How to Draw White Fur with Colored Pencils (Step by Step Tutorial)

Let's talk today about white fur. This is one of the subjects that confuses people more than anything else when drawing with coloured pencils. How can you draw something that's white, particularly when you're drawing on white paper. Now I'm going to show you that actually if you can learn to draw what you see, it's not as hard as you might expect. So the easiest thing to do here is to find a reference photo of a white animal and we can have a look at what's really here. So I found a very sweet white cat. Let's look at the colours that actually make up this white cat's fur. Now you will notice that this cat's fur is made up of some lights, mids and dark tones. It's not all just white. We've got some particularly light areas, I would say around on the forehead. Some mid-tone colours like around here for example and some really quite deep shadows like under the chin, around here and around on this left hand side. What I want to do is draw those shadows and then it will look like a white cat. Now before we get started with the drawing, I also want to show you some of the kind of underlying colours. So I would say primarily this cat is made up of a series of greys. But if I put this cat into some photo editing software and increase the saturation, there are some areas that have a kind of bluish tone to them, particularly on the right and there's also some kind of earthy yellowy orange. So I want to be specifically looking out for that as well. Now before we get started with the drawing, if you want to draw this with me in a lot more detail, it is available on my Patreon. I have not only this tutorial but loads of others of a variety of different subject matters and I have drawings in not only coloured pencils but also graphite and watercolour pencils. For every tutorial I include really in-depth instructions, all of the real-time footage, details of all of the colours I'll be using, sketch outlines and the reference photo. I've got some faster drawings like this for example and some much longer more complicated drawings which have a real wow factor. I also have some full courses which will show you the full process for some very specific topics, for example drawing fur. Check out the link in the description. So let's have a look at drawing this cat and building up this white fur. Now you'll notice that I've already drawn in the eyes and nose. I do like to do that before I get started on the fur or I think it just looks a little bit odd and what I'm doing is starting from the lightest colours. So I want to look for the lightest colour that I can see within the fur. Now I would say the lightest colour is a very light cool grey. So I'm going to use the lightest cool grey that I have in my set. It's always worth remembering with white fur that very little, if any at all, is actually white. Now in terms of how I'm drawing the fur I'm only going to briefly cover this. I'm following my usual fur method. So I'm starting off not worrying about any of the texture. I just want to block in all of the key shapes within the fur. I will link in the description a video which includes my full fur method if you want to see the process that I always use in more detail. I essentially want to be putting down a really nice and light layer of this grey. So you'll notice I'm holding the pencil pretty far back and that stops me from pressing too hard. We're going to need to build up a lot of layers on the cat. I'm also working generally in circular or oval motions rather than just scribbling back and forth. I want to try and get this as smooth as possible and the pencil will go down in a much more consistent way if I have a sharp pencil. So once I've covered every area of fur with this light grey what I then want to do is start using a darker grey to map in some of the key shapes. So as I mentioned earlier under the cat's chin for example is a really quite dark grey but there are a lot of areas of mid-tone as well. So what I want to do is put this darker cool grey anywhere where I can see a mid-tone or darker and I think you'll realise it's in more areas than you might expect. So you can see how much I've filled in. There's some subtle kind of stripes on the forehead. There's a lot of shadow over to the left hand side and this is what's giving the cat's face some shape. It's already looking like a white cat. Now once again notice that I am pressing really nice and lightly here. We are going to need to build up a lot of layers and I can't stress enough how important it is to have a sharp pencil. So I'm working from the lighter colours towards the darker colours. After filling in all of the mid-tones what I now want to do is actually use the black pencil to fill in some of the darker shadows. Now the black pencil may seem like the opposite of what you should do particularly when drawing a white cat but do notice exactly how lightly I'm pressing with this colour. I want to create some darker shadows particularly over the left hand side and under the chin of the cat but I don't want to create a really solid black area. So I'm holding the pencil so far back you can see here so I'm not pressing too hard and just building in all of the shapes on the face. I still haven't built up any sort of texture at this point we'll be doing that in a second and I can then go back to the mid-grey to once again go over all of the mid-tones and it's generally smoothing out where I put that black helping it blend a bit better into the overall white of the cat and quite quickly I would say although we haven't got any texture I do have something that resembles a white cat on white paper and actually up until this point I haven't used any colours except for a light grey, a mid-grey and a black to create this white cat. So what I now want to do is use those same colours to build up some of the texture and on some of the lighter brighter white areas like on the forehead here I'm using the same grey to create some light flicks always going in the direction of the fur. So I'll briefly mention that the fur particularly on a cat goes in all sorts of different random directions it doesn't necessarily go in the way you might expect. I am following those directions whilst creating some very light flicking motions and that is going to build up all of these lighter areas. Now to create these flicking motions I am literally brushing my pencil against the paper and it creates a very soft flick and I just want to do that over and over again to build up the fur. Now one of the main things I want to be doing with this very light pencil is working around the edge it's really good for creating light flicks going out from that main body and just softening the edge so that it's not as harsh between the white cat and the background. So let's work from the lighter colours again towards the darker colours over all of these base layers. So once I'm happy with the lighter grey I can start using the mid-tone grey to once again add some light flicks over the cat on actually most of the cat's face. So even on very light areas adding a very subtle light flick with this grey isn't going to make the whole area look really dark it's just going to give it a very light area of texture. So you can see me adding all of these flicking motions longer flicks on the ear around here for example shorter flicks on the face for the different lengths of fur and we're now starting to get a bit of texture onto the cat. Now once again I'm working through the same colours that I was for the base layers so let's now build up some of these flicking motions with the black pencil. Note that I am still pressing very lightly I don't want to be creating really thick wiry black fur but what I do want is to just add a little bit more shadow onto some of the fur strands in some areas once again mostly under the mouth where there's that deepest shadow but a little bit around the eyes around here as well there's the odd shadow here and you can see adding these flicks really nice and lightly is stopping this area from looking as scratchy and really giving it that little bit of detail. Now I am going to add a little bit of these flicking motions also with the pink on white animals you do tend to find that they have a lot of pink to them a lot of pink showing through particularly with cats on the ears and around the eyes so I'm just going to make some flicking motions around here I'm really focusing on drawing what I can see within the cat and I can see some pink around here so I should draw it. So once I've built up all of that fur texture what I now want to do is smooth out the fur, tweak any colours and generally brighten everything up. So I always find when I have first added in all of the flicking motions on the fur the whole thing looks a little bit scratchy so I'm going to go back over the fur once again with circular motions trying to smooth it out like I did at the beginning still nice and lightly and it's going to create a much softer fur so you can see here that I've gone back to that mid-tone that medium grey and I'm just using circular motions to adjust any colours smooth anything out and I'm just using the same colour this is my main colour I would say for this cat to go over the areas over and over again to just soften everything I think for every area that I complete it makes it obvious the next area what needs adding. So once I'm happy with the grey what I'm then going to do is go back to the black and once again make some of these shadows look a little bit darker so they're still not looking quite as dark to me as the reference photo so let's fill these in a bit more in exactly the same way as we did earlier so once I'm happy with the black pencil I'm happy generally with the contrast on the cat I want to think back to the reference photo when I increased the saturation I saw some blue and also some orangey brown let's think about adding that in so this is the raw umber pencil this is a kind of orangey earthy brown and I'm adding the smallest amount under the chin obviously when I increased the saturation the blue and the orange were really vibrant they're not that vibrant on the actual cat but I do think it shows if you don't add it in so here I'm using a very light blue this is the light ultramarine and I'm just adding a tiny bit on this right hand side to add a little hint and a little pop of color there's really not a huge amount of color certainly not on this specific white cat some fur looks in a variety of subtle colors more than others but the basis for pretty much all white fur I do find is always gray so once I've added in just these two colors I think we're already having a lot more brightness to it it's looking a little bit more interesting so I can then carry on working back through those grays that I did before still working in circular motions I don't feel like I need to add in more fur texture at this point and I'm still flitting between these colors between the black the light gray and the dark gray adding in the final details now like on the whiskers for example but then that is it so hopefully this will show you that actually to draw white fur on white paper it's not as tricky as you might expect it's generally built up of grays and we want to be focusing on drawing the shadows and also the texture now remember if you do want to draw this with me in a lot more detail it is available on my Patreon and if you want to go through my fur technique you can find that in this video here happy drawing guys and I'll see you in the next one!