Welcome!

Hello there! Welcome to my tutorial on drawing cute cats. Here we will dive into a bit of anatomy and discuss what makes cats cute.

 

Every animal is made out of shapes with different sizes. Defining these helps us become more accustomed to anatomy.

 

For cats, we will use circles for the head and hips and soft-edged triangles for the chest and ears.

 

Cats are naturally very flexible. Unlike dogs, they can close the gap to their torso and hips very far. The tummy is cylindrical and widens to form a circle when the hip and torso meet closer.

 

Now that we know about the body we can talk about the face. First start with a circle shape and bring down the sides to create cheeks you should end up with an onigiri looking shape.

 

Push the eyes closer and the nose higher. There should be about one eye sized gap in between the eyes. Big eyeball makes any animal cute and don’t forget to add a little shimmer right after.

 

When drawing a cat from the side view try to keep the lower mouth small and the muzzle shouldn’t be too long otherwise it will look more like a dog. For ears start from a one eyed distance back and draw a soft edged triangle.

 

Cats have many different breeds. We can’t talk about all of them but lets take a look at the most distinctive features from the most popular ones.

 

-Siamese: a beige-brown coat with spots on the face, ears and paws. Blue eyes

-British shorthair: grey coat, chubby cheeks and orange eyes

-Scottish fold: folded ears inward

-Russian Blue: bluish grey coat

-Turkish Van: different colored eyes(green and blue), white coat

-Sphynx: Hairless body, folds all over, upside down triangle shaped face

-Persian: Long haired coat with a flat face, short muzzle

-American Bobtail: Long hair and tiny, bobbed tail.

 

Length of the fur is divided into three:

Long haired cats: when drawing the fur draw clumps of it coming out, don’t over do this though instead for some parts using stripes is enough. Draw the tail very voluminously with the fur leading up to the tip.

Short haired cats: use stripes when indicating fur especially in areas like tummy and cheeks. Leave the tail as a thick line. Try to make it look moving and not stiff.

Hairless cats: Cats are actually very thin underneath all the coat, hairless cats have a very thin body with folds all over and the triangle shaped face becomes obvious with the lack of cheeks.

 

Accessories make animals look cuter by adding color and emotion into it.

 

Let’s make an example of a cute cat and talk about coloring through the process.

 

Start with drawing shapes and finalize the line art over it.

 

Start with a general idea of the coat pattern and use stripes to blend it in a horizontal motion.

Draw the eyes, nose, and mouth. For this drawing, I also included a small bag that I planned to fill with strawberries to heighten the charm.

Paint in the shadows where the light can’t reach like the tummy and the legs, since I used a more bluish white, the shadows should also match that hue.

 

Finally, I use a sharp brush to add color to the eyes and ears while adding another layer of color dodge to fill it in with a soft pink brush for a warm feel. This way the cooler tones we used are softened. To finish it off, I added a wooden flooring. The shadow was created in multiply layer using blue.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. <3