We've already had a blog post about how to draw birds and, since that one seemed to interest many people, I think it's time for another instructional post, this time about how to draw a cat's face in profile.
I've noticed a pattern or a structure through studying the profiles of cats, and once you recognize this structure, it's easy to draw a face based on it.
To begin, you're going to draw a square and divide that square into four sections. This is the most basic shape for their skull.
The second step is to draw an extension of the horizontal line in your square, and to connect the end of it to the closest bottom corner. If you draw your line on the left, it will be the bottom left corner and to the right, the bottom right corner. This is going to be the reference for the nose.
The third step is to draw a straight line from the tip of the extension line to the furthest top corner. So either from left to furthest right or right to furthest left. This is going to tell you where to draw the eye.
The next step is where you're going to bring it all together.
Curve around all of those straight outside lines to form the top of the head, the nose, the mouth, and the chin. The back of the neck is straight and should follow an angled slope; don't draw it directly up and down. The neck leading into the chest may be different depending on breed, but most cats have a sort of rounded 7 shape (which could be backwards, depending which side you're drawing).
The ears are located mostly above the back quarter of the square. Think of them as hollow triangles, but you'll only see the inside of the ears for the one angled towards you.The ear on the far side of the head will appear much smaller because it's farther away.
The eye will rest on top of the line from step three, or directly on it. Cats' eyes are fairly large, so don't be afraid you're making them too big. You'll definitely be able to tell when you've gone too far but if you're on the fence about it, you're probably fine. The eye shape is like a triangle, a flat line on the top, a ever-so-slightly curve short line down, and finish the triangle with a curved line at the bottom.
The nose is a triangle, too, with the front of the face as one of the sides. The bottom line should be much darker then the top, unless the cat you're drawing has a dark nose surrounded by lighter fur.
The mouth extends to the same vertical as the eye. It is mostly going to be straight across, but it curves slightly in a U shape at the end, but only a little.
Here is that sketch with those features I just talked about darkened so you can see them more clearly.
And here are some photos with the structural lines drawn in so you can see how it all works on a real cat.
Thank you for reading! If you have any questions about drawing cats in profile or any tips or tricks that you wish to share, please comment and share. We publish a new blog every Tuesday and Friday so, until next time, goodbye!
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