How to Draw Cute Animals

1. Welcome to Class: Hi, I'm Lisa, a freelance illustrator who works on projects for children's books, magazines, and stationery. I'm so happy to share this class on drawing cute animals with you as part of the schedule series. This bite-size class gets right to the good stuff. Drawing tips and demonstrations that will help your creative practice. All you need are the basic supplies. A pencil and sketch book are perfect whether you want to level up your drawing skills, establish a better sketch book habit, or simply have fun drawing. This class is perfect for you. Be careful though, drawing cute characters might become a creative obsession. 2. Part 1: Sketching Cute : As we begin sketching q, we will keep things playful and loose. Before we dig into talking cute, you'll need some basic supplies. I'm going to use a pencil for this. It's just a very soft, buttery pencil, but feel free to use a mechanical pencil or an ink pen. Whatever you have on hand. First, I just want to demonstrate how I think of cute. So I'm going to give you an example of how facial features on animals or humans carries a lot of weight. It's important. Divide the face. And then we're going to make an eyeline at the top, at the middle, and at the bottom. And using very simple features, I'm just going to do dot eyes at the top. Dot eyes closer to the center in the middle. And dark eyes in the lower half of the face. If you take one thing away from this class, It's this. If you use features and your characters that are at the middle to the middle bottom of the face. It's cute baked right in. Think of a baby. It's the same thing. Big, pudgy cheeks and a sweet, round head. It's just the very essence of q. Always soften the edges. And that too will just help bring this very pleasing, lovely quality to your characters. I tend to stick right between those two. And when I make characters or when I'm sketching the eyes, those features are usually right in the middle or just below the middle. Okay, let's create a circle, a very loose circle, and work on another character. And we'll test out a few of these cute notions. And I'm going to divide it in half and then do a mid to lower line for the eye placement. I'm sticking with the little dot eyes. But if you prefer to do more of a cartoony or anime, I want you to feel free to draw how you normally would. A little triangle for the nose, a few little cute lines for the mouth. Wanna make him look pleasing or her. And sticking with a very basic character, I'm going to do two little half ovals here for ears, filling those in and just outlining. This is what I tend to do. Start loose and then slowly build up from there as I'm thinking about the features for this cute little creature. And because I think was reading Bear, I want to show that it's such a basic shape that you can begin with. You can turn it into almost any animal. I thought a lion cub would be cute and different. And just staying really loose and sketchy. I think lines are so interesting this way adds a lot of character and itself to a sketch. And just slowly build from there. If I were happy with that, then I would move on and add a body and continue with it. But for this, I just want to keep showing you guys how quickly we can work through sketches and our sketchbook. I also believe in transparency, and I want people to understand that sketch books. Some people have gorgeous sketchbooks. I do not. Mind, is truly an idea. Playground. So what you might see on an artist's website or Instagram page, you need to understand that there were other steps that went into getting that gorgeous piece of art. Enjoy the process with this little character. I started with the circle again and then wanted to add to it, wanted to do something a little different with the ears. At first I was thinking maybe lamb. And then I thought, no, this looks more cow to me. If I were doing a cow for a children's book, for a project, and I was really leaning into a specific character. I would look at reference just to help me make sure I was getting the features just so. And certainly you can have some creative license with features just as long as it still is able to translate into the handle mole that you want people to recognize in your sketch. So as you're sketching and you're thinking about what can make your character Cute. Just remember those soft edges and the eye and feature placement. And then any other details that you think might elevate your character in some way. Whether that's little rounded cheeks or eyelashes or personal to tear like a big bow or hat. It's those little touches that can really add more personality and life to your sketches. 3. Part 2: Red Panda Demo: Let's draw an adorable red panda together. We're going to start with a loose sketch and build up to a more refined one. I will be doing this demonstration on my iPad using Procreate. And in the class resources section, I am sharing the pencil I use in this demonstration if you'd like to download it. I've also shared the rough sketch of the panda. Feel free to download and print that out. If you're working traditionally, you can use that as a helpful guide. I am just working very quickly, keeping my sketch loose and just thinking about the Red Panda features. Those big fluffy ears, the little markings over the eyes, the markings that come down from the eyes, the little muzzle and knows. I wanted to make sure I knew those key features that are red panda would have. I knew about the big fluffy tail and that cute little noggin, but I just wanted to make sure I got those features right in this early loose sketch so that it would translate well when we begin to refine it. Now we can focus on the body since we're happy with how the head is looking. And for this, I'm just thinking about adding some weight to his stance. He does have a little bit of a belly, keeping the lines soft, showing that maybe he has more weight on one side of his body and then where that tail would be behind him and how are just fluff out to the side? You can play with exaggeration here. You could make the tail even twice as big as it normally is if you want to play with proportion. I do like adding a bit of a shadow beneath my characters, especially if they're on a white page so that they don't look like they're just floating in space. I'm happy with how he's shaping up. He's looking pretty cute, but there is one little change I'd like to make. This is the benefit. It's appropriate park for sure. I want his head to be a little bit bigger. And another tip that I'll share with you is sometimes just angling the head slightly, making it tilted. It just had such a playful, cute little quirkiness to a character. Now we're working on refining our sketch. So since I'm doing this in Procreate, I've created a new layer above the sketch layer. And I'm just tracing over it. And I'm using the sketch task stick pencils still. And that is in the class resources section. If you have Procreate and you'd like to use the same brush that I'm using. If you're working traditionally, you can trace over your work. One thing that I used to do is I would take a rough sketch that I made and I would scan it. Then I would print that out. I have an Epson printer in the studio. It's nothing crazy fancy. And then from that copy, I would be free to trace over it. I could ink over it was just a little more freeing because I felt that if I made a mistake or did something I didn't like, I could just print out a new copy. So don't feel you have to work digitally. If you don't have access to an iPad. I'm going through and just I'm being a little bit cleaner with the lines as I go over the sketch. When thinking about how I want certain features to be a little more pronounced. The way I tend to approach sketching and drawing at this stage is to start lightly. Make sure I'm still happy with how everything is falling into place. I really do love this part though, because I feel like the bones are there. We've done a lot of the heavy lifting with that rough sketch. Now, it's it's just a little bit more. I didn't know it's a little more freeing as we get to this stage. But what sketches? I just love linework. I love seeing that line work. I think it adds so much energy to a sketch. For a character to be cute, it has to resonate on some level. I feel that adding this kinetic energy with the lines can add such a wonderful rendered detail to a sketch that makes it more interesting to look at. I'm still shading here, but now I'm paying close attention to following the shape of the red pandas face. So I'm being mindful to how Marx would lay like a crush the fur and then rounded around his muzzle towards the edge of his face. If your lines can follow the shape, it prevents your sketch or your illustration from looking flat. As you can see, I'm doing the same here around the top of his head. So as that fear comes up above his nose and heads towards the crust of the top of his head. I'm breaking the barrier a little bit, so I'm starting to try to give that illusion of the fluffy fur. Now that you've been able to fill in your character with some lovely lines. We're now going to add more like a new layer above that because we really want to bump up the contrast. We don't want our sketch to look muddy or have one tonal value. We really want to show light areas, dark areas in-between, because that's much more visually appealing. And it adds a lot of form and dimension to your characters. 4. Class Project + Final Tips: For our class project, I would like you to draw your own cute animal. See what you can do with a sketch. I want you to get comfortable in this sketch phase because really good art does start with a solid foundation. It's important to enjoy this phase and just really sink into the creative process. And please share your work with the class. You never know. It might inspire someone else to share theirs as well. And a few final tips. The most important thing is just to embrace your inner child and have fun in your sketchbook. It's okay if it's messy, it really is meant to be a creative playground. Thank you for spending time drawing and being creative with me.