What better way to capture the essence of your furry friend than learning how to draw a realistic cat? This step-by-step tutorial will help you capture the likeness of a cat in pencil.
Follow along with this tutorial for how to draw a realistic cat!
Before you begin, get to know different cat breeds
As with most animals, there are various cat breeds. If you want to draw your own cat, that’s a great place to start! You can even take advantage of having a live model by drawing some warm-up sketches of your cat in different poses.
However, if you don’t have a cat or would like to draw a different cat, you can look for different cat breeds online, in books or magazines, and choose which one you want to draw. You can apply the steps in this drawing tutorial for learning how to draw a realistic cat of any breed in any pose.
Step 1: Sketch in basic shapes
As usual, I like to begin by locating my subject on the paper. Do this by simplifying the cat to basic shapes, like circles and ovals, and draw light guidelines to find the cat’s proportions. Make sure you keep these lines soft so that you have no trouble erasing them later on.
Step 2: Sketch in the cat’s facial features
Now that we have our basic sketch and it looks proportional, we will begin to draw the features of the face.
A 2B pencil is soft enough to sketch things like the eyes and snout and allows us to easily erase and redraw any mistakes. Sometimes drawings don’t turn out great right off the bat — it’s a natural part of learning how to draw a realistic cat.
So, remember this in general whenever you are drawing: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and go in with an eraser<. We learn much more from our failures than our successes. This is how we are able to improve and move forward.
Step 3: Detail the cat’s eyes
Now that we have placed all the features, we can clean up our drawing by erasing the basic underlying shapes and guidelines.
Most types of cats have a very defined outline around their eyes. Grab your 4B or 6B pencils and shade in this outline along with the darkest part of their eyes in the center. Lightly shade the eyes, making sure to leave a white circle to represent the reflected light. This will bring more realism into your drawing.
If you’d like a more thorough tutorial for drawing realistic cat eyes, you can check out this post from The Craftsy Drawing Blog.
Step 4: Shade in the cat’s fur
Now we need to move on to the fur and shadows. This particular cat has white fur around his neck with some beautiful spots and lines on its back and legs. Using H or 2H pencils, shade the lightest shadows around the face and neck.
Using the same H pencils (or shading very lightly with a 2B pencil), block in the shadow on the tail and shade the fur with small lines and strokes to create the furry texture.
For more details on how to draw animal fur, check out You can continue building up the darker spots on the fur by layering pencil strokes using a 6B pencil. Tiny scribbles are a great way to imitate the look of fur. Keep working on the drawing by lightly shading areas of fur and the kitty’s paws until you are finished.Step 5: Continue shading the cat
So cute
Wow the cats look real and I cannot imagine what I am drawing if I really have on my paper
I love how real this cat looks and I can’t imagine what I am seeing on my paper right now!
Ummm... it said EASY
I really like your cat drawing, but I'm just terrible at proportions.
this seems like all the fun in the world
I love your cat drawing and I hope I could become a drawer like you. I love all your drawings. I wish I could do what you do. I draw lots and lots and lots of stuff. So I think I'm kind of a mini you. I just love your drawings. They are so realistic and look like they might just jump off of the page. I love love love them. XOXO
How to draw a realistic cat
I love this drawing but mine does not look even little a little like yours. I think you should have the best cat drawing ever reward, it is just so amazing that one person can draw this by hand