Drawing Cats Step by Step

Drawing cats is not that hard when we break the cat into different parts. There are many different breeds of cats, and also different cat species, but for now I'm going to stick with a basic house cat. Using this step by step lesson you should be able to apply the same method to draw any cat. I hope that you will enjoy this guide to drawing cats. Let's jump right in here and start with the most interesting part of the cat...

...the head.

Start by drawing a simple shape that looks like an egg. The only different between the shape of this egg and the ones you might find in your fridge is that this egg will be squashed a little. This egg shape will form the beginning of our cat's head.

Next we'll tackle the eyes. When drawing cats, the eyes are a really important part to making it look believable. Start by drawing the upper part of the cats eye. It's a simple curve that curves down more toward the middle of the head. Simple right? Draw another curve to complete the bottom of the eye. Start this curve a little bit inside of the top of the upper eye line. Connect the curve to the lowest part of the top eye. Now that the shape of the eye is finished, draw a circle inside of the eye to show the black part of the cat's eye. If you think it's too hard to draw a circle - use a protractor (geometry tool for drawing circles) or find something that you can trace a circle shape from. If you have the cap of a pen lying around - it might be a good object to trace a circle from. Draw lightly if you are tracing or using a protractor so that the line can be easily erased if needed. It's ok if your shape goes outside of the lines that you have created for the eye, just erase the unwanted parts. Now use the steps above to draw the other eye of the cat.

Let's really bring out the cat in your drawing by completing the nose and mouth. The nose of a house cat is pretty small. I like to think of it as an upside triangle shape. Draw two diagonal lines sloping towards the middle of the head. These lines should almost touch at the middle. Add a curve to the bottom of each of the diagonal lines to form the nostrils. Once the nostrils are finished - create two curves like the letter 'U' on the bottom of each nostril to form the top of the mouth. To finish off the mouth draw another u-shaped curve that connects the two top parts of the mouth.

The last parts to finish on the drawing of the cat's head is to add the ears. You can think of the ears as slightly rounded triangles that are attached to the top of the head. Start by drawing the top side of the ear - a simple curve. Then draw the lower part of the ear. Once you have drawn one ear add another to the other side of the head and finish up by erasing the line at the part where the ear attaches to the head. I hope that you are starting to see that drawing cats is easy. Pat yourself on the back, you've just finished the head - the hardest part when drawing cats.

Lets move on to the body. Draw another egg shape. Don't worry if things are looking strange at this point! Draw a horizontal line across the bottom of the body egg shape. This line will act as the ground that the cat is sitting on. Erase the bottom of the egg shape that is below the horizontal line.

Now, draw two lines down the middle of the cat to form the legs. Draw the line starting at the chest of the cat down toward the horizontal line, but don't touch the horizontal ground line. At the bottom of these lines create a curve to represent the paw. Repeat this for the other leg. Cats have 4 toes, so, add 3 small vertical lines on the paw area.

I'm going to leave out the tail on this drawing of a cat. When you have a fat cat like this it's not uncommon that you won't actually be able to see the tail if you are looking at the cat from the front as we are.

I hope you've found that drawing cats can be easy. Keep this lesson in mind when you are trying to draw another cat. If you can find some pictures of cats it will greatly help you make your drawing more realistic.