Learn to Draw Your Cat! Watercolor + Pencil Tutorial

Let's paint a cat. Hi friends, my name is Shada Campbell and I just have a fun, silly little video for you today about how to paint your sweet little kitten or cat. So start with the head and then add the ears. You'll notice here that I started with the ears. It's always a better idea to do a round head, two little triangle ears right on the edges, drop down and do two legs. And then you kind of round out the back, thinking about how that cat has a bit of a rounded back and the long tail. I like to lift a little color around the face. And one thing is to just use a really light color. I'm going to paint a gray cat. So I started with a super light gray. If your cat is orange, start with a super light orange. If your cat is a calico, start with a very, very light gray. And if you want to, you can take another color while the cat is drying and kind of go around it and just do some messy brush strokes and add that bit of color. It's just sort of silly and it's something to do while the color dries. Then we're going to come back in with a slightly darker color. So again, if the cat is gray, a darker gray, if you have a tabby cat, it could be a slightly darker orange. If you have a calico cat at this point, you might be adding just a bit of shading, like a bit of a darker gray, and then do the spots afterwards. So I wanted to make mine a bit darker on the tail, the ears, and then while that color is still wet, we can start adding some of the coloration. So now is when you would add the spots, maybe a few stripes, but we're also going to do some of the coloration with colored pencils. So the idea is you work in layers, lifting with paper towel or cotton balls around the face so that you can add detail to the face later. And then you're going to let all that watercolor dry completely. So build it up slowly in layers and then let it dry. And then we're going to come in, I like to do a little bit of pencil first before I start adding the pencil crayon or colored pencil. So I did a line there to show where the Then I did a little u-shape for the nose and two eyes right beside the nose, but separate from it. And then once you're happy with the little details you've done in pencil, we're going to grab those colored pencils and start adding some detail, especially fur color detail. So if you have a photo of your cat or your cat is hanging out with you, look at what their coloration looks like. So they have stripes on the legs. Now's the time to add that. If they have really pink ears, you could add some pink in the ears, stripes on the tail. If you have a calico cat, you might have added some of the browns and blacks with watercolor, but now you can darken them up and add fur texture with those colored pencils. So I like the colored pencil because it kind of adds to the illustrative quality of our little kitten. You know, it looks like something out of a storybook or on a greeting card. She's quite cute and silly. But I also like the colored pencils because they give a little bit of that furry texture. So there's a, there's a dual reason there for using them. And another thing is as you add, and you'll see I'm using layers, I'm kind of layering three different grays, some really light gray, some darker grays. And then what I've also done is erased a bit. So sometimes I'll think, Oh, that looks a little too heavy. You can come in with an eraser and get rid of some of the color. Next up, we're doing detail work, little pink on the nose. If your pink colored pencil is too dark, add a little white to it. We have his almond shaped pupils in black. And then I did the whiskers in black as well. You know, we've left his face and neck area, very white neck. That's sort of his chest. So I added a few little pencil marks there to look like fur. We'll do his green eyes. And then I want to, I actually just took my pencil and outline the eyes, but you could use a gray. And then I just kept working on the coloration and the look of fur. You know, we want him to look a little silly and illustrative. This is very cutesy. And then I actually even took a little hint of red for the ears and the nose. I did a shadow underneath him and he's all done. He looks so silly and cute. And don't forget friends. We have our Patreon pet portraits request video that's coming up next weekend. I'll see you then.