Cat Portrait: Pencil Drawing With A Focus On 3D Form | Intermediate

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Emily. I'm a professional drawing teacher from New Zealand. And today I'm going to take you step by step through drawing a realistic cat portrait. This lesson, we'll focus on how to draw a portrait with a strong sense of three D form. We'll warm up with some simple exercises and have a practice run at the portrait before we move on to the final project. Creating a sense of three D form in a portrait takes a bit of a mind shift and change in the way that you think about what you're looking at in your resource photograph. This is a great starter class for moving into drawing human portraits and using techniques like lumos method. We won't be specifically covering this method in this, but the approach is very similar. Because it's a cat, it's a little less intimidating than trying to draw a person. We'll also use a range of drawing techniques to capture the likeness and expression of the cat. Like proportion, negative space, angles, and contour drawing. But we're going to keep coming back to how to achieve a strong sense of three D form in a portrait. Well, in a cat portrait, grab your pencils and we're going to get started right now. 2. Materials: Okay, so let's get started. The materials that you're going to need, just our usual materials to start with, we're going to be doing an exploratory drawing first, meaning we're going to be figuring out some things about form and light for that. Just an HB pencil will be fine. If you wanted to use a two H pencil, you could do that and keep your lines really light, especially if you are maybe a bit heavy handed and tend to get really dark lines. In the Exp drawing, we're going to be layering lines on top of each other. It's important that you can see what's underneath and you can see what's over top as well. Maybe you have a two H pencil and an HB pencil on hand, just in case. I've also got my mechanical pencils. We'll see if we use these. If you don't have them, it doesn't matter. But when we go into the final drawing, you'll see in the photos, this is a photo we're going to be, you'll see that there's some very fine lines there for fur and whiskers and these could be useful otherwise. Just make sure you have a nice sharp pencil, so you might want a pencil sharpener then for that final drawing. You may also want some different grade pencils. I'll probably use this three B pencil and just my HB pencil as well. You could use 2s3s4 Bs just to get those darker values. And you're going to need two pages in your sketch book. So the first one will be for the exploration, and then the second page will be for putting that into practice in a final drawing. 3. Our Focus - Form & Light: There's two things that I'm going to talk about in this class that we're going to be working on, especially with our exploratory drawing. Those two things are form, especially three dimensional form. How do we get something looking like it's actually got depth? And also the effect of light on form. They go hand in hand together and I think when you first start drawing, you are looking at your subject for what it is. You'll look at this picture here and you'll see that it's a cat. And you'll be trying to draw a cat. You'll be trying to draw your idea of a cat. And sometimes you get those cartoon drawings because you're putting symbols in place of what you can actually see. When you get past that stage, maybe you're starting to think more about line and angles and edges. It may be some shape in there as well, but even when we're at that stage, when we're thinking about shape, it's usually still quite flat. We might draw like a triangle shape for those ears rather than a, some pyramid or something like that. We're not going to be drawing pyramids in this class, but how I'm hoping that this class will help you is to get past that stage of just thinking about lines and angles and flat shapes. To really start to use your perception skills and your translation skills to think about things in three dimensions and as having form and depth. This is particularly useful when it comes to drawing portraits. You may have heard of the Lumas method that is all about getting that three dimensional form onto paper. It's not a great method for beginners because they haven't developed those skills yet to be able to think in three dimensions and translate that into two dimensions on the paper. That's where I'm hoping this class will help. We've got a cat portrait here. It's not quite as complicated as a human portrait. We can afford to make a few errors and it's not going to make a big difference to our drawing. Whereas if you're doing a human portrait, you're really wanting to get everything super accurate so you get that likeness. But this is a good place to start, especially if you're thinking of going on into doing some portraits. And to get you head around that way of thinking in three dimensions. 4. Exercise: Understanding the 3D Head: How do we look at this portrait in three dimensions? Sounds funny, because obviously we can see it's a real life thing. It is three dimensional, but it's also a photograph, so it's flat. It's two dimensional in that sense, our page is two dimensional as well. We're creating an illusion of three dimensions. Really. We do that using three dimensional shapes like spheres and cubes. And putting those on dimensional page, as we always do with these classes, we're going to look for the bigger shapes first. The main shape for that head, or for any head, really is a circle or a sphere. I'm just going to draw a series of maybe three or four down my page here and you can do the same. They're just going to be a little representations of head, especially of cat heads as well. We have a, I'm going to draw quite dark. I've got a slightly darker pencil here, actually, just so that you can see it, but keep yours nice and light if you can. I would normally draw much lighter than this for these little exploratory sketches. We've got a circle there, if we're thinking about turning into a sphere. Then if you've done any of my other classes, or I learn to draw classes or lessons on Youtube, you'll know about wrapping a string around the ball. You can imagine that there's a string wrapping around. This could represent the line of the eyes. Then if we use that photograph as an example for this first one, we can also wrap a vertical string around the ball or around the vertical axis that represents that line that comes down the center of the face. Don't think about going out to the nose, but just going straight through the ball that forms the face. It would be something like this. That's the first step to getting something on your page that represents three dimensions. These would be our eyes here, maybe not that far apart for a cat. Then we'd also have another shape on here as well, which forms the snout of the cat. Even though it's maybe like a triangle shape coming down from the nose on either side, we're going to draw that as a circle. It overlaps the first circle a little bit. Let me just draw this on the screen here so you can see what I'm actually drawing. We've got a circle of the head there. Then we have a, what we're going to draw as a circular shape here as well. So that's what we've drawn and seen ones a little bit crooked, doesn't really matter. All we're doing is we're getting that idea of three dimensional form. And then this one is also going to have those contours or those axes around it. So we could have one coming around the front here, and then maybe one across here as well. You can see if you're drawing dark like me, your lines start to get a little bit, a little bit blurred. If you're drawing light to start with, then it means when you've got the correct lines, you can just darken up a little bit and you'll be able to see those nice and clearly. So can you see how we're starting to get a representation of three dimensions there? Now it doesn't look like this, which looks quite flat. It looks like it's protruding out from the page a little bit. And then if we were to take this further, we'd be putting on ears. In refining the shape as well, we'd find the triangle shape of that snout and maybe put in the cheek bones and the jaw line. And those things usually with straight lines. But let's do a couple more of these, maybe facing in different directions. This line here, which is the eye line, that's also going to help us show whether the face is looking up or down. Let's do one that's looking a little bit more upwards. This is about as light as I would draw if I was doing this myself. I'll do this one light and then I'll darken it up. If we did a cat facing the same way but looking upwards this time or a person, the eye line would be curving up and over around the ball in the center of the center line of the face of vertical line would still be facing the same direction. You see how the eyes are now up here, you get that sense that the casal person or whatever it is, is looking upwards, also means that we're going to be able to see the bottom of this part underneath the chin. This one is going to protrude out a little bit, but we're going to be able to see most of the underneath of it. Maybe the nose might be here. Should put the nose on this one as well. It takes a little while to get your head around that. This is what I'm trying to get you to think about and hopefully develop some of those skills, is how do you use your imagination to think about, well, what would I see if that head was tilted up? You'd better see much more underneath the chin, you bet. To see if it was a person, you'd better see up their nose as well, or the shape of the bottom of their nose rather than the front of their nose. Let's do a couple more and hopefully this will help you to start, see this a little bit more clearly as well. Again, another circle. Let's do one facing the other way. And maybe we'll just do facing the other way. First we can put in the vertical axis. I usually try to go from the top and the bottom center and then bring it out and around. Not always entirely accurate. Sometimes there are exceptions to that rule, and it comes down to looking at the photograph and seeing what you can see. Then we're going to do one going curve slightly upwards or curve slightly downwards. Then we're going to draw another snout, another sphere on top of the sphere, or some spherical shape. That's going to have a cross section as well. Nose is going to be maybe just across. Those two lines intersect, then the eyes will be on this line here. It looks a little bit like a teddy bear as well, so you could use it for drawing all of animals really. Then the ears are going to be added on. That's where we look to our photograph again and find the place where they sit. This first exploratory section, we're not thinking about proportion at all. We're going to do that in the next part of the class. I'm going to do one more here and let's do this one. Looking a little bit further down, you can do it facing either way. You don't have to do exactly the same way that I'm doing. But this one we want to tilt the head downwards so we'll get a circle. You're having trouble with these circles. You can always map them out. You may have seen other classes that I've done on this as well. Putting it at four points, and then putting a curve around each one of those points, and then just joining together with short light lines. But it's much quicker if you can get used to this technique here. This one we're going to do. I'm going to have the face looking slightly to the side again, like this, 13 quarter view. Then I'm going to have the eyes wrapping down and around. If you want them to look down, they've come down or up, it's got to come below halfway. This one, if you think about halfway through that circle, it's curving up beyond halfway. This one's about halfway, curving up, This one's curving down below halfway. And we could put the eyes in there just to get a feel for it. This time we're going to see more of the top of the nose, on the top of the snout. This takes a little bit of practice. If you hadn't done this before, you might be thinking, I'll draw a circle like this. But that's not facing the same way. The snout is more like a flattened, a little bit like a lozenge or something where it's squished down. And it's not going to be a complete circle from this angle, we're looking slightly from the side. It's going to be a little bit more of an oval. That's another thing that just takes a bit of getting used to and looking at photographs and things. The horizontal cross section is going to be lower down as well. The nose might be out here, maybe the nose would be just a little bit lower down. Why would it be lower down? I'm just thinking in my head about how the angle of those three dimensional forms would affect what we can see. We'd be able to see much more of the top, whereas here we can only see a little bit of the top or half of the top. This one we can't see any of the top. This is a really good practice to do, to start thinking in a different way about anything that you're drawing. It doesn't have to be a portrait. Is particularly useful for portraits, but even if you're thinking about drawing a camera or something like that, that has the lens on the front, the body and then the lens reacting. Or how are they working in space, in three dimensional space. 5. Exercise: Understanding Light & Shadow: We've done these four drawings here, just as a bit of a exploratory practice. Soon we're going to do a bigger one based a little bit more closely to the photograph, but also practicing this technique. But first, I want to talk about the second thing that this class is about, which is how light and form work together. What happens when light falls on Form. How does that affect where the light side and the dark side are? If you take a look at the sphere here, this is like the head of the cat. If we take a light, we shine it on here. This is quite a strong spot light, but hopefully it'll help you see what's happening. One side of the ball is very well lit up the side here. Then as you come around the other side, the light doesn't reach around that curve and that's why you have the light side. In the dark side, if there was light coming from like a window on a person's face, wouldn't be quite a strong, but you'd see half of their face would be lit up. Then when you get to the nose here, the light wouldn't be reaching the other side. Pretty much the whole other side of the face would be dark. There's would be a few things like the cheekbones that might a little bit lit up because they stick out and they'd catch the light. So think about how a form can catch the light. If I move this light around further towards the front there, you can see that more of the ball is lit up. I hope this isn't too bright on the video, it's a very bright torch that I've got here. And as I bring it back around, you can see that only half is lit up. And then I won't bring it around to the back because I don't want to shine the torch at the camera into your face. But the same thing happens when we move it up. You can see that the top half, I guess maybe a little bit less than half is hit by the light. And when we bring it down, you can see the bottom part of it is lit up there. This is just to get your head around thinking about shadow, the light site and the shadow side of any form, but in this case, a sphere. So how does this apply to our cat portrait? You could have a look at the portrait now and maybe just see if you can tell where the light side is, where the dark side is, and where that point is, where it changes. It's a little bit hard with the photograph and quite often with anything that you're drawing that has pattern on it and has light and dark on it because you can see that dark side of the face there. There's light areas. They are light areas that are in shadow. They're darker than the light areas on the light side. If I turn this into black and white and take some of the light down a little bit, you'll be able to see a bit more clearly where the light is hitting the form here it is just in black and white. You can actually see on the back wall where the lights are coming across to. You should do it this way. The light is coming across and then it gets to a point and then you can see some shadow. The front of the cat's face is still lit up a little bit. But if I take the brightness down a little bit, then you can really see the areas that are in shadow. Even on the nose, you can see the light reaches to about here and then it doesn't get past that line. This area here or that edge, this area here is all in shadow. There's probably a little bit of light hitting this part here. A little bit of light hitting the cheekbone or in the top of the head as well. There's some light. But then all this area here is in shadow. Can you see if I take away all these lines, can you see the point at where the light hits like a corner or maybe like the edge of a sphere or the edge of a curve, and then it doesn't reach over the other side. It's about here. The lights coming up to that plane, hitting that plane, and then it gets to the edge of it and it doesn't reach over the side of it. This is all stuff I want you to be thinking about or starting to think about when we're looking at how to build a sense of three dimensional form. Remember the sphere. Let's start to apply some light onto these spheres that we've got in our drawings. Say the light, the same as the photograph coming from the upper left. Coming towards the sphere is getting to about the midway point. All the side is going to be light. Maybe a little bit of the front is also going to be light. If it's coming slightly from the front, it's not directly from the side of the head, it's this angle. Then this part might be lit as well. All of this side of the sphere is going to be in shadow because the lights are coming from the top down. This area here will be lit as well. Then we've got a second sphere here. The light is going to work independently on the sphere than it is on this sphere as well. Going to react in the same way because the light's hitting it from the same direction and the sphere is facing the same direction as the main one. But just get your head around that. Imagine the light coming down onto the sphere. Whatever you've drawn, the secondary sphere, this part here might be light. This top part, this side, but underneath this sphere is going to be dark because the lights aren't going to reach around very far past that midpoint. All of this side will also be dark. Then there might be a bit of shadow here too, where there's even less light reaching the main sphere because this snout part is blocking it. Then we start to build an even stronger sense of three dimensional form. We're going to go through each one of these and just put in really rough shading like that. Maybe two layers to block in some shading. And then another one just to define where there might be any really dark areas. Maybe under here it would be a bit darker as well. Let's do this one here. I think we'll just keep the light coming from the same direction. If you want to play around with it, you can. But because I'll photograph the lights coming from the left hand side, it is just going to help us get in the right frame of mind for drawing our main portrait later on. The lights coming down here, you might even circle the areas where you think the light would be hitting. It's coming from above and from the left, the areas that are at the top of the sphere and the left of the sphere are going to be the same on the secondary sphere shape. Here the top and the left are going to be light. The right side and the bottom are going to be dark or in shadow. How dark they are depends on the strength of the light. But they're going to be darker than the side that the light is hitting. If the lights coming from here, it's hitting this three dimensional form. Maybe there's a bit more shadow cast onto the main sphere From that smaller sphere, we're really having to use our imagination and our knowledge of how light hits form and what happens when light hits one side, what happens to the other side. Using our imagination a little bit, but our imagination is based on, on science or experience, on rules as well. These are also rules of drawing, but they're based in reality. This one here, all of this back of the head will be lit coming from the top, so some of that light's going to reach over this side. Maybe something like this will all be lit. If you imagine the curve of that sphere. If you get a quarter of the way around here, it's going to start to bend back the other way. That's where the light is not going to reach it so much, especially down the bottom. All of this will be in shadow. This part here might be in light. If it's starting back slightly, it'll be maybe catching a bit of that, maybe about here actually. Because this part here, the light will be blocked by this part of the main sphere. That half should all really be in shadow. All of this should be in shadow here. Like I said, maybe just a little bit on the nose might be catching the light if it's jutting out beyond the shadow of that main sphere. That's getting a little bit more complicated. Don't worry if that is going overhead, where would be an even darker shadow? Maybe underneath the bottom of this sphere. I'm having to use my imagination in my visual thought process to think about where that light would be hitting. Then this last one, we've got all of the back of this head, it's going to be lit up. We're thinking about this sphere in three dimensions. This sphere of the head, the light is coming from the upper left. Where does that curve of the sphere occur? Where the light is not going to reach beyond? Maybe about here. It's actually happening a bit with the natural light in here as well. Darker on this side and lighter on that side. We can maybe even put a little bit of a line there to think about where the curve is shade. And all of this area here, all of that is going to be shadow the top because the light is coming slightly from above. This will all be lit out. Maybe this side will be a little bit darker then this side then below this curve here will probably be even darker below this curve here. In this one, we had this area here which was a bit darker. And that's because it's the part away from the light. This one here, you might think, oh, I have to make this part darker, but it's actually quite close to the light, is probably going to be getting a little bit of diffused light reaching around that side of the ball. This part here is the furthest way from the light. And this part here, as well as also the furthest point away from the light right on that other edge of this sphere. Maybe all the front of that. If it was quite a flat nose as well, all the front of that would be quite dark. 6. Practice Drawing: The 3D Head: I hope this exercise has helped you get your head around that idea of three dimensional form and light and dark. Right now, we're going to go into a slightly larger drawing. We're going to look at the photograph up there. And we're going to use that as our subject, but we're not going to worry too much about getting a likeness. We'll save that for our final drawing. Instead, we're going to take these drawings a little bit further in this bigger drawing here. And we're going to add in some angles and some war planes as well. Getting in the cheek bone, getting in the correct shape of the snout. Not worrying too much about proportion. So don't worry if this cat that we're going to draw doesn't look exactly like that cat. We're just using that as a very general reference for this drawing. So let's start the same way that we did over here. We're going to start with this sphere. There, is there. I'm going to do this one maybe about tennis ball size, Move in whatever direction feels most comfortable for you. Just get rid of a few of those extra lines that don't need. And then we're going to put on the sphere of the snout as well. Like I said, we're not thinking too much about proportion. But if you did have a quick glance at that photograph there, you'll see that the sphere, the smaller sphere comes about halfway up the main sphere. Maybe a little bit less than half way. It might just give you a place to start. Then we could put in a center line to get a feel for the direction that the face is pointing in. You see, I haven't put that center line. Coming through the nose is something that sticks out, especially if you're doing human portraits. This is a really important mistake to avoid. You don't want to bring any center lines out through the nose is just an addition. It's stuck onto the ball of the face, the sphere of the face. We're just imagining this sphere and bringing that center line through there. We could bring one across this way. It doesn't have to be too accurate. What I'm actually doing is I'm looking again at that photograph, just thinking about where the eyes are and that's where I'm putting that line. And we could even just put a couple place holder ovals in there for those eyes. Now you see how light I've kept my one. It's because I'm going to build up the lines over top and be good if you can keep yours light as well. This is the basic shape of the two basic shapes. And then we can start refining it a little bit further. So I'm going to get rid of these lines. We can start thinking about the different planes that you can see in there. One really strong plane that I can see line the shape along the top of the nose. We can make a little mark where we think the very top of the triangle part of the noses. Maybe even put that in there. Then we've got this quite strong bridge of the nose here, which is flat. Maybe it angles in and then angles up slightly. Might have two planes there, but generally facing the light that lights coming down and hitting it. We can start to put in the edges of the snouts, and now we're thinking in straight lines looking for the shape of it. This is where I could draw a little bit darker. Now I'm looking. This angle along the left hand side here. This angle, and then also this one here and this one. Putting those in, what other angles can you see there? There's one coming up, forming the shape of the cheek bone. Then we could bring that up and put in the side of the face as well. Then under the chin here, quite a strong line just here. If we're doing human, this would be like putting in the jaw line. Maybe we could even put in this shape too. Have a look at the photograph. What are some other planes? You can see the plan, the different facets or the different sides that will be either facing the light or facing away from the light. This front part of the snout is a plane in itself as well. It's quite flat. Then also this side here, maybe this part. It's like the side of the cheek bone. If I take away those lines, see if you can see those without the lines. Like I said, it takes a little bit of imagination, maybe visualization as well. It's hard to explain. But I guess I'm thinking about a cat's face at my experience of a cat's face, and I know that it's quite flat. It's not just that I can see it in the photograph, it's that I know that this front part here is flat. It's not like a complete dome that comes around the front of the face. I know that's a bony part, I can see that as well. But I also have my experience to rely on that. Cheek bone may be coming up around to the air there. Maybe there's another plane here as well. It comes in, the snout comes in, and then the side of the face is flatter, closer to this plane here. I hope this is making sense to you. You can either copy exactly what I'm doing or you could just draw the ones that you can see. You can understand. Hopefully you can understand. Front plane is flatter. We know that the nose is quite flat. It's not round or anything on the front. Even though it's a triangle shape. The three D form the front of it is quite flat. We've got that bridge of the nose there. There's a couple of planes on the forehead, but they're very subtle. It's that rounded part of the sphere at the top. There's not really any strong angles like there is with the cheekbone. The cheekbone, you come across the nose here, and then you come down. Then you hit the cheekbone and then you come down again. It's a serious change in plane. Whereas, this subtle change in planing from one side of the ball to the other side of the ball, There's no strong lines. I mean, you could imagine that there's something like this in here if you wanted to. I'm not going to worry about that for this one. Let's go ahead and put in these ears, don't worry too much about the likeness. But we could line up the points, or the starting points of the ears. This ten ear starts in a line with the inner corner of the eye. This is good practice for the portrait that we're going to do on the other page, starting to figure some of these things out. You can see that line there and put the ear up, probably intersects with this eye somewhere. I think I've got this part a little bit too big, but like I said, we're not worrying about proportion. This is just about practicing the planes of the face. The other one probably intersects about here, the angles. Something like that. So now we've got quite a strong three dimensional sense in this drawing here. It was quite quick and it's almost just like a diagram. It's a little bit like if you were to build this cat out of cardboard. If you imagine the different joins that you'd have to make, the different pieces of cardboard and planes that you'd have to create. It's very hard to get cardboard to stay in a nice curve because it just sort of bends. And this could be a good way of thinking about a drawing, how you can approach your drawing. How would I build that as a sculpture? What kind of sides would I have to create and then join together to get that three dimensional form in real life? Now, this doesn't mean that you need to start every drawing this way. This is more like a diagram. But having done this and understood this, hopefully it means that you can also kind of almost like do it in your mind. I think that's the way that I do it now, is if I'm approaching a portrait, I might draw a few of these lines, not all of them, but I have an understanding of what to look for. I know to look for the planes. I know to think about the light as well, which we're going to add in a moment, and how the light is hitting those planes. This was not something that I did for a really long time. I've been drawing for, I don't know how many years, probably 30 years or something now. Probably only in the last, maybe seven to ten years, I've been thinking about this idea of three dimensional form. Or I was introduced to it with lumos head and that sort of stuff. So my drawings really changed from before that time to after that time where now I have a much stronger understanding of three dimensional form and anatomy as well, which really helps. 7. Continuing The Practice Drawing With Light & Shadow: Let's add a bit of light to this now. We can imagine that light is coming from the upper left. It is coming from the upper left in the photograph, which planes is it going to be hitting? I'm just going to get rid of that line there because that was just a measurement line, a plane line, which corners of the planes are going to be casting shadows. This here is definitely going to be casting a shadow on this side. This cheek bone is also going to be casting a shadow. The front of the face is getting a little bit of light. The left hand side and the top definitely getting a lot of light. All of this here can be in shadow. Even just doing that extends the sense of three dimensional form straightaway. Because it's what three dimensional form is all about. It's about light hitting with height and depth. Got this one in here, up a little bit stronger this plane, it's getting a bit of light, but it's a bit in shadow from the nose as well. Then there's a bit of a plane here which I missed out, which is also in shadow. Maybe a little bit more up the nose there. You can't really see it in the photograph. But this part of the cheekbone here, if you think about a cheek bone, it comes out and then it comes down a bit and you get shadows under cheekbones. Probably from this point of the cheekbone here, underneath that is probably going to have a bit of shadow just a bit. Might be a bit too much. Then we can build this up a bit. Where is the amount of shadow? Probably over here, that's the furthest point away from the light source. You can actually see that in the photograph that it's very dark over that side. And actually all down the body as well. If we wanted to put a little bit more of this body down here, there's a very strong plane there that is all in dark, dark shadow. I won't do it too dark just because I haven't drawn it very accurately. But just block something in this part here would also be in shadow where else you can see that would have some strong shadow or even just a little bit of shadow. This part of this side of the head here, I think has a little bit more shadow than this side of the head. I'm looking at this area here. If you imagine the curve of the ball, the sphere, this is the other side of that curve. The lights coming from this direction, it's definitely hitting the left hand side of the ball. And then it may not reach as far around the other side of the ball. The light in the photograph is quite diffused. It's coming from a window. I think if it was coming from a spotlight, like the torch that I was using, probably all of this would be like in complete shadow except maybe the cheekbone, it'd be really strong, strong dark shadow. But because, you know, it's a very large light source but very soft, it's reaching other areas on this shadow side. Then we've also got the ears as well. If we wanted to think a bit about how the light is reacting with the form there or hitting the form, some of it's a little bit hard to see because there's a bit of fur in there as well. I'm switching a little bit between shading or where the light is not quite reaching and also just shading in the darker areas that I can see. There's all these different ways of looking at a photograph or looking at a subject. You need to pick and choose what's going to suit needs best for this one is to create a three dimensional form. So that's why I'm picking to think about the light source and think about the planes. But when that fails, then you just go back to thinking about, or looking and observing, where can I see dark, where can I see light? Rather than thinking more conceptually about the three dimensional shape. Let's build this up just a little bit more before we move on to the next one. I'm going to put in the shape of the eye there. It comes up from the nose and then around, then it's quite strong. Line across and then curves around and up. So it would be very tempting to just sort of put these in. There's like almonds, but when I look for any straight lines, there's quite a strong straight line there, then a curve. If we broke this up into straight lines, there'd be a straight line there. And then there'd probably be another one just across the bottom here as well. In those, we can build up a little bit more. Don't worry if yours is not exactly the same shapes and everything as a photograph. We're going to work on that in the next one. And then we can put the mouth in maybe a little bit of the pupil, but the whiskers on there as well. It looks like an Egyptian sculpture at the moment because we're not really looking at the lightness and giving any particular kind of character. Quite a severe looking cat. There's a dark area in here which is, I think it's dark color, but it's also quite a strong shadow in there too. I think because I know that the light would be hitting this edge here and then casting a shadow deep in that recess of the eye as well. Maybe a bit more shadow here, just to build this up just a little bit more. When we come to do the eyes in our final portrait, you can see the high light there. That's really important. Just note where that is now. I'm just getting your eye used to this. It's like a practice run before we do the main drawing. 8. Starting The Cat Portrait: We're going to move on to the main drawing now. It's going to start off in a similar way to this drawing, looking at the shapes and the angles, but then we're going to focus on getting the likeness of that particular cat there. For this one, you might want to start with a two H pencil just so you can keep those lines that we nice and light. Basically going to be doing a drawing like this to start with, just to map it out, but we'll focus a little bit more on proportion as well. So there'll be even more lines and things in there then Once you've used your two H pencil and you've very lightly put everything down and then you can build up the lines that you want to keep. We're going to focus mostly on the head, but we can put in some of that body area as well. Especially to show the shadow side, that strong shadow side on the right. Start by sphere. Again, about tennis ball size. Don't go too big. Make sure you leave room for the ears as well. We'll go through this pretty quickly because we've already done it. But we're going to maybe mark out a few more proportion lines when we put in the second sphere. Remember it came about halfway up the main sphere. It's about halfway and it just overlapped a little bit outside. We can change this if we need to, but we need to get something down to start with. I am keeping mind a little bit lighter than usual because this is going to be our finished drawing. You want mind to look like a finished drawing too, and not just be full of lots of scratchy lines. Let's put in the line of the eyes. We didn't put in the line of the center of the face. You can do that if you want to, but now I'm looking more at the photograph. I'm not relying on that diagram so much on the idea of the diagram. I'm more looking at the photograph to think about where are the eyes in relation to the top of that snout there. Come through here and here. And then we could again put it in a little bit of a circle or oval. They're in line with each other, maybe this one comes in a little bit closer. Just thinking about where the edge of that snout is going to go and where it's going to intersect with the center of the eye, maybe the top of the head is a little bit lower down. What we can do now is start to put in some proportion. We're going to go back and put in those lines and planes and things again. But let's look at the proportions here. We've got the eyes, which are pretty much in the center, if we're going straight through the eyes. Something about here, here, and here. You draw these in if you want or just check them. You don't have to draw them. If you don't want too many lines all over things, then the mouth is going to be about the bottom of that circle as well. The top of the nose is going to be just slightly halfway, or maybe halfway, between that line of the eyes and the line of the mouth or the bottom of the ball in the middle of the ball. This is the way that you'd approach drawing a human photo as well a human portrait. Maybe not exactly the same proportions, but the same idea. You'd measure the mouth to the nose, to the e to the top of the head. We've the top of the ears as well. I think we've got this line. This one, they're about the same then. Yeah, I mean, that one's pretty much the same as well. So we could go 123, Put the ears up here. The segment and the segment are all about the same. We may have to change them or you might find some more accurate measurements. I'm just doing this on my screen, it's really just by eye, not by pencil. By pencil as a ruler. If you've got the photograph with you, you might want to double check these. Now we can go and start putting in some more of those shapes. So we've got the top of the nose that's put in the shape of the nose just generally. Now I haven't put in all of the planes and things yet, but I am still thinking about three dimensions. And with three dimensions and perspective, especially these angles will be different. Because this side of the nose is further away from us. Then the side of the nose, we've got that center part of the nose sloping that way. Then we've got this angle coming through here, then the one across the top. And then we can start to bring this up, putting in these three D forms. Now putting in the mouth, then putting in the shape of this snout. This angle here, the shape of the snout. I'm looking at the angle in the planes, but I'm also looking at the distance between that and the eye. There needs to be a little bit of a space there. And then this side of the face, the snout. Putting in these angles, there's this angle of the cheekbone. Again, I'm looking for the angle, thinking about three D form. But now I'm also lining it up with points. I'm thinking where does that angle of the bone intersect with? The nose lines up with its come up. How does the angle change as you come around that cheek bone there in this angle? Then it changes and then it comes in close to the eye there. Then there's the angle across the forehead, put in the angle of the che bone. These are just guidelines still, so don't worry if you haven't quite figured it out. To put something down and to start thinking about the three dimensional form. It's putting the straight lines around that overlapping part of the air there, that curved part of the air we can put in the jaw line. If this is very new to you, it might feel a little bit strange and you might feel a little bit out of your depth or like things aren't working, but just give it a go. And we can always go back to our usual processes that you might have done with me in other classes where we look at negative space and those sorts of things. Just putting a straight line up there to find where that ear is going to start. Then the other point of the ear lines up, straight line here through the center of the eye. Just clipping the nose there as well. So this is a good way to just make sure you've got things in the right place. The center of the eye doesn't line up with the corner of the nose. Something not quite right with my nose, I think I might have to sort out in a moment. And then the other ear, using vertical lines, it comes outside the edge of the snout, intersects that eye, intersects the cheek bone there as well. This could also mean maybe you have to move your eye across a little bit. If the space is right, but your eye is too close in, you might have to move it out a little bit. Look at the angle of that ear and this other side of the forehead. So I definitely haven't gone up high enough with my ears because there's my guideline there. It feels like it might be a little bit too high. We'll see what happens. Yeah, definitely too high. If something like that happens, then it would be a good idea to go back and do some more measurements. This is way drawing works. You're always having to adjust things. We could go through the center of what would be the sphere or the ball or the circle. We're not thinking about it as a sphere. I'm thinking about how does this compared to this. Yeah, I could do it this way and then we can have a really close look. So if I take that and then I move it, I don't know, it kind of looks like it's halfway. It's maybe just slightly less than half. And then I need to measure on my drawing. So the ball, what's it to come up to? Or maybe the corner of the mouth. Take that the ears need to be half of this. Oh yeah. So they're definitely more than half. So there was just my mistake in my drawing, it feels better. Now, look at the angle at the top of that ear, and then it starts to curve a little bit and look at the angle at the top of this ear. And we could also look at the space in between, like a triangle shape with a flat bottom. This edge is actually pretty much straight up and down. It might look like it's on an angle, but if it does, it's probably just because we know that a cat's ear is like a triangle. So we imagine that this side will be coming down like this, but actually it's got a slight curve in it, but it's pretty vertical. You know, maybe got that angle in that angle there. Let's put in a bit of the body as well and that's going to help us just figure some things out. Here's the side of the body thinking about what's on an angle, but I'm also thinking about how does it line up in a straight line with everything else intersects through that eye there. Then on the other side, we've got that part of the ear coming down the back of the head. Then at a point that is about even with maybe the center of the mouth comes out at an angle. Then another angle. Then we have that shoulder blade there as well. About point of the mouth is where it starts to angle out. Let's see, we've got the air comes down in straight along the side of the sphere, down to the mouth. Angles out, shoulder blade. In the size of these lines. I'm just doing my eye, but you could measure them if you wanted to get really technical. But the body isn't really so important in our drawing. I'm more concerned with getting this portrait part of the cat accurate. 9. Refining The Sketch: At this stage, before we go too much further, we'll use some of our other strategies like negative space and just see if we can pick out anything that might not be quite right. I can look at the negative space around this side of the head. Just bringing my pencil with me, I think definitely something not quite right there. I noticed that a while ago I'm going to do almost like a bit more of a contour drawing or just looking closely at that edge. Now, using your eraser to correct anything as well, I'm looking at this shape and hair rounding off some of these lines too. We're using very straight angles. And now we can start to bring in some curves, but make sure they're not curves that you're making up, so you still looking at them, still using the angles that you had there. This center line of the mouth is on a slight angle. We've got that front plane of the snout, remember that. Then it'd be slanting just ever so slightly downwards, that's why this is on an angle again, a little bit of contour drawing, looking at the shape of the nose, the planes or the edges that I might have missed out is a edge that comes down here. Now this is only a good idea if you've got everything else in the right place. Let's just make sure that our eyes and the other parts of the face are all in the right place. I think there's something not quite right in here. I feel like this is a little bit too long or a little bit too big. And that could be a problem because then I'll have resize everything else, shrink everything else down to fit it unless I make that bigger. I'm just going to do a little bit of just playing around here, just moving my pencil around, trying to figure out what's not quite right. And hopefully you don't have the same problem. I'm just doing like an analysis with my eye now, but moving my pencil around as well, figuring out where the eyes should go. I think the eyes need to come up just a little bit. Look some of the other shapes, like the shapes of the light colored fur there could help as well. Yeah, I think this nose just needs to go a little bit bigger. Such a little nose on the cat that I think I might have shrunk it down a little bit. Now we're about trying to find the likeness. And I thought there was something wrong there. And that's been exaggerated even more now that I've moved the nose over. So I need to go back and correct that again, make that just a smaller. Now starting to get more of a likeness of that particular cat. I've still got all my planes in there, figured out the proportions, hopefully. Yeah, I think those are mostly correct. I'm very, very honest with you about what's going on in my drawings. I know there's a lot of artists out there who will speed up a whole lot and it looks like it's all just kind of come together and that they've done nothing wrong. I probably could have like skipped over some of these errors that I'm correcting or maybe just done them without saying anything. But I think it's really important that people who are learning understand that it's not perfect every time and it's not an easy road every time. You don't always get it exactly right the first time drawing is actually more about responding to what you put down. You put down something first and then you can correct it. It's always about editing and correcting the white area there, serving another quick look at this cheekbone, running my pencil along, looking at the photograph at the same time, just checking that I've got ear apart in the right place. What led me to do that was just looking at the photograph, Comparing the photograph and my drawing, Switching my eye back and flicking my eye back and forth between them. Something looks not quite right back here. Then I'm trying to figure out what is that what needs to be corrected? I think it's that there's a bit of an angle here that I left out. Spend a bit of time just looking at the photograph in your drawing. Now this is the stage Just before we get into adding the fur and the dark areas and all the details and things, it'd be a good idea to take a little break. I'm going to take a little breakdown and then come back to it and flick your eye between the two, the photograph and the drawing, And just try and pick out what might not be quite right. If you find something's not quite right, then you need to use those techniques like negative space and lining up. So you actually need to do some work. It's not enough to just look at and go, oh, there's something wrong there. I'll just fiddle with it and see if I can make it look better. You actually have to find a reason to change it. This is a big problem I think with learners as well as they don't have the skills to change it or to know what's wrong or they just fiddle and think of, I keep working on it, it'll get better and better, but it's only going to get better if you've got something to compare it to or if you've got some reason for changing it. I'm looking at this eye again here, or this space here, and the shape of the eye. I'm comparing those to each other and the shape of the air. So there's something here. And maybe you need to change just this angle a little bit, just looking at that space. Maybe I think that's right. So just go through and do that after you've had a break. 10. Assessing The Drawing: Did you discover anything when you came back from a break, by flicking your eye from the photo to the drawing is something that I noticed about mine almost straight away. This is because I'm trying to capture the ness of that particular cat and the attitude of that cat. This line here, I've got going completely the wrong way, It makes a big difference. This changes the posture of the cat you see in the photograph. It's actually leaning slightly, this way line, I guess the neck, that makes it look like it's maybe jutting its head forward or it's looking at a bird. It changes the likeness. Sometimes just tiny little things like that as this line here. When I look at this line, I'm also drawn to look at this angle. I'm also drawn to look at this angle. I think maybe I need this to come a little bit further across. I'm drawing from my screen in front of me, rather than having a photograph next to me. Sometimes there might be little things that I can't quite see. I've got another version just over here to the left, which is the feed that's going to the screen. If you've seen me leaning over, that's why when I look at it, I think I extreme there. But I think this line here, it comes straight from the corner of the cheek and it comes down to match where the chin would be, and it's quite shallow there. That's made a little bit of a difference. I think to the ness of this particular cat, the eyes are going to make a difference as well. Once we put the pupils in, it's going to show that it's looking up a little bit, also getting these curves right? It's going to make a big difference. Still feel a little bit like maybe my forehead and my drawing, it's a bit too big. But that may come together when we put in the fur and the shading and that sort of thing. Hopefully you've stayed nice and light. And that means you can make some changes if you need to. What I'm going to do now is rub out most of the lines. Any of the lines that I don't need, we are going to block in the shading like we did with this one, but just a very light soft layer and maybe a piece of tissue might be handy as well. Just to blend some of those shading layers or that one shading layer before we add in some detail. Rubbing out all the lines I don't need, some of them will still be useful like the cheekbone line, but we want them to be light so that they disappear under any shading or anything that we need to put over top. Definitely, any of these proportion lines, we can get rid of those. 11. Blocking In Shading: Like I said, we're going to block in some shading and we're going to keep this shading just as a light layer. Keep it quite tidy. What I've done is just identified where that shadow plane of the face is. This parts in shadow too, but it's also very light. It's darker than this side because it's got shadow on it, but it's white. It's maybe more like a light gray. So I'm not going to worry about that for now because I don't want to go too dark. But this edge here along the cheek bone, underneath that little white part up here in the upper side of the air. I'm going to shade all of that in, and then I'm going to bring it down to about here. That part of the body as well. It won't go all the way down, but you can do as far as you want. All of this just going to shade in. I'm just using up and down lines, can go in any angle. Really, one technique I've heard is that you should go in a direction that's perpendicular to the light source. When you're shading the light sources like this, that would mean that we'd be shading this way. But yeah, I'm not worrying about that for this one's something that I came across not too long ago. It's more if you're just drawing or shading with these lines, these very graphic lines. And you're not going to be blending them in. The reason we're putting our shading in is so that we can help enhance that idea of three D form by showing how the light is hitting that form. Put in that shadow plane there of the nose, then come up through the eye here as well. It's another area where I'm not quite sure about something. I'm looking at the shape, the shape of white and the shape of dark hair. And I think maybe it's just said, I haven't got the correct shape of the eye in there yet. Let's just put in the shading first and then we can go back and put in the details of things like that. May put in the ear as well. I'm just looking for those main shadow areas, I can get that bit of this mud. It's just like a block in of shading. My drawing is quite light at the moment because I wanted to lose a lot of those dark lines. So hopefully you can see, okay, can probably build that shading up a little bit more. This is quite a hard pencil, probably should have said. If you switched to something like a two or an HB, it'll make things a little bit darker, a little bit more quickly. Then straightway, we've got a stronger sense of three dimensional form just from that light layer. I'm going to put a little bit of shading up here too. Remember that was an area where not quite so much light is hitting, but some light is hitting because the light is still coming from above. It's just not quite reaching as far around that sphere and maybe a little bit here. Okay, so let's work on the eyes and the nose now, the details. And try and get that lightness switched over to black and white here so we can see things a little bit more clearly. Get distracted by some of the colors. I'll start with the eye on this side and then we'll move over to that side there. Now I'm going back into contour drawing mode. Looking really carefully the photo with my eye and then following what I'm looking at with my pencil as well, trying to get these angles right then putting in the double lines, the areas that you're going to shade. Or maybe even just straight away putting in a thicker line. Then we could also put in where the high light is going to go. A little bit of that pupil sticks out just underneath the high light. It's just a little bit of dark and then not very much at all of the pupil that you can see that slit part of the eye, this dark part under here, my HB pencil, I'm not putting in the black points yet, but I am shading them dark. This part here is going to be very dark. Later on, a few little flicks out of there to show the eyelashes. See the quality of line around this eye by quality. How thick or how thin it is, how soft or how hard it is. Just tidy up some of my lines from underneath there so I can show that it's very thin on this side. Then you got that thick part and then around here thin and then it gets thicker and then thinner again. Make sure when you're doing that, when you're changing the thickness, that you're not changing the shape of it. The shape needs to stay the same, or the outer edge of the shape anyway, needs to stay the same. And come down here and work on this nose. Tiny bit of shading here which comes in a little bit. And I think that's important because that's showing the way the n is starting to curve around the front of the nose. It's quite hard to see. This is one of those really small details. I think it's partly just the color of the fur, but it helps show the contour as well. Just part there. See if you can see that. Then on this side, it comes just inside the top of that side of the nose. Again, it's got a little bit of a curve on it and then it starts to come up and between the eyes there, it's a bit of a change in the type of fur and coming down the other side, it's going to dark shape in here. Go around the edges of that dark shape, make sure you've got the right angles, the right proportions is too high or too wide. And change those if you need to. There's some things that you get to a point and you're just not going to be able to change them and that's okay. If it's going to ruin everything else, then I wouldn't worry about changing it. I'm just putting in a little bit of shading in here as well. It's definitely dark on the right side of the nose. All of this is shaded really, but then it's a little bit darker just here, maybe just over the bridge of the nose, a little bit of a darker patch as well. Let's come down and do the nose back into contour drawing mode. Contour drawing, remember, is when you are looking closely at the edges, the change in direction, moving your pencil at the same time as your eye. Sometimes this can really help you find, identify some of those errors drawn in the shape of the nostril there. And then I can shade in the shape of the nostril. Let's put this other eye analysis, the one where I thought I might have a little bit of trouble. A bit of a problem. I'm looking at the shape of this dark area. I'm going to work my way up just following, I've got the edge of the dark area just here, then there's a little bit of light, and then there's this shape that comes around the eye like that. So have a look at the photograph, especially if you've printed it out. Maybe even drawer on top of your photograph if you want to see if you can pick out those areas. The edge of the dark shape of the snout or the side of the snout. Little bit of light sneaking in there. It's not light, it's light fur I think. Dark shape here, but there's just a tiny bit of light left in that as well. We're going to piece it together like a jigsaw puzzle. I've got my dark part and then we've got that little light part. And then we're going to follow that shape, leave that little bit of light peeping through there. Let's have a look at that. Again, without the lines on the photograph, try and get an accurate shape for that dark part. It comes around the rest of the eye there. When I'm re drawing this eye, just relying on what I already had down there. Because I think that might be incorrect. But even if I thought it was correct, I'm looking again at the photograph all the time. You're never just relying on the drawing that you've put down. Because that first pass especially, there's usually something not quite right. Some kind of error that you have to correct that you just don't see until you start putting other things in there. Look at the quality of the line around that eye. Where is it there? Are there any little changes? There's a tiny little bump in it there. I think that bumps taken mine a little bit too high now. It's just slightly higher than the other eye and it should be on the same level. This is just another eraser pen that I found. It's a bit broader than the tombo mono zero, which I have used in other classes. But it just gives you a bit more control than using the Putty erasers which are the only other eras that I use. Really these sometimes you can't quite get it at the right point or the right place is a pyramid or a triangle. It always has a point on one of the sides. It's quite handy. It's not as clean as the mono zero is the only thing, sometimes at least a few marks and we'll put in the highlight of the eye, then the pupil look at where it is overall in comparison to the rest of the eye. Is it right in the center? Pretty much is right in the center. Hopefully once you put that iris in, in that highlight, in actually it's put a little bit of shading as well so that we can see that highlight pop out. Hopefully that has created the same look on the cat's face or is looking in the same direction. At least to make sure you've got the highlight to the left of the pupil in each one. And it's the right shape, It's touching the pupil in each side as well, this one. It's actually overlapping the pupil a little bit. 12. Continuing Shading: I've put these about the same size on the screen now as the photograph and my drawing. And it might be good practice for you to have a look at my drawing and the photograph. Just flick your eye back and forth and I know it's perfect yet it's not tidy yet and put everything in there. But are there any major flaws that you can see, Shapes that are incorrect, or any angles that are incorrect? It's going to change a little bit when we put the fur on there. That's going to make it look like the head is not so smooth and flat. I'm pretty happy with it. I know that you if I spent a few more hours on it, I'd definitely find things to correct. But yeah, I'm reasonably happy with what I've got. So we're going to move on from here, but do always feel free to compare my drawing with the photograph and see where I may have missed something because that's a really good learning exercise as well, just putting in a few of these fur marks now or finding the white areas as well. So preserving the white areas by putting some lines around them, just very light lines. There's this white area around each of the eyes, the dark area through here. I might just kind of block that in some scratchy lines too just to start getting the fur patterns in there and seeing how that affects the way that I see the rest of the drawing, the white part around the eye, but a dark coming up here. This is making me question the height of my forehead, but it might be all right if I can't find anything that clearly demonstrates that I've got the forehead in the wrong place or that it's the wrong height. I'm not going to change it. I might see it later, but when I'm putting these patterns in here, maybe a couple of millimeters different but there's nothing major, I'm just trusting that everything is okay. I need to have a reason to change something. I'm not just going to change it because I think it looks strange, but I don't really know why it looks strange. If you have any problems with your drawings and you're not quite sure what's wrong with it, but you think there is something wrong with it, then remember, you can always share them with me. It's much easier for someone else to see any issues. I don't know why that is exactly, but it's true. There's lots of times where I can't see what's right in front of my face. There's an error there, and I might see it a few days later. But it needs a really fresh viewpoint and someone else can give that to you. You need to make sure that it someone who has some experience with drawing and not someone who's just going to look at it and say, oh, that's a cat that looks like a strange cat or something like that, because that's just not helpful. Still, putting in these patterns here, finding the white areas, using the patterns to jigsaw piece things together, make sure I've got all the parts in the right place. If part of the pattern doesn't fit, then there's something wrong with my drawing. But so far, everything seems to be fitting. Okay, We've got the whiskers here. Maybe should have done this before, but if you've done the dog drawing, you'll know that you can indent these whiskers. The only thing is, there needs to be no shading there, which there is a pay to practice this somewhere. I'll give you another quick demonstration for this class here. You need something that is hard or sharp. I'm the tip of this mechanical pencil, but I'm not using the pencil end, squished the pencil back inside it. It's just the metal end. If I did some on this one, do them on this side quite firmly pushing down. You don't want to rip the paper though, and that's why it has to be a soft or not a sharp end. It just needs to be something that's a little bit blunt. Then you see those whiskers showing up there, lidar there's no point in doing it. If it's going to be an area where it's not going to have any shading over top. On this side, there is going to be shading over top. This might be an area to do that. Don't do it. If you don't want to. I don't want you to ruin your drawing or rip your paper or anything like that, but I'm just going to put a few coming down here that might show up a little bit later on. Just one chance to do it. You can't draw in short lines or anything like that because you've got to keep the same pressure down the whole time. This side, there's not going to be any shading. So like I said, it's silly to do on here unless you're going to shade in the background, which yeah. I mean, you could do, you could do shade in the background in your own time. The other way to do it is you're just going to use a very fine pencil, like a mechanical pencil, to put those in. Right. Where were we before I started talking about whiskers? We're just putting in these patterns. That's right. So there's a bit more pattern here. Just coming around the side of the cheek, making sure that line of the mouth is correct. Now look at the line quality of that mouth. Very soft down here. It's not a hard line like you'd draw in a cartoon drawing. It's almost just made up of little furs overhanging a darker area. So you can't actually see the darker part of the mouth here. When you come in here, you can see it darker, but it's very soft. Disappears a little bit or it has a smudgy edge to it. Same in here, it's very soft. It's not like the hard edge of the, around the eyes. And there's a little bit of shading on each side to show a bit of fur and then hair. Very soft's dark, definitely dark, but it's soft, which means you might have to do slightly lighter shading first and then come in with your dark over top using more of the side of the pencil. I hope you can see on the video how soft this is when I do it with a bit of shading first and then come in darker as a blurry edge to it. A little bit of shading here as well help create that softness, shading around here. Just doing it as I see it now, to put in this edge, there's not really a hard line really. If we wanted to bring out that white, we'd shade the background. I haven't decided if I'm going to do that yet. But another way to do it would be to just flick inwards a little bit. It's quite hard to see, I can't get any closer on the video, but flick bit darker, don't do yours this dark. But just to show that there's fur overhanging even though it's white fur. Drawing the spaces in between the white fur. Then as we come up here, just following the direction the fur would be going, a little bit dark up here around the ears. Let's put a bit more detail on the ears, make sure you get the shape right. Again in the dog video and actually in the rabbit video as well. Drawing a here we did those dark fluffy areas. This part here is light and white fluffy fur. It's coming from this side, the white fur. We're going to shade what isn't, what's just like the inside of the ear. Maybe smudge it a little bit and then we're going to flick inwards into that white area. I'm using more the side of my pencil, so get nice soft mark, but that's just going to create the illusion that it's actually white hair that we've drawn and not dark hair and same hair. Flip down a little bit. Then I'm just going to tidy up some of that shading. What have I done with this air too straight here, Maybe it doesn't have enough of a curve in it. That's what it is. A bit of a curve at the top that I missed out. I thought it was looking a little bit pointy. I'm working on this air now, doing the same thing, putting in some shading, thinking about where the white fluffy parts are coming from. Then from the shading area, I'm going to flick into the white area, following the direction you get really detailed here if you want to, and pick out each one of those little clumps of white fur. But I'm just going to do it just generally find a few clumps in there. Maybe down here I get a little bit more particular about the negative spaces that I can see there's a bit of shading in here, always following the direction of the fur. Then maybe put a bit more detail just in these areas where it's a bit grayer around here. 13. Adding Fur Texture: From here I'm going to do a bit of work on the fur. I'll just keep working on this air and shading it while I talk. It's up to you how much you want to do. If I'm just doing a drawing that's like an hour or two, then I just keep all of this fur and detail quite sketchy. You could choose to do that if you want to. There are times where I might spend a couple of days on a drawing, maybe 10 hours or maybe spread across a week, but still a couple of days. In that case, I would spend a lot more time, like, if I was doing this part here, I'd be zooming in really closely and trying to get all of those individual negative spaces. There's some tiny, tiny, little shapes and they're dark shapes in between each of those hairs. That is something you could do if you want to, if you did want to get more detail that I'm doing, then feel free to just pause the video and come back to it in a couple of days or whenever you need to. But yeah, like I said, I'm going to do some more on the fur. I'll show you how to do that. And then some of the black points, and then the rest will be up to you how much you want to do. As we do the fur, we'll add in a bit more shading as well. These are all quite light, these furs coming up here and then it gets darker. It's just under the air. There was going to very lightly sketch a line to guide where the darker part is and where the lighter part is. The lighter parts, I've got a bit of shading in there, I'll just take some of that out. Again, I'm going to flick into the lighter part. It's coming from this darker part on the air here. Flicking down then, and then when you come over here, there's not really a darker part, but I'm as if I'm doing the flicks in between the lighter fur. I hope that makes sense. Not drawing the white fur, I'm trying to draw around the white fur, the dark spaces in between, and then that gives the illusion that it's actually white fur. We can do a little bit coming from this side as well. This is the darker side. We're going to follow the direction of the fur, still using my big pencil, but my two millimeter pencil. But probably I should be switching to this. If you've got a mechanical pencil, especially for these very fine furs at the back of the head, on this side, we want them to be very small because things that are further away are smaller. Spend a bit of time on the pattern here. Remember, we mapped out those lighter areas. There's a lighter area coming up through here. Light, dark, light. Then all of this area here is pattern of fur. It's got a curl or a curve to it comes around here and then it does come down this way. I'm looking in the direction of the pattern of fur that curves up towards the air. All of this probably needs another layer of shading, but I can do that over the top if I want to. If I want to take this drawing a bit further, then put some more shading over top and get the values exactly right when we come down to here. A lot of that is just going to be shading, but I'm going to put a bit of texture in here. Now, just while I've got my pencil mechanical pencil here. Some darker marks that will get shaded over, but they'll show through still. Then maybe we'll work from this side of the face over to this side. We don't want any hard line here because this is a very soft line that's made up with just furs. Do some flicks the eyebrows there as well. I think eyebrow furs look at the value compared to the inside of the air. So it's a bit darker as you come along here, then it's lighter. And then we've got a dark mark coming down to meet that white area of the eye. It's a little bit of light fur here on this side. Let's put in that dark shape. If you don't have a mechanical pencil, then it would be a good idea to sharpen your pencil so you really nice fine point. And you can turn that pencils around as well, so it'll start to get blunt. And then you just need to turn it a little bit and you have another side of a point there. This dark shape that comes up here, you can see how. Changes direction, that helps to show the plane of the forehead or the curve of the forehead. Got a little bit of light in here. And then we've got this dark, almost like a long triangle shape. Compare the values, not as dark as these ones. Some of it is, but some of it isn't. Again, as you get to the top, it curves over a little bit, is a little bit of dark there, which shows how it's changing as it goes over the top of the head. These furs here along the side of the nose or above the nose here are pointing upwards. And these ones as following the plane of the nose. We're getting there, just working our way across. Drawing what we can see as a sketch. I'm not getting too detailed about exactly what hair is going where, but I'm following the general direction and I am looking for patterns. What might you be looking for in the patterns? It could be how long hair is it, could be the direction it's going, it could be how dark it is. Then you're imitating that in your drawing. Rather than replicating every single tiny hair that you can see. These light areas here, they are light, but they've got a little bit of value in them. Very light pressure with my mechanical pencil because this is a to be mechanical pencil, I'm just putting in a little bit of fur marks even into those light areas. A couple dark fur marks in this light area, just here, and then on the other side of it is a little bit darker as well. Where else do we need to add some fur marks? Definitely here. It's quite short here along this cheekbone. What direction is it going? Actually, it's going this direction away from the nose. Let's put a bit more shading in here, then within that shading, there's some patterns come around the side of the face. Again, these are helping to show the contours of the face. So pay attention to the direction that they're going on this one down side of the face here. Even though the line is coming down and around and following the direction of the fur, which is moving outwards. And here's another one coming up here. And then we'll just do a little bit around the mouth here. And then most of it done. And that's just a matter of putting in the darker values what we got happening around here. Looking for the darker areas, the patterns, look at these rows of holes that the whiskers come out of. So have a look at how they line up with the nostril on here. They get a little bit bigger and they're very soft as well. Soft edged, if using mechanical pencil or any pencil, using it a little bit more on its side with firm pressure. So you get a dark mark. You want a soft mark. Lighter, smaller. And then they get a little bit darker as you move out and join together. As you move outwards as well, this row here, it comes right up to the mouth, but it's very light then I think there's maybe one more row underneath that one. We'll just give an indication. Just a couple of little dots. Maybe a darker dot here. Let me put the whiskers in right at the end. Put these dots on this side of the face too. Just a light row there and then a slightly darker row here. 14. Shading Fur Continued: Shading in that chin there, then the body is white. All of this area here, there's a few little very light tufts that you can see that we can shade in just very lightly. Another way to do this would be to shade it all in, and then use your party eraser to pull them out so we could shade this area very lightly. Then, rather than putting in the dark areas of the Tufts, we could bring out the light areas. You can choose any eraser. But a funded party eraser works really well because it is. So it gives that soft mark. I see the whiskers just coming out there as well. Party eraser, you put it into a point, you get that kind of idea that it's like white fluffy parts might need to pull it. Just a little bit more detail on those. There's three main ones there. 123 very fluffy on this side. Bit of pattern coming in. I'm not going to do this too dark because I don't want to detract from the face just following the direction, generally following the values. But a little bit lighter than they are in the photograph. Will be nice to put in these Ripley parts of fur hair. They're quite nice. We could put, let's see, we've got this dark part, then a lighter part, which is still gray, but it's a gray. Then we've got a dark part then we almost like tiers or levels fur as I usually do. I'm just giving you an idea of them. You can study them really closely if you want to. But I'm doing a mark like this, using my pencil on its side and then changing the level a little bit. Maybe have a little practice of this. First starts off light and then push a bit harder bit of scribble and then light again. They're jagged and staggered, then you might need a little bit of shading underneath each one. Maybe a bit of a smudge of the shading is a bit too strong. It's one of those things where you find a wave drawing something. We zoom in here so you can see it. A wave drawing something without actually having to draw every single tiny little detail of it. Can see what I've done. I've just put in, I do a few more even though they're not completely accurate to the photograph, but putting in zigzaglinesjust, putting in some scribbly lines in a, in a linear fashion across. And then underneath each one of those sets of lines, you shade a little bit more. You're creating the illusion that these white areas are sticking out a little bit tufty. Maybe even put a few lines coming out of there too. At the moment, this is all white. We don't want it all white, so need to put in a bit of shading there. It's white when you get to about here. Then underneath that there's our dark fur flicking from the dark fur into the light, the light area to create the illusion that there's light fur on top of that dark area. The same here, we've got this light area, the dark area underneath it. Sometimes I like to just map it out, Okay, where's it going to go? And then create the illusion from this dark area coming this way. Then from this dark area going back into it as well. Maybe a little bit more pointy from this dark area coming back because we want to show the detail in between the fur. I've done one then this is the one that comes quite far across the body. Then up again on the other side here, follow the direction of the fur. Just an indication of it, especially on that side of the body. Maybe here we go a little bit darker because that's a significant part of the pattern. I'm trying to follow the direction of the fur. It changes direction as you come around here. Then all of this is going to be quite dark and I'm going to need to switch to another pencil. So if you want to, you could put a few fur patterns in here or this stylistic choice. Or you could keep it very flat that area. So I could get my three B pencil. Just make sure I've got the right shape here. Checking that shape, again, comparing it to the fur marks as well. I think my fur marks might be a little bit low down. But then all of this, if I wanted to keep it flat, doesn't have to have fur marks in it. But then as I come towards the fair, I want to lessen the pressure, Have it integrate with what's there. How dark do you go is up to you as well. But if you go too dark here and you don't have dark in the face, it's going to draw your attention, or the viewer's attention, down here. Which we don't really want. But I am going to go darker in the face, so got a little bit darker here. Let's let it fade out as I come. I quite like having pencil marks and I could easily just leave it like this scratchy. I think that's nice, especially if you put a little bit of fur over top. But if you don't like that, then you just get your tissue, smudge it out however you like, whatever style you like. 15. Working On The Body: Shading in that chin there, then the body is white. All of this area here, there's a few little very light tufts that you can see that we can shade in just very lightly. Another way to do this would be to shade it all in and then use your party eraser to pull them out. We could shade this area very lightly. Then rather than putting in the dark areas of the Tufts, we could bring out the light areas. You can choose any eraser, but a fund, a party eraser works really well because it is, so it gives that soft mark. I see the whisker is just coming out there as well. Party eraser, you put it into a point, you get that idea that it's like white fluffy parts might need to pull it. Just a little bit more detail on those. There's three main ones there. 123 very fluffy on this side. Bit of pattern coming in. I'm not going to do this too dark because I don't want to detract from the face just following the direction, generally following the values. But a little bit lighter than they are in the photograph will be nice to put in these ripply parts of fur hair. They're quite nice. We could put, let's see, we've got this dark part, then a lighter part, which is still gray, but it's a gray. Then we've got a dark part then we almost like tiers or levels fur as I usually do. I'm just giving you an idea of them. You can study them really closely if you want to. But I'm doing a mark like this, using my pencil on its side and then changing the level a little bit. Maybe have a little practice of this. First starts off light and then push a bit harder bit a scribble and then light again. They're jagged and staggered, then you might need a little bit of shading underneath each one. Maybe a bit of a smudge of the shading is a bit too strong. It's one of those things where you find a wave drawing something. We zoom in here so you can see it. A wave drawing something without actually having to draw every single tiny little detail of it. Can see what I've done. I've just put in, I do a few more even though they're not completely accurate to the photograph, but putting in izaglinesgjust, putting in some scribbly lines in a, in a linear fashion across. And then underneath each one of those sets of lines, you shade a little bit more. You're creating the illusion that these white areas are sticking out a little bit tufty. Maybe even put a few lines coming out of there too. At the moment, this is all white. We don't want it all white, so I need to put in a bit of shading there. It's white when you get to about here. Then underneath that, there's our dark fur, flicking from the dark fur into the light, the light area to create the illusion that there's light fur on top of that dark area. The same here. We've got this light area, the dark area underneath it. Sometimes I like to just map it out, Okay, where's it going to go? And then create the illusion from this dark area coming this way. Then from this dark area going back into it as well. Maybe a little bit more pointy from this dark area coming back because we want to show the detail in between the fur. I've done one then. This is the one that comes quite far across the body. Then up again on the other side here, follow the direction of the fur. Just an indication of it, especially on that side of the body. Maybe here we go a little bit darker because that's a significant part of the pattern I'm trying to follow. The direction of the fur changes direction as you come around here. Then all of this is going to be quite dark and I'm going to need to switch to another pencil. So if you want to, you could put a few fur patterns in here or this kind of stylistic choice. Or you could keep it very flat that area. So I could get my three B pencil. Just make sure I got the right shape here. I'm checking that shape, again, comparing it to the fur marks as well. I think my fur marks might be a little bit low down, but then all of this, if I wanted to keep it flat, doesn't have to have fur marks in it. But then as I come towards the fair, I want to lessen the pressure, have it integrate with what's there. How dark do you go? It's up to you as well. But if you go too dark here and you don't have dark in the face, it's going to draw your attention, or the viewer's attention, down here. Which we don't really want, but I am going to go darker in the face. Got a little bit darker here. Let's let it fade out as I come down. Quite like having pencil marks. And I could easily just leave it like this, scratchy. I think that's nice, especially if you put a little bit of fur over top. But if you don't like that, then you just get your tissue smudge it out however you like, whatever style you like. 16. Adding The Black Values: We're into the final stages of this drawing now. You've got everything down, everything is mapped out. You've got the lights and darks mapped out. Hopefully you've got a good sense of form happening in there. Now we're just going to add in the black points. If there's anything that you need to change, you want to change it now. Hopefully you've got a bit of a likeness to the cat. If you don't, it's okay. Hopefully you've got something that looks like a cat. But every one of these videos, these classes, is an exercise. It's probably something you haven't done before, it's a practice exercise. Doing something new is always difficult. There's always going to be failures involved with that. That's how you learn, you do it. Maybe it doesn't work out exactly like you want it to, but the next time you do it, you've got a much fuller understanding of how it all works. It usually just comes together like that, which is nice and surprising. Makes you feel good about achieving something. Let's add our black points in with whatever you've got. At the very least, that's going to give our drawing some impact. As you do these black points. You might also notice that there's something that needs to change as well. We're looking for black shapes now. I've got my three B pencil and I'm going through just starting on one side of the face, following the photograph. Again, going back to the photograph, not just blindly going over top of what you've already got. When I do this now I can look. It might be a little bit of fur coming over top of this in some areas, just here, I can pay attention to that. Pay attention to the soft, soft eyelashes here in there. I can pay attention to the subtle shading inside the eye. The iris there, Any changes there anywhere? It should be light or dark. It needs to be a, just a touch darker to bring up that highlight. It looks like the highlight looking closely at the photograph. It goes just over the pupil. So you can see a little bit of the pupil at the top of that part of the high light and then a bit more of the pupil underneath it. It's very minimalist. You know, there's not much that you have to actually draw there, but it will create what you need. Moving across, darkening up some of the shading, paying attention to the pressure of your pencil. So there might be times where you need to push a bit harder. As I come into the nostrils here, I'm going to push harder, get a darker mark. Keep looking at the photograph then as I come across the nose here, which is also gray, I'm just going to lessen the pressure coming down here, pushing a bit harder in any of those dark parts. How do we get the definition between the nose and the bridge of the nose? Is a bit of dark shading in there. I think it's just a bit of a dark fur, I should say. That we can add a bit of dark shading. But pay attention to the shape and the direction of the fur. You see any patterns in there that you can replicate? This line here is quite dark as well. I think it might be a dark color, but I think it's just the curve of the cheek coming out where the light is hitting the lights, Not hitting right on the inside there. Put in the dark part of the mouth. Again, remember this is soft, soft edges. Doesn't mean you have to do it light, it just means you have to pay attention to the angle of your pencil and feathering that line out rather than doing a solid line. Just let it drift into gray. Moving along, Going to put in this really dark shape in here. I didn't figure out what my problem was. I think it's a pretty good likeness. It may have just been that I was looking at it prematurely. Comparing it to the way I thought it should look at that stage of the drawing, I was judging it prematurely. Now as we come around this eye and put in that darker line and follow what you can see in the photograph. But the iris itself has a little bit more detail than this one here. So we zoom in on the photo. Can't get quite as big in my drawing, but I can show you hopefully what I can see. So there's a bit of a shadow actually cast on the iris. And it's sort of hard to see where that starts and ends ends into this dark shadowy area here. He can just see maybe a hint of where it blurs into the lighter color there or maybe a slight curve there. Then we've got the highlight. Just do this side first. There's a lighter area there on the outside edge of the eye. I just need to shift my pupil over just the tiniest amount. Then we've got the highlight. To show that highlight, we need to have the darker areas around it is not as dark as the pupil, but definitely underneath that high light there here in the photograph in here. That needs to be darker than the high light up here. It blends in a little bit more. And this is where the mono zero would be useful. Erase a pen, just bring a bit of that highlight back again. The more you look, the more you see. It's a little bit of shadow up here too, doing the lower eyelid, nice and dark. Pretty even. And a bit of shadow around here as well. So I want you to keep building up your dark areas, the dark patterns, but also keep thinking about that three D form under the cheek bone here. We can push that a little bit further. Remember that shape came all the way out here to the air. I'm not following the direction of the fur here because all I'm doing is building up the plane, the darkness of the entire plane. It's not about detail, it's just about getting a shadow side in there. I'm going to keep on working on my one. I'm going to build those darks up just a little bit more. Not so much the details but this side of the head. So let me just show you how dark I'll go. I won't do all of it now. Just do it carefully. So have a nice gradation, but I also want to make sure I've got the correct line there. I might have to just adjust it again. Probably go about that dark for most of this area here. That's really going to bring out the light areas you have, the dark areas recede and these lighter areas will really pop forward. Keep in mind that this area here is in shadow. Maybe a little bit of light hitting the, little bit more light hitting there than everything else. But this should also be darker than this side. It's still light, but it's a darker light than this one. It's a light that's in the shadow side. Once you do something like that, then you'll notice I've got to darken up everything else because you're changing the relationship between the values. Oh, and then the last thing you can see, my whiskers are just starting to come out there, where I put in those white whiskers. And I don't know if I really want to put too much more in for the whiskers. I don't want to have big dark lines there. But maybe I'll do a little bit on this side. And you could do this too. This is a lighter, a mechanical pencil. But you're just going to do, actually maybe it's a dark one, I think it's a dark one actually. I just going to do a few flicks and that's about it. So a couple of long ones, a couple of short ones, not worrying about the fact that they're white. And then you could do the same on this side, or if you've done the indentations, probably just leave them. Maybe just put a line here or there just to create an illusion that there's whiskers coming out of there. You don't actually have to draw every single one. 17. Final Thoughts: I'm just trying to think if there's anything else I need to tell you before I leave you alone with this drawing. To keep working on it and building it up, just remember to keep following the direction of the fur. Remember that you don't have to draw every single strand of fur. You're just looking for patterns and you're also making decisions, creative decisions about what you want to stand out. What do you want to be a feature of this drawing? Maybe you really want to focus on the fur on the top of the head and draw the attention there. This area here, it's quite significant, significant area of pattern on the cat. You could build it up a little bit, but just be aware of how this area is relating to this area. We want the face to be the prominent part of the drawing. Maybe you want to work a bit more on the eyes and really make the eyes pop. You could even exaggerate them a little bit and make them darker or make the iris darker than it is in the photograph, if you want that high light to pop a little bit more. If I think of anything else as I'm going through and just finishing off this drawing, then I'll let you know. But otherwise, I'm just going to speed up this process. It can take as long as you want. I'll probably spend maybe 20 minutes on it, just bringing things into balance, especially this darker side here and maybe tying up a few of the edges around the eyes. I don't know if you can see them, but in my drawing they're just a little bit messy. Just because of the way of sketch and also the way I demonstrate I guess as well in these classes, sometimes it's hard to show you what I mean. And also I get the effect that I want. At the same time, thanks very much for joining me. I hope it's been useful for you. It is a different way of approaching portraits and drawing anything really when you're starting with those three dimensional objects. And it takes a little bit of getting used to and a little bit of what it takes practice. Really a great idea to go back and redo some of these again, maybe even different directions to get better at creating the three D illusion and to get better at interpreting how light affects light and shadow on form. When you have a light coming from this direction, what's going to be in shadow? How does it hit the form? How does the form cast shadow on other parts of the form? Good luck with finishing off the rest of your drawing. I hope you get a good result. Remember that I'm here and I'm happy to have a look at your work. You may as well use me. Use my drawing experience and my teaching experience to help you improve your drawing. Sometimes it's something really obvious that you might not have noticed because we all get a bit too close to our drawings and it takes a bit of distance. And I might be at a point something out to you that can make a big difference. I can also point out anything if I think you are struggling with something, I can point out areas that you might want to work on as well to get better overall at drawing. You can then take into your other drawing projects. And I'll also point out the things that I think are working really well in your drawing too. There's always something good happening. I hope you'll join me for the next sketch club tutorial, and I'll see you then.