How to Draw a Tiger [Narrated Step-by-Step Tutorial]

Hey there everybody .

It's Markley .

I'm back with another how to draw video .

This is number 14 in my ongoing series of how to draw animal videos .

I'm gonna put a link to the full playlist if you want to check it out .

I've got videos on how to draw lions , leopards , rabbits , cats , you name it .

And today we're gonna be drawing a roaring tiger .

Now , people like to know what size that I'm drawing at .

And so I've put a box here that is five inches uh on all sides in centimeters that works out to just a little under 13 centimeters and then I just put a line right across the middle there .

Uh And uh let's not waste any time .

Let's go ahead and get into drawing some basic guidelines .

So here you can see a line that goes across the top of the head , touches the box right here and then comes down uh diagonally and sort of it is gonna just trail off as we come down the uh back of the neck of the tiger .

Here we have uh what I always call the snout of the region .

I don't think that's right .

What is it ?

The muzzle , somebody tell me in the comment section , this is the uh where the nose of the tiger will be .

And you can see that sort of familiar cat like uh curve there as we begin to do the upper lip .

Uh And uh now I think it's time to go ahead and finish off drawing uh the rest of the mouth .

So I continue this line uh from the upper lip coming down at uh quite a steep angle as it reaches uh the lower lip and um from the , you know , photos and stuff that I studied , it seems like the lower lip , the lower part of the mouth is much narrower from side to side compared to that upper lip area .

And uh this little round area is eventually gonna be um furry .

All of this stuff is going to change quite a lot , quite a lot as time goes on .

I uh decided to go ahead and drop in the tongue .

We are going to see uh the tongue of the lion .

But as you can imagine , we have plenty more to do here in terms of the teeth and so forth .

Let's go ahead and get to drawing the eyes .

OK .

So I decided while I was at it , I would draw the ears as well .

But let's start with the eyes .

The thing that I noticed as I looked at um photos of tigers is that the eyes are very small in proportion to the rest of the head , smaller than you might imagine .

And uh notice the space between them always key when you're doing a drawing like this um to , to get the spaces between things accurate as well as the various lines and contours and so forth .

Uh The ears of a tiger can be um very different depending on the position that they're in .

I've seen some photos in which they appear quite round uh from this angle .

Um Because you're gonna be seeing a little bit of the top uh of each ear .

And indeed , over here , this whole thing is the top of the ear .

Uh It just takes on a slightly uh different shape and notice that this one comes real close to the line of that initial box doesn't quite touch it .

This one does indeed actually go right up to it .

Well , uh he's looking weird without a nose .

So let's go ahead and uh draw the nose and maybe also the fangs .

So here you see the uh sort of triangle shaped uh nose .

One thing I noticed is that this line , there's quite a dark line that extends past the that triangle shape of the nose uh going quite up .

I I imagine to um allow increased air intake .

Uh and maybe I'll go ahead and , and do indications of the nostrils here , although we're gonna be refining this a lot uh later on this nostril quite visible uh from this angle .

Whereas this one , you can't see so much and , uh , as far as the uh teeth go , you can uh see that they're , you know , you don't want to get too carried away with the size , maybe when your fierce looking tiger to have gigantic teeth .

But I'm trying to be fairly realistic here .

One thing I noticed was that the lower uh , fangs kind of jut outward more than I might have imagined rather than just going straight up .

And uh perhaps that gives them some um advantages in terms of um chewing meat or um going on the attack , some such thing .

Anyway , I think it's time to do just a couple of more uh basic guidelines that will be delineating the patterns of the fur and then we can get into some real time drawing .

So you can see there's these unusual shapes uh around the eyes here and this is really delineating an area of white uh and interestingly right around the area of the tear duct um that uh white fur sort of breaks up and uh it it creates a dark area , we'll be getting into the details of that uh later on .

And since the forehead is kind of turned away from us , we can't see uh so clearly but presumably uh almost the exact same shape going on over there .

This line also sort of giving us the border line , I guess you could call it between a darker area up here and white fur um around the uh upper lips or um the snout heeler ridge .

And over here , just a very simple curving line .

It's gonna get much more refined later on for showing an area of um longer fur and uh just hear the neck um connecting and sort of to me looking surprisingly like almost jungle book kind of cartoony style , but there is something about the lower jaw uh of a tiger that when it opens up , um you don't see so much uh at least from this angle uh as it goes from the chin .

Uh uh and then down into the lower neck area anyway , that I thought that was surprising anyway , as I uh looked at it and now it is time to zoom in a little closer here on the area uh of the eyes and the nose .

And we're gonna start to uh all in real time uh begin to add more details .

All right .

Now you probably noticed before I zoomed in , I erased all of that uh initial box , you know , uh that I had put in place for helping us with the guidelines .

And uh now we're gonna start to get into a little bit of uh the detail work for drawing the eyes .

As I said , I was surprised to see how small the eyes actually are and um uh when drawing the pupils , um you wanna make sure that they are not too large uh in comparison , I suppose there may be situations where the pupils get dilated uh at night , maybe let me know all of you ti geologists out there , but most of the photos that I studied the pupils , quite small , almost kind of beady looking .

Uh And as I said , there is this interesting area down here near the tear duct uh as I studied various uh photos that seem to be composed of kind of two prongs of black and this whole uh area around the eye is gonna go um You know , we're gonna get very pronounced uh bands of darkness there uh later on , in fact , um those of you who know my videos , you know , I love to use a black colored pencil , my trusty black prisma color and it's gonna be coming in extra handy in this video because uh of course , the black stripes of a tiger are uh one of its defining characteristics .

And uh if you have a black colored pencil , it can really help you capture that inky blackness that you just can't get with a um graphite pencil , like the one I'm using right now .

Now I'm gonna get into the sort of pattern uh of stripes uh later on , but for now , let's just stay a little more focused on the um shall we say structural details of , shall we say I sound like shell is here ?

I'm starting to sound like some sort of professor uh anyway , um going in here darkening in the nostril .

I was a little surprised to find that the um nostril of a tiger , at least of a lot of breeds is not dark .

It is sort of a pink fleshy kind of a color .

Uh I never really noticed that until I started studying photographs , but this area of , of the nostril and beside uh the nostril and below that sort of separates the , you know , you get that sort of cleft palate of the uh upper lip .

This area all will be indeed going very black and there's maybe just a tiny um outline almost as if you went in and drew a line across the upper uh edge of the nose , at least in some breeds of tiger .

Uh I noticed uh that and um for some tigers , the fur goes right up to the tip of the nose .

Uh for others , there may be just an area of uh fur less snout , snout , muzzle , bridge of the nose .

Uh in any case , um um make sure you get this area over here beside uh the nose , this darkness .

Um as I said to me , it looks almost like a slit that extends um well up past the edge of the nose , but that is an important uh aspect of the tiger .

Let's um let's go ahead and do a bit of the ears uh here that uh as I said over here , we're , we're gonna see the upper edge of the ear just , um , a little bit because of the position of the ear .

And I believe , uh , at least for a lot of tigers that there is a sort of a black upper surface , uh , that becomes , um , at least a little bit visible across the edge of the upper ear .

And so over here , I'm gonna try to also , uh , get that , um , you know , sort of darken things in here just along the upper edge .

And , uh , again , there's so many different breeds of tiger , I'm not sure , uh if you're gonna see dramatically different ways of shading in the ears or the upper surface of the ears .

But in at least one of the photos I saw there was quite a lot of darkness along the edge of the ear , but the upper surface was , um , had a kind of a gradient uh quality to it in any case now that we've got that and since I'm zoomed in as close as I am , well , I suppose I should do some uh indication of the fur that is within , uh , the ear , uh not all the way within , but it , there's a , there's quite a lot of Tufts of fur and I've noticed this in a variety of animals , uh , cats , dogs and so forth that there's quite a lot of fur in the area that we , uh , you know , uh would call the inside of the ear .

Um , and I don't know if it , um , aids in the hearing process helps to keep uh the ear clean or who knows what it's doing there .

But , um , uh , in cartoons you may see this just all nice and clean and pink looking , but in actual photographs , you'll generally see lots of , uh , fur uh growing in this area , I suppose , depending on the angle uh that you're looking at .

And , uh , now that we've got that in place , I think maybe we should start to get into um some of the stripes uh which is of course , a hugely important part uh of the tiger and uh every tiger's stripes are gonna be different .

And so there's no need to replicate exactly what I'm doing here .

Um But um in one photo , at least that I studied there uh was almost look like an eyebrow , a sort of a dot uh right above the eye .

Um these uh uh across the forehead , excuse my squeaking chair , curly , get some oil on that chair .

So you don't give everyone an ear ache with the squeaks .

But these stripes that go across the um forehead , especially at this angle appear very narrow .

And in a way they help you as an artist to uh suggest this upper surface with these repeating .

There's this uh almost a kind of a repeating pattern of uh you know , I'm tempted to say horizontal uh stripes .

I don't know if that's quite the right word .

But um uh as they recede across the top of the forehead and they sort of uh echo one another again and again , that helps you uh kind of visually describe that upper surface .

And anyone looking at the drawing understands um the structure in that area .

Now , in some of my other animal videos , I have become quite into the whole idea of drawing each individual um piece of fur uh or uh at least really focusing on getting the uh direction right , the um the direction in which the uh fur goes .

I'm gonna try , I'm gonna experiment with this video and not get quite so obsessive about that .

Um because there are , there is of course a pattern for uh the direction in which the hair grows .

But you don't necessarily have to always uh replicate that in your drawing .

Not everyone is going for uh that level of uh hyper realism .

And so what I'm gonna do here is do more of a , you can see my uh pencil sort of just moving in in circular uh slightly random looking directions .

I'm gonna try almost as an experiment this time to uh free us from trying to constantly be aware of the uh direction of the fur .

But instead just try to get that uh the , the balance between black white and that sort of orangey color um of fur that a lot of tigers have now .

Um over here , at least again in , in uh one photo that I studied , there was a very interesting uh arrangement of uh lines that again , I feel sort of helps me to uh describe the structure over here .

But it almost to me looked a little bit like a , uh a letter F or something .

I li lying back a little bit and I did notice because of the , you know , uh here across the bridge of the nose , the , the fur is extremely small and delicate and , and , uh , you almost can't even see individual bits of fur .

And that seems to be true of a , across a wide variety of animals that the , for whatever reason , the fur across the bridge of the nose is very , um , fine , you know , and , um , just , uh , not very long at all , whereas a as you go across away from the bridge of the nose , the further away you get , it seems that the , uh , fur gets longer and longer and fluffier and fluffier .

And so I'm gonna try to describe that a little bit with my , uh , pencil and , um , as I said , not , not getting too obsessed with the direction of the lines .

Um , but wanting to somehow suggest that the fur is longer in this area and I'm gonna leave that aside for now to suffice to say there's , um , you know , there's a lot of , you can get into a lot of detail work with lines uh over here in the area of the forehead .

Um , and , uh , that is something I will be continuing , especially when I pull out the black Prisma color , I will be continuing to work on this whole area .

Um , but I wanted to get into the um , area of the sort of what I'll call the upper lip and , um , it seems like there are stripe , uh sort of rows , I don't wanna say stripes here , but rather rows of uh black dots that um , are a little bit coordinated with one another .

I mean , these one blends into the other .

So I'm gonna , I'm gonna kind of make a , a foggy little series of stripes here and then attempt to uh kind of break them into uh splotchy dots almost that start to head towards uh the nose .

And you may find uh at least in some uh breeds as , as you study photographs .

And I would suggest that you study photographs and if you want to get an accurate uh drawing of a tiger um that it begins to actually break into separate little dots as it gets closer uh to the nose .

And I think we're still , this is still within the uh view of the camera .

So I don't have to readjust my uh focus quite yet , but we definitely will be uh needing to do that soon uh here because of the angle of the snow to the region .

You're not seeing so many of those dots , but they are kind of just kind of curving across from one side and I suppose what I'm gonna do really fast here is just to help you understand why I roped off these little areas of white .

Because , um , indeed this is where we get this , uh , very , um , defining trait of the tiger .

That it , it's not just the black stripes or , uh , or the orange , it's the , it's getting that those white areas in there .

Uh , and , um , again , I'm no , I'm no tiger ologist , but uh I suspect that a wide variety of tigers do have uh some area of white uh right here around the ox .

And it seems to me that , that the balance is towards the area above the eyes where you see more and more uh white .

But you see as I go across here that this , this line also that I put in quite a while ago , seems so long ago before I started gabbing on and on .

Uh but this also sort of defines a , an area of the orange changing into uh white .

And uh I'm gonna sort of erase away the harshness of that line because here it becomes , I think really a little more um of a gradient kind of a thing , you know , gradually changing uh from , from orange to white .

And so you see me trying to kind of blur it a little bit and that , that extends all the way across like so , all right , I think it is time to refocus now .

So that we can uh start working on drawing the area of uh the teeth .

OK .

So as we come into this area of the mouth , um I realized , uh that I had never noticed the , the kind of relative blackness of a uh tiger's gums .

Um not all the way around , uh in all areas , but certainly in this area below uh the fangs , um a sort of an almost terrifying blackness here below uh the teeth and it , um , certainly , uh is unusual in , at least as far as I know among animals , I've never seen this level of blackness in the gums .

Um There are teeth back here , I guess what we would call molars and I'm gonna sort of dash them in , uh real fast , but there's a , a very big gap .

Um , as far as I can see between these fangs and uh these molars back here .

Uh So , um , as you , you know , as you're trying to draw the teeth in this area and try to allow for that , uh the space between these two and it seems to me that there are some little areas where pinkness of the gums uh comes through .

Now , there's a secondary area , sometimes it can be hard to see in the photographs , but I believe you've got almost like a , a black uh lip uh area down here .

So I'm trying to separate these two , as I draw it , but again , all of this , I'm gonna be coming back in with my black colored pencil , uh , later on and getting , um , much more intense with the , with the darkening .

Now I did notice in , uh , many photographs , some surprisingly tiny little , they almost look like baby teeth , uh , here and I wonder if it helps with this sort of shredding of meat and so forth that on , on tiny little , um , sort of surprises , delicate row uh , of between , uh , these giant , you know , much more frightening looking fangs .

And , uh , one thing that I noticed , uh , even though I've drawn , I've drawn them pointy , uh to begin with , I'm actually going back in and making them a bit more rounded .

Um At least in the photos , I looked at the , the teeth that we , of course , we think of them as having sharp pointy teeth .

But , um , with some tigers , at least it is a little bit more rounded and , uh , I wonder if the , the points are more in the back here , who knows anyway , I'm gonna go in now and , uh , and draw a line down the middle of the tongue .

Uh And I'm just gonna go in here real quickly and , uh , get some shading , uh going on on the tongue .

And because of the lighting situation we have here , the , the tongue becomes increasingly dark as you go higher and higher , uh closer to the uh upper lab back here , I'm gonna really go quite dark , but we're gonna get into a tricky thing where I am gonna maybe try to do , make a suggestion of white whiskers later on .

I'm a little torn as to whether I ought to use white wash this uh white opaque paint that I have or try to do it just by erasing away part of me wants to not make this drawing dependent on white gush for those of you who don't have any .

Um So let's see , we'll cross that bridge when I uh come to it .

But uh to be sure there are um quite a lot of uh whiskers and I'm just gonna , you know , just to get started draw them um coming off here with uh strokes of the pencil , um almost sort of horizontal up here near the uh nose and then uh curving down .

I hope this is showing up and uh you kind of get the mirror image over here .

But again , uh uh I , I think I'm gonna have to do this all with uh the eraser .

And um I'm , I think I'm gonna have to sort of arrive at that uh as we go .

I suppose that what I can do is just , um if I've got a sort of a newer eraser here on another pencil , I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna try to do and that is to make a very finely erased area to see how that , see how that's happening .

And that , that will help me suggest the presence of white , uh whiskers .

It really is a challenging thing to do um short of uh pulling out paint and even with white paint , it can still be a challenging thing to do because you have to be very um skilled with your use of the brush .

So I think I am actually , I think I'm settling on it now .

We're gonna do it .

Uh We're gonna draw the white um uh whiskers just by way of erasing .

That's gonna be my method .

That way we can keep this really uh down to two pencils uh that you're using here , an ordinary uh writing pencil , uh which is what I've got here and my black Prisma color uh and that is gonna be allowing me to get uh things much darker later on , but we are not quite at that stage .

I'm gonna get back down here to um below the lower lip .

Um where again , it gets super jet black , but then we get into an area where the fur begins to um emanate .

And this whole uh thing that I've drawn as a kind of just like egg like shape needs to kind of be lightly erased and replaced with um a contour that suggests white uh fur of sort of moderate length .

It's not , it's not nearly as super short as what you see in the area of the bridge of the nose , uh but not as fluffy as going back from the cheeks and heading towards the , the neck but what happens here ?

And I'm just sort of uh creating a contour here .

This , this whole area is gonna be basically very white , except for right here uh near the lower lip where we see a little bit of blackness peeking through .

And depending on the strokes of your pencil , you can maybe begin to hint at the , the direction even though I said , I promised no trying to get the direction of the fur , but I will do it uh down here uh with the strokes of my pencil trying to show how the white fur is heading out .

Um kind of like the spokes of a tire uh in all directions here across the bottom .

And I think maybe I can quickly start to show you how I'm going to use the stripes in this area to help .

Uh again , suggest the structure .

You know , when you're drawing a tiger , I'm beginning to understand that these stripes give you the opportunity to um show the structure , you know , because the stripes are gonna be following the contours of your uh tiger .

And especially as you know , you as you come down here .

Uh let's say the there's a stripe coming across the neck and it gets very narrow , that helps you understand um uh the shape in that area .

And as if you come across here and it starts to , you know , thicken up a little bit , I'm gonna go ahead and obscure that initial area .

Uh that sort of curved line that I had put in there because it's a little bit of an artificial construct that I had come up with just a placeholder .

Let's call it um to help us understand the structure in that area .

And I suppose there are just um you know , infinite variations in terms of um the patterns .

No , two tigers are gonna have exactly the same uh stripes .

I'm sorry , my pencil always going out of frame very dangerous .

And I start talking while I'm drawing in an area that you can't even see .

Come on cri keep it together here .

Um And uh yeah , maybe we're getting closer to a part where I can .

Uh Well , I'll tell you what I'll do .

I'm gonna bring out the black prisma color .

Uh and we're gonna maybe um shift back focus to the era of the eyes .

I'm gonna do a little bit of real time .

But guys , you know what ?

I really miss having an old man time lapse in here to help me finish these videos quickly .

And uh I will make no apologies uh later on as we really kick it into time lapse happens a lot with these animal videos .

Sadly can't do the whole thing real time .

Uh At least I can't because it ends up being a three hour video .

Uh So I'm gonna go ahead and refocus here as I show uh how I I'll use a black color , black colored pencil to begin really darkening in uh some of these areas .

All right .

So I got my black uh prisma color really just a good quality black colored pencil .

If you can get hold of one , I really do um strongly advise you to see if you can get one in , in terms of doing a drawing of a tiger .

It makes a huge difference .

Uh As you can see already uh when I go in here and start using the black colored pencil and pressing down , we we can get to True Black , which just is not really uh possible with an ordinary writing pencil , you can press down as hard as you like and it just will always be a kind of a dark gray no matter how many times you layer .

Uh that's graphite just has a limit as to how uh dark it can get .

And that's why you see me in a lot of these videos combining the um black prisma color with a uh ordinary graphite pencil , the graphite pencil being so good at shading and sort of delicate line work and uh that kind of thing .

Uh Whereas you can really just uh depend on a black colored pencil to give you true black and maybe you couldn't even , you know , until now you didn't understand just how um light all of this uh these areas were .

Now it it becomes clear as I as I press down with the black colored pencil and you say , oh wow , that really does make a pretty huge difference .

And uh yeah , unfortunately I think , um I've already expended an awful lot of time gabbing on and on .

Uh much to the annoyance of a large sector of the audience watching this video .

You talk too much , please stop talking .

Those of you who don't mind me talking .

Thank you .

Thank you for your moral support .

I do .

I'm trying to teach , you know , it's not so much about , hey , I love to talk .

It's more like I'm , I'm , I'm doing my best to , uh , offer advice , uh , to people who want to learn , uh , how to draw .

So let's go ahead .

I'm gonna refocus , uh , or maybe I'll keep the focus here for now , but I am gonna kick it into time lapse , bringing my friend , old man , time lapse back from vacation .

Oh , I feel great .

Three weeks you guys deprived me from doing my job .

He is ready to help me , uh , finish off this drawing in lightning time .

Uh , so let's go ahead and do that and I will be back with a few final words .

All right .

Well , that brings us near to the end of it .

Uh , of course , I just had to time lapse through about two hours really of shading here .

It's , uh , you know , making an illustration like this is hugely complicated and unfortunately , I can't really take you through every single step in the process , but at the very least you got the basics of how to get the structure , right ?

And some sense of what I would say , the key thing is getting this sort of mid ground color and understanding where are these white patches ?

What is that pattern ?

Uh And of course , as I was saying , getting this uh dark black colored pencil in there to do the job of , of , of taking black all the way to Jet Black , which just makes a huge difference , especially uh in a drawing of a tiger .

But before I go , I want to say thank you to anyone who supported me by getting any of my books like the Realism Challenge , my book on hyper realistic illustrations , the drawing lesson , a graphic novel that teaches you how to draw and my very latest book , manga art .

I really cannot say thank you enough to all of the people who have supported me by getting these books .

But let's go ahead and lay down this pencil .

I wanna thank you all for watching this video .

I really hope you enjoyed it and I'll be back with another one real soon .