Materials and Colors

Colorless blender, natural Stonehenge paper, eraser, 2B pencil

STEP 1: Develop a line drawing

1. Pick color paper in neutral grey, green, or blue shade and draw accurately from the photo the outline of your cat.

2. Break down complex form into simple shapes: Cat’s head is a circle; ears and nose are triangles; and eyes are ovals.

3. Connect the head with its body by creating a curvy line following the shape of cat’s back and its neck.

4. Add a few key features: stripes, mouth, and whiskies.

STEP 2: Separate between lights and darks

1. Pick your colored pencils.

2. Start layering the darkest darks following the shape of the cat and fur’ growth. Instead of using black pencil for your darks mix Indigo Blue and Dark Purple or Indigo Blue and Dark Brown pencils. Indigo Blue is the best color to define your darks that delivers depth of field rather than flat and dull appearance of black pencil alone.

3. Add the highlights with white pencil.

STEP 3: Lay in the foundation colors

1. Always keep your pencils sharp.

2. Draw in direction of fur’s growth.

3. Employ crosshatching: lay and mix colors on paper by placing strokes on top of each other in the opposite directions.

4. Keep the fur edges soft and the eyes’ and nose’ edges crisp.

STEP 4: Finish

1. Finish the background adding more colors

2. Add a little bit of Cerulean Blue and Crimson Red into brown fur.

3. Reestablish the highlights.

4. Add final details defining the edges like ears’ hairs.

5. Burnish parts of the drawing where you want to achieve smoothness by using colorless blender (in cat’s body).

Detail of Cat’s Eye

1. Notice the texture of directional strokes in combination with the burnished smoothness of cat’s eye.

2. Highlight’s placement is a very important feature that brings cat to life.

Would you like to learn more?

Sign up my art classes or check out my Master Realist Techniques in Colored Pencil Painting in 4 Weeks book.