Realistic Drawing – How to Draw a Cat's Eye

Hi there, my name is Jamie Boots.  I am a professional wildlife artist who mainly works in pencil.

In this course I will show you the techniques that I use to create the realistic look of an eye as well as how to create and emboss texture into the paper to create the effect of fur. 

I will start by going through the materials that I will be using to create the picture. 

We will then start the initial drawing and I will show you a way of plotting the picture out to get the proportions correct.  This system is highly adaptable and as you get more confident you can use less and less marks to build up the picture.  Alternatively, if you are confident with drawing the outline you can simply use this method to double check the position or size of parts of the drawing.

We will also be using blunt pencils to do this as this is a non-invasive way to do the drawing and it can easily be erased if any mistakes are made.

We will then move on to building some shape into the picture, again working in a non-invasive way using a blending stump to apply tone that will add shape to the picture effectively creating an under drawing.  Tone will then be applied to the eye using various pencils and the blending stump as well as a putty eraser for any corrections or highlights that need to be added and this will start to build a bit more contrast into the picture before starting to apply more detail to the eye to create a glassy look.

We will then start to work on building some of the texture into the picture starting with very subtle texture of the skin around the eye before moving on to creating the realistic look of fur.  Using the dart or embossing tool I will show you how you can create the texture for the fur before apply pencils over the top to bring out the texture (this does take practice to produce the desired effect).

To finish we will then apply some of the darker tones to just give a slightly stronger contrast as well as making any alterations that need to be done before cleaning up the picture with the putty eraser. 

This is quite a challenging technique but I would say it is suitable for an ambitious beginner who would like to challenge themselves.

There are two downloadable images that you can work from.  I personally prefer to work from a colour photograph as I feel this has more detail but there is also a black and white one if you prefer to work from that.

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