I set myself a syllabus - to learn to paint and draw feline faces and bodies. One of my weaknesses is that I’ve never been to an art school with a specific process, so sometimes it’s hard for me to measure my improvement drawing to drawing, project to project. To that end, I started curating my own courses on Skillshare; in this one I am working my way up from drawing orthographic cats to doing watercolour paintings of tigers and snow leopards.

I took this class to help me improve my understanding of cat faces (and consolidate my shading on organic forms). I spent a lot of time on drawings and exploratory drawings (included here) before moving on to the final project.

I tried to use both positive and negative lines in the composition - using the patterning on the forehead and throat as cross contours and leaving white space on the neck and ears to suggest white fur. All the final drawing was done using Faber&Castell Pencils (HB-B6). I also used A3 Canson Croquis Paper, as I find that drawing on a larger paper is much easier for me, and gives me a bit more space to play with some bold lines.

This drawing was probably at the top of my drawing ability - it took around 6 hours total work, and is the most naturalistic face I’ve attempted thus far. I haven’t sprayed any fixative on yet, while I wait to see if any tiny lines need to be tightened or softened, but its 99% done. One observation I had was that this drawing has fewer bold lines than some of my other drawings - I think I have come to prefer blending graphite together to create smoother washes, more like watercolour, and put darker lines over the top, whereas I prefer using bold strokes with wax-based pencils, which don’t blend as easily. 

I’ve been focused a lot on measuring and proportion recently, and this cat is mostly in proportion - it’s not quite a likeness, but it’s about as close as I could make it. To further consolidate, I’ll take the drawing fur class in the next few weeks, so any feedback would be much appreciated.