So if you guys know me, you know I like to draw cats! I used to draw them a lot when I was younger but they always looked crappy, but I finally figured out how to draw them and now I will show a step by step process of how I draw cats!
Step 1: Start by understanding what you are drawing by tracing over (yes, tracing. tracing is ok as long as you are not trying to pass the original photo as your own) and blocking out the main shapes. I used a long haired cat for this because I wanted to demonstrate how to properly draw the fur. Long fur isn't one big entity-it is in clumps and while it usually flows one way, each individual clump will be slightly different.
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Step 2: Start sketching/lining! You can either draw over the trace, or you can just eyeball it from the photo and the trace. I suggest the latter, but you do you do. I went with a neat sketchy style for this piece off the bat but if you want, you can do a messy sketch and then line art. I separated the head from the body so that I could do the fur on its own. I personally stylized my fur, but if you want to make yours more realistic, go ahead!
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Step 3: Time for the fun part! After lining, colour the entire area of the cat a single colour, and then you can just add colour from there via Protect alpha. What protect alpha does is basically, if I draw a red circle, and then scribble with a different colour all over the circle, the second colour will only be limited to the red circle. You can design the cat's pelt however you want! You can take the palette from the reference image or you can make your own palette. I did a combination of the two. I did the dark stripes on a different layer so that I could lightly airbrush the ends of the dark stripes so that it isn't too harsh.
