How to Draw Animal Fur (Cats)

OK , so today I was actually intending to do a video , Uh , a spear drawing of Bruno Mars .

But all I can say is that that didn't go to plan .

So instead , since I have all the , uh , the tripod and the camera set up , I thought I'd treat my subscribers by , um , doing a video about fur .

And and I've been getting a lot of requests for fur today , So I'm gonna be showing you this drawing that I've started and how how I've started to do the fair and how I'm going to be , uh , making it look more realistic .

So I've done another video on fur before , but this one is going to be more related to animal fur .

And it's just gonna be generally better because the last video I don't feel was wonderful .

It was about a year ago when I did that video , and I think I've progressed a lot since then .

OK , so this is my cat .

And as you can see in the picture , let me zoom out .

We can see in the picture .

It's not quite the same yet .

Now the clear points are around here .

OK , you can see that they're not quite anatom anatomically correct .

But the anatomy is not what I'm going to be working on today , OK ?

So just let me zoom in .

Sorry about that .

Zoom very slow .

OK , so hopefully you can see a little bit of the detail .

There Something to notice for cats ?

Is that around the nose ?

Um , you can see the the fur is very light .

It's , um you can't notice it as such as individual lines at the moment .

You can If you go even further , you can see that I've drawn each line separately , but it's it's very smooth .

The texture is not as , uh , Bumpy .

I suppose you could say , uh , whereas up here on the forehead , you know , the the hairs really do stand up and you can see a difference in the levels .

Um , and this is the difficult part .

Really .

This you could , without any practise , start to do this just by doing line after line after line line .

Whereas for this one , even though it follows the same principle , it's just a lot harder to do .

I find So So what I've been doing using mechanical pencils .

As always , these are the best because the point always stays very sharp , and you want every hair to be made from a sharp pencil , some mechanical pencils .

These are the best , and you're just flicking upwards , as you can see here .

Mhm .

Now what I would advise is always do your fare upwards because it's to do with the biomechanics of the hand .

Bring it down .

You can actually get not quite the , um , the line that you desired .

If you're bringing the pencil line down , whereas going upwards , it's generally always going to be what you want it to be .

You can practise that yourself and see if it if it works .

But that's generally what I've found and what science really agrees with .

So take that advice , Um , and just you need to start .

Just do the lines like this , and you can you can see by going upwards .

What you notice is the bottom of the hair , which is where you have pressed the pencil down first , which is slightly larger , actually looks like the root of the hair follicle , so that seems to work really nicely .

Mhm .

Another thing to notice might be to start quite high and then move lower because you want the hairs lower ?

Um , to appear in front of you of you .

Sorry .

In front of the hairs behind .

So these will appear above these hairs above it .

Yeah .

OK , so you're just filling in the gaps .

Really ?

Uh , using this technique , um , and eventually , you should start to see what looks like here .

And then once you've began doing this , uh , and you've covered a large area that said this area , uh , you can start building in the darker tones .

Darker tones .

You could just go over the same line heavier or a few more times , or just around the area .

When you go around the area , it will make it appear darker , like this one .

Try to avoid doing zigzag lines like this .

You want this to be all flicks ?

OK , all right .

Firstly , I should apologise , because , um , I can't zoom it any further without it .

Uh , defocus .

So , uh , I'm just gonna stay here .

There should be enough detail for you to be able to see what I'm doing now .

I'm gonna be doing the lower part of the year .

Uh , it's quite simple .

Like I said , you're moving the pen upwards .

You can rest stroke the same line , Uh , the same hair follicle , Uh , more than once , as long as it clearly is the same line .

You know , if you start doing sketches like this and it , you seem it seems like there's a loads of lines next to each other .

It's not really gonna look like hair .

Uh , it's gonna look .

It's hard , hard , really to explain what it will look like .

But basically what I'm trying to say is that it won't look as realistic as what you want to achieve , so keep the lines nice and distant .

Now , these lines are quite awkward because they are coming in moving to the right and then moving upwards .

But it's no problem .

I don't think .

OK , so once you've started doing a fair few lines like this one a Oops , sorry .

Um , you can move on to your darker pencil , which I was using before , and call it the base .

You'll find that the base is generally darker , and in this picture , there is actually a lot of black hair underneath this , So this will continue into the black part of the hair .

Now , to make these hairs stand , uh , apparent .

You can actually sketch some sort of darkness behind it need to ensure enough gap is left between the hairs , though I don't know if you can see what I'm doing , but , uh , hopefully you can get the gist of what I'm trying to achieve , All right ?

And this is obviously just going to be , uh , carrying on all the way down here .

If you start to make a mistake with hair or if you've you've done a dark area , you can use the putty rubber , which I've talked about many times .

Um , and you can just wipe away .

You don't even need to use much pressure providing .

You haven't pressed down hard with the pencil , and it should be lifting off as I think you can see here .

Just make sure there's a fine point and you're not lifting off the whole thing .

Once you , uh , once you've done a lot of hair in one area and you think it starts to get a lot darker , this is a great technique to to highlight some of the hairs , make it look more realistic , more depth and just generally making the the piece look more how it should be in the picture , which is the goal of realism .

All right , so there's quite a few tips there .

Uh , try and give some of them a go , and hopefully that was helpful .