends through the tail.

Any cat pose can be drawn with the help of the three circles!

💡TIP: When sketching and drawing cats, try to use curved strokes instead of straight lines.

 

This cat is my colleague’s Norwegian Forest cat, which has a large fluffy mane and tail. To capture the light texture of the fluff, draw light and quick curved lines.

The coloring is up to you, I recommend checking my tutorial on Webtoon Coloring and Shading for various easy techniques.

In this picture I used a warm morning sun from the side to add to the yawning expression.

I went for a slightly stylized style from memory here, but you can still stylize further!

 

Focus on what expresses the moment and the pet’s personality best and emphasize it! The choice of what to leave out and what to emphasize is completely up to your preferences and how you view your pet.

 

Here I wanted to emphasize the roundness and the overall curve of the body, the fluffiness, especially the mane and the tail, how the head gets tucked inside the mane, and the details like the paw in the front, the closed eyes, the shape of the mouth and tongue, and the teeth.

In case you want to draw a cat but want to avoid anatomy at all costs, try capturing the pet in a moment that doesn’t show the body structure, like when the cat stuffs himself inside a glass ball, only leaving the fluffy tail waving around!

🐶 Dog

The variety of dog breeds would make for a long tutorial so I’ll focus on one of the strangest yet cute dog breeds I know, which is a French bulldog.

 

Just like with cats, a bulldog’s body can be simplified into basic shapes. As you can see, the body is quite angular, so we’ll use trapezoids as basic shapes.

Rather than slender curves, I tried to draw her with bolder, angular strokes that make the drawing energetic but still true to the sturdy nature of the French bulldog.

 

Notice that I used the Symmetrical ruler for drawing the bottle, and the Ellipse tool for the toys.

My colleague once showed me a video of her French bulldog playing in the garden with an empty plastic bottle while ignoring all the dog toys around.

 

In this drawing I wanted to capture the excitement of the bulldog of owning the plastic bottle, and the sparkles in her eyes.

Again, you can try simplifying and stylizing the drawing even further as you like.

 

💡TIP: Light shining through the ears is a nice and cute detail that gives liveliness to any animal.

🐹 Guinea pig

Guinea-pigs are the easiest to draw as their body can be simplified into a furball with eyes… At least that’s what my friend says!

But really, while their bodies can be made up of three circles, just like the cat, depending on the pose and fluffiness even a real guinea pig can look like a fluffy loaf!

For drawing short fluffy fur you can use a special brush like this. There are many kinds for download in Assets.

Compared to the real life drawings on the left, I wanted to simplify the guinea pig with the focus of the comfy atmosphere, melted pose and content expression.

 

I chose an evening setting with warm colors and light from a lamp illuminating the fluff from the side. Coloring the lineart makes the fur look even fluffier!

You can play with various stylizations according to the breed and character of the guinea pig.

 

These are my family’s piggies and each of them has a completely different type of fur and personality!

🐰 Rabbit

Like cats’, rabbit bodies can be simplified into three circles which are closer together and often overlap so that they can merge into something like a loaf. Unlike cats, rabbits have large feet that can be emphasized even more in a drawing.

Our bunny was a spotted lop with a white heart on his forehead! I especially loved this pose when he sat on his huge feet while grooming his ears and face.

 

🦜 Parakeet

A parakeet’s basic shapes can be defined as eggs, which funnily works for most other birds. Notice that the body also forms a curve.

The parakeet we had when I was a kid was really funny but he preferred the mirror over anything else, including us...

 

I might have got the wing pattern wrong… I drew it from memory like all the other animals but when I searched for parakeet images later, I found that the pattern is a bit different XD

🐌 Snail

When I first saw a neritina snail cleaning the glass of an aquarium, I was taken aback by their radula that looked like it had two vampire-like teeth!

 

I wanted to draw the chill expression and the hat-like shell to give off a Rasta-like feel.

🪴 Pet plants

Not everybody can have an animal pet, that’s why we have our pet plants! Drawing them isn’t really all that different from drawing animals, but you can let your imagination run wild with the exaggeration of the scenes!

 

For example, this was a quick doodle of our office’s marimos I scribbled to show our colleague who had gone on permanent home-office that her desk had been turned into a whirlpool bath for the marimos :D

These are my caudiciform plants, each of different species. Notice how I tried to stylize their structure and features to add to their expressions of happiness of basking in the morning sun.

The dioscorea has a crinkle-like structure with heart-shaped leaves. I emphasized the jaggy structure mainly in the silhouette to make the face clearly readable. Notice that even the face is drawn with angular strokes.

Stephania kaweesakii looks like a tiny asteroid with only one leaf like a satellite dish or a parasol to shade from the sun. I simplified the cheese-like structure and used similar oval shapes to draw the cheeks and face.

The kedrostis looks as if relaxing on a beach under a rainbow. I have it arranged in a bonsai pot with pebbles and a rock to evoke the sea and an island.

⭐ BONUS: How to draw a cat and kittens with kids; an easy and motivating method

The pets theme reminded me of how my mom taught me how to draw a cat with kittens when I was a little kid. She’d show me how to draw a simple kitten, and after I’d drawn a row of them, she’d draw the mother cat for me.

 

It was very simple yet fun and memorable, so I thought I’d pass it down so you can try it with your kids or younger siblings.

The kitten is made up of two circles, to which you add ears and a tail.

Let the child draw a row of them. They can have fun coloring them, or even practice shading a ball.

After the kittens are done, you add the lying mother cat behind them.

Now the whole scene is complete!

 

It’s a really simple exercise that not only teaches drawing a cat, but also encourages using imagination for the kittens’ patterns and learning to shade! But most of all, you have fun together!