Sketching Cats: How To Draw 5 Different Poses

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Emily from the pizza room and welcome to another sketch club tutorial in this class. Oh, she and my process for sketching kits. And I've developed a sort of a recipe for drawing a cat in any pose. First, I'll show you how to break down the anatomy of a cat into simple shapes. And these simple shapes will be the ingredients for our cat drawings. Then after a short warm-up, I'll show you how to use these shapes to draw three different poses using photographs for inspiration. This class is suitable for complete beginners or for creative people who just want to be inspired by a fun drawing project. Once you learn the process with kitchen kits, how you use it is up to you. It could be applied to realistic drawings or to design and illustration work. The project for this class is to create a collection of cat illustrations on one page. You could use ink, pen, watercolor, digital media, whatever you like. 2. Materials: Materials you need a pretty simple, you need your sketch book, you'll need an HB pencil for sketching with n. Then you need any other media that you want to use to finish your drawings. I'll be using ink pins. So I have a 0.7 fine liner and a 0.4 fine liner. If you want to draw along with me in there in part of the project, you might like to have your fine liners handy or feel free to use any media you like, or even keep your sketches and pencil. 3. Project: The project for this class is to create a series of small cat drawings on one page. And we'll draw three poses together. And then you can add as many as you like. I suggest drawing around three to seven different poses to fit all of the drawings on one page means we'll be sketching quite small. And the detail added all probably be illustrative rather than realistic. Once you've sketched each pose, feel free to add anything you like, including food patterns, colors, hats, whatever. But think about how to make your collection cohesive. What will each small drawing have in common? It may just be the media that you use. So all of your drawings might be finished with colored pencils or it might be something that you decide to add to each drawing if you want to get creative. 4. Finding Seven Key Shapes: Before we get started, take a few minutes to watch how I simplify the body of a cat into seven adjustable shapes. The main length of the body can be broken down into a simple oval. To represent the chest area. We can add on a half-moon shape here. This is a superficial representation of the chest, meaning it doesn't actually correspond with the ribcage. But I found this shape works really well to represent the front part of the body in the neck. And you'll see how this works when we put the shapes to give it a different poses. The head is a circle, about 1 third the width of the body oval. Will use shapes to show with the back legs in the front leaks join onto the body. Take a look at this anatomical view of the kit. Notice those large muscles in the thigh of the back leg. We're going to draw all of this area here is an oval shape fitting within the body shape. This will identify the crease of those large muscles. And it will tell us where to attach the lower part of the league. As we go through this tutorial, you might hear me refer to it as the joint of the back leg. In actual fact, the hip joint is here. But it's just an easy way to refer to where we will join the back leg to the body. For the front leg will add a smallest circle joint here between the chest and the body shape. The legs are the most complex shape and we'll do some practice drawing them in a moment. The back leg comes down from the body as a triangle shape with the top cut off. But the right side has a curve to it. You can see how that triangle shape matches up with the oval for the back leg. The bottom part of the league, Phoenix deans, at an angle. It looks a bit like a long rectangle. The front leg is similar but with less obvious curve to the side. Of course, this depends on the post of the cat isn't. If the front leg is lifted, you might see a bend the knee like this. And this is why we will use photographs as we go to get a visual idea of how to create a particular action or pose. The last shape is a small half circle to represent the pore. Again, the shape of the poor may vary. But once you've gained some practice drawing different poses using photographs, these seven shapes will help you to draw kept poses from imagination. 5. Warm Up - Practicing The Shapes: To get started, we'll practice drawing the symbol shapes that we will be using by repeating the shape several times your hand and I will become accustomed to them so you can draw them quickly, inefficiently. Will draw each shape four times. The body shape. The body shape is an oval. If you have trouble getting an even shape, try drawing a cross-section first to guide the length in the height of the oval. The trick to getting a good looking oval is to make sure the ends are rounded. Focus on creating a nice, gentle curve at each end. You might find you can draw the oval freehand or you might prefer to use the cross-section. The chest shape. The best way to describe the shape that we will use for the chest in the neck area is a half-moon, and it will vary quite a bit depending on the pose. The cat isn't. Draw the gentle curve for one side and then add the curve for the other side. The head shape is a circle. With circles. Again, it can help to lightly draw a cross-section first, if you have trouble getting an even shape, you could try working loosely to create a circular rhythm with your pencil. And repeat this several times to get an even shape. Or you might find it easier to use short light lines to sketch around a shape and then make corrections to even it out. Remember these are going to be placeholders. They don't have to be perfect. We'll also be drawing a smaller oval for that back leg area. This one is an upright Oval. Try drawing it free hand first and then if you have difficulty, use a cross-section to get an even shape. We've also got a smaller circle for the joint of the front leg. The leg shape lightly draw along upside down triangle and then cut the pointy part off the back leg. We need to add a curve to the right side. Then extend a long rectangle shape at an angle like this. Take your time to draw several more of these. This is probably the most complex shape. Start with an upside down triangle with a top cutoff. Adding the curve, and then extend the lower part of the leg out at an angle That's creates that joint in the lake, which is a little bit like a backwards knee. You could draw a vertical axis first if that helps to get an even triangle shape. The poor shape, we indicate a standing the poor can be represented by a simple half circle shape like this. 6. Warm Up - Drawing The Shapes In Order: You might like to draw this even shapes out one more time in the order that we will be drawing them. We'll start with an oval for the body. And if you wanted to get particular, the length of the oval is perhaps 1.5 times the height of the oval. But otherwise you can just take a guess. Once you have your oval shape, you can define it a little bit more with a darker line. This has shaped number one. The second shape is the chest shape, which is at half moon and it kind of fits in nicely at the front of the body shape. Shape number three is a circle for the head. The size of the circle for the head is usually about 1 third of the oval for the body. Let's put the league shapes down here. We have the oval for the joint of the back leg. And we have a small circle for the joint of the front leg. Shape number six is the shape of the leg itself. That upside down triangle with the pointy part cutoff. Don't forget to add the curve to the back edge and then extend the lower leg down at an angle. And I'll final shape as a small half circle to represent the foot. This might all look a little bit strange at the moment. But next we're going to put all these together using a photograph as a reference. 7. Pose One: Standing Cat: Let's start with a simple standing pose. First, I'm going to mark out five circles on my page very lightly, which are just going to act as a guide for where I'm going to add the posers to my collection of cats. You can do this too, or just wing it and add each pose as you go. For the standing pose, start with the long oval body shape. Now we are just using the photograph as a guide. So if your kit ends up a little bit skinnier or a little bit fatter. It doesn't matter. If you were aiming for accuracy, then you could measure the height and the width of the body shape in the photograph. And then make sure this is the same in your drawing. Next, add the half moon shape for the chest. You might like to make a mark for how far out do you think the moon will come from the body? And it's going to join onto the end of the body. Keep your lines nice and light so you can draw over them later. And it won't be too difficult to rub out the lines that you don't need. Add the circle for the head. The width of the circle is around about a third the length of the body, sometimes a little bit smaller. And it sits on top of the half-moon in this pose. You can see why it's useful to use a photograph as a reference at this stage, because if the cat was looking forward, the heat is going to be at the side of the half-moon rather than above the half-moon at an oval and a circle shape to represent the upper leg joints. The back leg oval fits nicely into the back of the body oval. Sometimes it's on an angle depending on which way the back leg is pointing. The front leg joint usually overlaps the body in the chest shape. To add the leaks start with the upside down triangle extending from the leg joints. The back leg has a strong curve along the back edge. If the cat is standing still, these triangular shapes will be pointing downwards. But as you can see in these photos, if the kid is moving, the angle of the leg changes. It could point forwards or backwards. So feel free to change the angle of the legs if you want to. For the front leg, I'm tilting the triangle to point slightly backwards before I add on the lower leg. And it's just because I'm referring to the photograph it on the shape of each pore. And then we can add in the second back leg and the second front leg in the same way, look at the direction they're pointing and use the shapes that we've practiced. Right now we've got something that looks a little bit like a robot cat. We need to add some more detail in the ED, some flow lines. 8. More About The Process: Now at this stage you may be thinking, great, I've got these shapes I can use, but how do I actually make it look like a cat? Well, finding the large shapes is just the first part of the process. Step two is to then add smaller shapes like the face, the ears in the tail. Step three is to add flow lines. This is an important part because it's going to capture the natural curves of the cat in the pose. There are four flow lines that we can look at and add into our drawing to get our cat to look a little bit more like a real cat. The spine, the chest, the legs in the belly. Once we're happy with the large shapes, the smaller shapes in the flow lines. Then we can add the surface detail, select that face, the patterns on the foot and the clause in the whiskers. 9. Pose One: Small Shapes & Flow Lines: It's always a good idea to put a cross section and to represent the way the face is looking. In this case, it's looking straight ahead towards us. We have a vertical axis straight down the middle through the nose. And then we'll have a slightly curved excess straight across the middle for the eyes. Once you have those four quarters formed by the excess of the face, you can then add in the ears. See how they fit within each quarter and they come up from the sides of the face. Sketch the triangular shape of the bottom of the face in the ED in a circular shape to represent the snout. Now we can add in some flow lines. You will need to erase any of your outlines. If you feel like they're too dark. Then we're going to take a look at four areas. The back, the chest, the leaks in the stomach. Have a look at the back of the cat or the spine. That lovely curve that goes from the neck all the way across the bag in down to the tail. And then look for the curve of the chest. It starts at the side of the face and then curves down and around underneath the body in the crease of the back leg, in the front leg. And they should follow your initial shapes that you put in to represent those joint areas. Then have a look at the belly of the cat. What kind of flow line can you see there? Now we have something that looks a little bit less like a robot and a little bit more like a cat. 10. Pose One: Surface Details: Now we can add the final details. The nose is a small triangle with the mouth extending down from it and the top of the eyes extending upwards from the nose. Draw in the shape of the eyes in ed and a long thin shape for the pupil. Go through your sketch and round off any other areas or ED and any other details and erasing the lines that you don't want. Round off the top part of the poor joins naturally to the rest of the leg. And then you can add some small creases to show the space between the toes. The bottom part of the face is quite angular. It's like a very shallow triangle. Use your pencil to lightly add in some patterns of the following the direction that they go in the photograph. You can see that they come downwards from the back. But when you get to the league, they actually move across rather than down. I hope you've got a good result from this drawing. Don't worry if the cat looks a little bit different from the photograph. It may be but fetter a bit skinnier, or it might be slightly quirky looking, but that's okay, especially if you're working in an illustration field, think of it as adding some unique character to your cat. 11. Pose Two: Sitting Cat: Let's try a seated pose. We'll use the exact same shapes, but they might be slightly different in terms of how they fit together. And we'll look at the photograph to know where to put them. Start with the overview of the body. And if you look at the photograph, you'll see that the overall is not standing straight up and down. It's slightly on an angle. Then add on the half-moon shape for the chest. Again, this is slightly tilted to the left and add a circle for the head shape. Noticing how it overlaps the shape of the chest. When we come down to the lower leg here, it gets a little bit tricky because part of the league is hidden. We can still put the joints of the legs and the oval for the back leg and then the small circle for the front leg, which overlaps the body in the chest shapes. Try to imagine that triangle shape for the back leg and the curve on the back edge. Then you can see that the bottom part of the league is actually horizontal. For the front leg, remember our upside down triangle shape. And then the lower part of the leg extended on a slight angle at the pore shape. And the other front leg that we can see. 12. Pose Two Continued: Here we have our robot kit. Now we can start to add the second level of details. Have a look at the direction the cat's head is facing. This time it's not looking straight ahead. So we need to curve the vertical axis around the front of the head through the nose. Imagine you're wrapping a piece of string around a ball. Add on a shape for the snout. And then look for the angles of the jaw. Before you add the flow lines. It's a good idea to rub out any of the shapes inside the body that you don't need anymore. The shapes that we've put down so far are just placement markers. Now, we will look at the flow lines and don't just fit them to the shapes that you have down on your paper. But adjust your jarring to match the flow lines that you see in the photograph. These flow lines really helped to set the expression of the pose. So take your time and if they're not right thing change them. Remember the first flow line is the line of the spine that extends from the head all the way down and continues onto the tail. You can really make the tail any shape you like. I'm going to add in the ears here. Remember the ears come up the side of the head and they fit within each one of those quarters created by the cross-section of the face. The flow line for the chest comes down from the head and extends through to the legs. At the flow lines for the creases of the front leg and the back leg as they come up across the body. I'm just making a few adjustments to the shape of the face. It's always useful to look for angles in draw these in. Because the cat is looking slightly to the side of the nose, is not going to be right in the center. It's going to follow that vertical axis. Extend the line upwards from the nose in cuvette across the top of the eye. And then draw in the eye shapes you can see. Now we can add some food patterns. Before you add your foot, you want to make sure you've erased any lines that you don't need inside the outline of the body. And you don't have to stick with what's in the photograph. But the photograph is useful to see which direction the patterns of the firm moving it some tow lines onto the pores. And we're done. 13. Pose Three: Sleeping Cat: The third pose, we'll draw a sleeping cat. Draw the oval shape of the body. This one is tricky because the heat in the chest coming forward in space towards us. So we're not going to be able to see the full, half moon of the chest because the heat will be in front of it. But we can still Jordan first and then put the head over top. Try to visualize where the oval of the back leg joint is. And in this case, it's on a slight angle because the league is pointed in towards the head. Add on the triangle shape for the back leg. Don't forget about the curve on the back edge. And then extend the lower part of the league towards the head. Think about the cross-section of the face. Which way is the face pointed? The horizontal axis goes through the eyes and again, curves around the shape of the head. You can just see one of the pores underneath the head on the right side. So I'm adding that and to find that triangle shape of the jaw. Any other angles that you can see in the head? Head on the ears. Rep the tail around the front of the cat. Before we add flow lines, make sure you erase any of the lines that you don't need anymore. 14. Pose Three Continued: I'm adding in a flow line that extends from the head along the back and down around onto the tail. When I add that flow line, I'm looking for any changes, any angles or curves at the flow line of the crease of the back leg and increase in the front leg in. You can make some of this up a little bit if you want. Draw a line up from either side of the nose in the ED and the eyes. They are pretty simple because they are closed, but pay attention to the angle they are on and add in the detail of the toes on that one poor that we can see underneath the head. If you're using this photograph as a reference for the fur, then have a look at the direction, the patterns moving. They come downwards across the top of the head. There's sleeping cat finished. You'll notice we didn't have to draw quite as much because we can only really see that one leg. But the position and the angle of the head are quite important in this one. So if you haven't got that, since the cat is touching its head downwards, take a look at the position of the eyes that quite low down we can see a lot of the top of the head of the cat. 15. Inking With Fineliners: Inking your sketches, I'm going to go through now and use an ink pen to finish off these three sketches. And then I'll draw two extra poses. I'm using a 0.7 fine liner. And I will also use a zero-point for fine liner for very fine details in the face in the field. I'm starting by going over all of the main lines of the outline. I think it's nice to use your pin a little bit like a pencil so that you have some sketching max and some energy. It doesn't all have to be a perfect, smooth line. Now, I'm adding in some of the food patterns just with little scribbles really. You'll see instead of drawing a line across the belly, I've just added some firm acts to show that it's a little bit fluffy. Switching to my zero-point for fine liner to add the smaller details of the eyes. And all I really do for the eyes as I add a curve that joins onto the structure of the nose. And then focusing mainly on the top of the eye. And adding in a small downwards slit for the pupil. Obviously, you can't erase any mistakes that you might make with a fine liner. If you do end up drawing something that you don't mean to draw it, then you've just got to find a way to edit into your drawing. You can see how I've used a broken line along the back to give an idea of fear rather than a solid ink outline. We didn't add any whiskers and when we did our pencil sketch, but you could add these in now, in whatever medium you're working in. I like to go over my lines along the bottom edges of whatever I'm drawing where there's likely to be a little bit of a shadow. Underneath the feet, maybe underneath the chin, and underneath the tail. This just creates a little bit more depth to your line drawing onto our sleeping cat. I'm using a 0.7 fine liner to start with, but I am using it lightly with not much pressure, especially on any of the top edges. Because we can assume that there is light coming down from above. And we really want our bottom edges to be darker than our top edges. With these three poses, I am working in a very loose minute. I'm thinking of the end result is a quirky illustration rather than something realistic. If you did want to take your sketches into something that's more realistic, you'd be spending a lot more time to create some light in dark areas, some shadow in some form. If you're inking along with me, once you've finished, you can rub out all your pencil lines. Once you've done that, you'll have an idea of. We might need to add just a little bit more contrast. If there's any lines that are missing with your ink work, you can go back in and just add some black points as well. Just be careful you're not putting any dark, heavy lines along the top edges of your drawings. Think about the light is coming from above, so any shadows will be underneath the head, underneath the belly, underneath the feet, underneath the tail. 16. Pose Four: Strolling Cat: I'm going to draw two more poses to complete my collection of cats. On the one-page. I'll speed up the video so I suggest watching the whole pose drawing process first and then have a go on your own using the reference photograph and also using the video, you can pause it wherever you need to. I'm going to draw a strolling cat. 17. Pose Five: Curled Up Cat: For this pose, I'll draw a cat that's curled up in a ball. This is probably the most difficult one because when we start off, we have to curve the oval around a little bit more like the shape of a kidney bean. Watch the speedup video in inhibit, go on your own. Again. You can pause the video wherever you need to use it for reference. 18. Final Words: I'm going to take a little bit more time with inking this cat and create some food textures that are denser in a little bit more realistic. I'll also add in some of the black areas of fear. And I'm using my zero-point for fine liner to get some really fine lines that follow the shape of the body. I hope you've enjoyed this class on sketching cats. You can always go over your drawings with some watercolor paints or keep going with your ink pen to build up some more detail. Or if you've used paint. So think about whether you want to add some more shading. If you want to create something that's a little bit more realistic in his son-in-law depth. Hopefully by drawing three poses or even more poses, you've got an idea of how you can use so simple shapes to put together a particular pose of a cat. If you keep drawing from photographs, you'll find it eventually you can draw from imagination because of all the experience you've gained, you understand how those shapes fit together and how you can manipulate them to create a particular pose. I'd love it if you wanted to share your cat pose drawings with me and you can do that in the projects section of Skillshare. And I hope to see you along for the next sketch club or class. Thanks for joining me.