How to Draw a Newborn Kitten

Kittens and puppies are perennial favorites. But cat fanciers will drop their jaws in amazement if instead of a fluffy six to twelve 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.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

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. Sketch from Our Christmas Eve Kitten by catographer Wazabees 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. Color chart for 72 color full range set of Derwent Coloursoft colored pencils If you haven't already done this when you bought the set, take a sketchbook page and make a color chart of your colored pencils. Do a small full-saturation patch of each color. Later on the artwork you'll be testing combinations on sketchbook pages too, to get better mixtures. This is my color chart for the set I'm using in this demonstration, 72 Derwent Coloursoft colored pencils. The larger a set you have, the easier it is to match colors. Paradoxically, the more colors you have to mix, the richer your mixtures are too!
3. Some color mixes and tests for my newborn kitten piece. Decide your color harmony for the finished colored pencils piece. Since I chose a white kitten, any color I use for the background is going to give some strong value contrast with her. Her nose, the tiny foot visible behind her shoulder and the crease of her closed eye are pinkish-salmon or grayed pinkish-salmon. In the photo she's on a rumpled sheet with a complicated pattern in muted pastel colors. I tried different medium pastel blue and lavender mixtures for the background, but may do something else in the final version. Do as many color tests as you want, and don't hesitate to do more in the middle of the later steps when we're coloring the kitten. Experiment, and decide what you like.
4. Outline sketch of newborn kitten showing proportions 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, 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. My example is in graphite, but my under sketch is in too light a gray to scan. 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.
5. Background covered with lavender tonal layers. Working carefully around the outline of the kitten, sketch in the background folds of fabric and cover the background with light tonal layers in one of the colors you're mixing to do the sheet she's on. I chose a light lavender for this first stage. My scanner makes some of the light values drop to white, but the background is totally covered with lavender. Next, I'll go over that with a light blue and some other purples and blues till I get a good combination for the sheet color. Coloring from the negative space is a good way to get the kitten's shape right, I can correct any minor flaws at this stage without drawing on the white kitten at all.
6. Background shaded with purples, lavender, blues and grays, mid gray kitten details Going over the previous stage, I started 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.
7. Background washed with Bestine rubber cement thinner 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 though so that the background is smooth and the fur has a jagged, furry edge. Let your art dry thoroughly before doing anything else.
8. Final details of face, foot and fur on a white newborn kitten! 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, ear, 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 sheet 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. 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. Sign it with a monogram or your signature down on the sheet near her head. You've drawn a white newborn kitten! The same shading that works for her fur will work for any white animal. You have my explicit permission to copy all of my sketches and this finished artwork in any size, but please credit me if you sell your artwork or display it online and link back to this article.

Tips & Warnings

• Buy your colored pencils and art supplies online. The overhead is so much lower that you may get exactly the same products for half price or less, even with shipping. Also check eBay, some sellers have packaged large sets of Prismacolors at very low "buy it now" prices that beat anything else.
• 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, cover the top, lift it out and drop it into the palette cup instead of pouring.
• Bestine thinner dries much faster than water and may be the best solvent with Prismacolors, Coloursoft or any wax based colored pencils.
• Avoid buying mixed-brand lots of loose pencils on eBay, they are often bulk lots of defective Prismacolors and cheap brands, but may only have a couple of dozen colors in hundreds of pencils, with say, dozens of white pencils all misprinted. They're not the bargain that the sealed new sets are at eBay.
• 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, 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.