Drawing a Cats Head

Drawing a Cats Head:

In drawing the cats head, and I'm not talking about drawing their face here.

I want you to concentrate on the head features alone, once you get the head proportions right; then everything else will follow.

There are many different faces in the cat world, but I am going to start off with concentrating on the good ol moggies' head here.

There are the flatter proportions of some breeds of cats to the sharp faced breed of the oriental and Egyptian cats.

As long as you remember that the basic shape of the overall cat is relatively the same, then, and only then, can you change the building blocks when drawing the cats head to whatever breed of cat you want to draw at the time.

Drawing a Cats Head ~ Front Profile

Lets have a look at the front head of the cat and the different lines I have drawn over our our cats head here.

I have also drawn some lines in a different color so that I can pin-point to you, the differences of what I am about to explain (just so you don't get confused).

The blue lines here are the basic form of the front shape of the cats head. When drawing a cats head, you need to stop thinking in circles and squares and get a bit more angular here.

Lets face it, have you ever seen a true living thing with a perfect circle as a head? no, I don't think so.

Just as there isn't any straight lines in nature, so it is the same with drawing up your subject on paper, I want you to get used to this idea right from the start so that you don't have to reshape your "true" circles at a later time.

In drawing a cats head were not trying to go for a whole oval shape here to depict the front of the cat.

As the cats face can be sectioned into plains, that's right, plains. 

It's just another way of dividing, or you could say sectionizing your surfaces so that it make a whole lot more sense to you, also my subscribers get this explained to them in more detail, in my free newsletter "pet art newsletter" .

The world of surfaces in intricate form can overwhelm you a bit. And we have been brought up to visually see surfaces all together, not knowing where one surface distinctly goes on to blend itself to another.

We see all surfaces really as one in order to distinguish what we are looking at. So you could imagine that we are not taking in all those details in our minds.

This can be proved if I gave you the chance to get a piece of paper and ask you to draw the cats face from memory. Try this if you like and see what you come up with.

I will guarantee you will find that you will struggle, and that what you draw will not be a precise rendering of a true cat subject.

"An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision."~
James McNeill Whistler

OK, when drawing a cats head, the blue lines that I have drawn in here also show the oval direction of where the cats flatter top part of the head. Followed by the ridge where the forehead follows downwards joining with the nose.

On the first photo, the red lines will give you a good indication in spacing for where the eyes will be, and follow these lines down, also drawing in the chin. Which you will find will take on its own correct proportions.

Drawing a Cats Head ~ Side Profile

When drawing the cats head, the side head profile of the cat more or less is easier to draw than the front.

Why? when you think about it, you are dealing with trying to create the illusion of raising surfaces on big flat surface. To make it tangible to your audience and get them to believe that your subject is in fact dimensional and realistic.

In a side profile here you are drawing good clear outlines when drawing a cats head, and not trying to create one plain on top of another.

The cats head again, does not need a full circle, because in the long run, you will only need to do more rubbing out.

Draw the yellow lines in to give you a guide to the flow of the cats upper head. Don't draw in the ears yet, as I  would rather you didn't at this stage.

I know it is tempting to put the ears in straight away.

But it is a shortcut; and in some ways cutting corners.

Always get the basic shape of the cat drawn firstly, and then draw in the fleshy of the act parts afterward.  This way you avoid mistakes later on.

The blue lines show raw flat plains showing the rises in the cats face from one plain to another. This way you have emphasized the sections of which you will need to deal with later when filling in the details.

Drawing these guide lines in this way, gives you a clear diagram of the rises and falls within the cats facial features.

Also giving you more of an awareness of just how intricate these features really are.

Remember to keep a loose wrist when drawing in these lines, don't hold the pencil in your hand too low, keep your hand in the middle of the pencil. Almost with  flamboyancy, don't try to get your lines too straight, as this will slow down you're line drawing, and also tends to make the lines thicker. Resulting in pressure groves on the surface of your paper that your eraser wont get out.

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