How to Draw a Newborn Kitten

White Newborn Kitten by Robert A. Sloan

Kittens and puppies are perennial favorites. But cat fanciers will drop their jaws in amazement if instead of a fluffy 6-to-12-week-old kitten, you have a good realistic color drawing of a tiny newborn. This never fails to thrill any cat person, and most people who like baby animals in general will be awed. This article also demonstrates how to draw white fur.

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Photo reference of a newborn kitten
• Large set of colored pencils, 24 colors or more (can be watercolor pencils)
• Good heavy drawing paper or watercolor paper
• Bestine rubber cement thinner or odorless turpentine, or water for watercolor pencils
• Size 4, 5, 6 or 7 pointed watercolor round brush (can be sable or synthetic)
• Sketchbook
• Kneaded or white vinyl eraser
• Soft graphite drawing pencil, 2B, 4B, 6B or softer (high B numbers mean blacker and smudgier)
• Workable fixative

1. Start with preliminary sketches of your subject, copying your photo reference into your sketchbook with your soft graphite pencil. Doodle paper and a normal pencil will work, but soft graphite is easier. Change the background and composition, but be careful and accurate about the kitten's proportions, though you can be loose about details. Try several different poses and work out the composition for your serious kitten drawing with thumbnails and a value drawing. Doing more than one sketch will make the kitten's unusual proportions familiar and lead to more accurate rendering in the final art. Spray your sketches with workable fixative so that they don't smudge, after you're done.

2. Decide your color harmony for the finished colored pencils piece. For a white kitten, any color used for the background is going to give some strong value contrast with her. Her nose, her tiny feet and the crease of her closed eye are pinkish-salmon or grayed pinkish-salmon. Do as many color tests as you want, and don't hesitate to do more in the middle of the later steps when coloring the kitten. Experiment, and decide what you like.

3. Do a simple line drawing of your final pose on your good paper, in the lightest gray that's in your colored pencil set. Don't fill in any shading, as this drawing is just for the outlines and proportions. Using a very light color that goes under the white will make the sketch vanish when other colors are added. The kitten's head is a third of the whole kitten, the tail is very pointed and small, the hind leg shadow is farther down than on an adult cat and the big closed eyes are very close to the front of the face. Ears are to the side rather than on top of the head like an older kitten.

4. Working carefully around the outline of the kitten, sketch in the background textures. Coloring from the negative space is a good way to get the kitten's shape right and correct any minor flaws at this stage without drawing on the white kitten at all.

5. Going over the previous stage, start establishing shadows and fur texture with a light purplish blue and a darker medium gray -- still not very dark, but dark enough to show. Shade the kitten where the shadows are strongest, and pay attention to the direction of the fur. Define lighter areas of fur by drawing the shadows under them with loose feathery strokes in the direction of the fur. Shade the background with other shades of blue, violet, lavender, purple and gray until it's soft and medium value; work toward darkening the deepest shadows.

6. Pour a little of your water or thinner into a small cup or palette cup. The lid of a pill bottle makes a good palette cup; it doesn't need to be deep or wide, just enough to get the brush wet. Carefully paint around the kitten, working from lighter areas to darker on the sheet. Do not wash the kitten with liquid at all, just wash over the background. Use the point to go near the kitten. The shadows on the fur at the back of her rear end should still have the dry fur texture. Use the point to go up between clumps of fur so that the background is smooth and the fur has a jagged, furry edge. Let your art dry thoroughly before doing anything else.

7. Sharpen your salmon, pink, red earth, gray and gray-blue pencils to very fine points for the last details. Working close to the reference, carefully shade the kitten's face, ears, closed eyes and fur. Work in the direction of the fur with light careful strokes. Use a dark gray to deepen the very darkest details, not over large areas, but close to the kitten even over the background. It will provide a good transition from fur to the smooth texture of the background and give more value contrast to the kitten. Gray-blue in the fur shadows and mixed pinks and salmons in the pink parts of the kitten will give a more realistic look to how white she is. Only the strongest highlights should stay white; use the white of the paper for the top of her head, her whitest highlights and details.

8. Sharpen a white pencil very fine and flick her tiny whiskers away from her muzzle to cross darker areas; they don't need to be perfectly opaque so much as visible and fine. You've drawn a white newborn kitten! The same shading that works for her fur will work for any white animal.

Tips & Warnings

• Sharpen your colored pencils frequently.

• Use a new pencil sharpener or a fresh blade if you have any resistance while sharpening colored pencils.

• If you have trouble pouring the Bestine thinner out of its pint container without spilling it, try dipping a straw in it, covering the top, lifting it out and dropping it into the palette cup instead of pouring it.

• Bestine thinner dries much faster than water and may be the best solvent with Prismacolors, Coloursoft or any wax-based colored pencils.

• Always get permission from the photographer who took your reference photo, or take your own reference photos. If your cat just had kittens, you can try sketching them from life, but it's easier to snap pictures even with a webcam since they do wiggle!

• Never use a pencil sharpener with a dull or rusted blade for colored pencils, as it will break the points.

• Be careful with odorless turpentine or Bestine rubber cement thinner: they're flammable and have fumes. Be sure to work in a ventilated area, and do not smoke or use open flame while these liquids are open.