How to Draw a Christmas Kitten in Oil Pastels

This cute little Christmas kitten has great details thanks to a useful Oil Pastels trick. By drawing white under some color areas, you can scrape color off to make fine white details like whiskers and the highlights on the Christmas ball. Follow carefully step by step and look like a real expert when you're done!

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A set of oil pastels including White, Yellow Ochre, several greens, white and metallic silver. I used a 50 color set of Erengi Art Aspirer. The more colors you have, the better!
• Good drawing paper like a sketchbook or drawing pad
• Pencil
• Kneaded eraser
• Pointed scraper, not too sharp. Tip of a nail file or anything like that is good for scraping.

1. 
   Line sketch for Christmas Kitten project

   Copy this kitten sketch. You can enlarge it with Grid Method or just try drawing it freehand. Grid Method would be printing it out, then put a grid of 1/2" squares over it. Measure them to be exact squares as you draw them on. Then draw the same number of 1" or 2" squares across and down on your drawing paper and copy the lines in each square exactly to enlarge it.

2. 
   False color scan showing where my white patches are. You can also add white feet and tail tip or tummy.

   The illustration in this step has false color because the white would not scan different from the white paper, but it is very important! Use the white pastel to draw on your sketch. Put a fat line over the eye and under the eye. Put a fat line or two coming off the eyebrow going right over the sides of the face. Put some white inside the ears. Put one or two fat white lines coming off the muzzle where whiskers will go. Draw hard with white where the highlight on the Christmas ball will be. If you want your kitten to have white feet or a white tail tip, put the white in now. Any white markings you want on your kitten should get white at this stage. Be sure to fill the eyes with white completely, we will scrape out highlights back down to this white. Put white on the topper of the Christmas ball if you want white highlights. (I did and forgot to put it on the digital-color version.)

3. 
   Color started defining ball color and kitten's coloration.

   I'm doing a Ginger Tabby kitten but you can do any markings your cat really has. Gray tabby just use grays where I have gold and orange and light brown, with black in the darks. Brown tabby use duller browns. Not a tabby, don't do the tabby markings but shade Kitty to whatever colors your cat really is. Same with eye color -- my ginger tabby has green eyes. Sketch in a light fur color with a short zigzag motion around the edges of the fur. Fill in the muzzle and the front paws. Draw with dark green (or red or blue, your color of Christmas ball) around the ball with a crescent to the lower right. Sketch the kitten's face again upside down and a little curved, fill it in with light yellow green. Fill eyes with light green (or blue or yellow) solidly right over the white. Color the muzzle over the white unless your cat is white. (White or black animals are harder, but you can use blue for shadows on white and blue for highlights on black -- that's the trick for black or white animals). Fill the inside of the ears with light pink and shade slightly with darker pink. Fill the nose with light pink (or the color of your cat's nose.) On the ball just go light and dark green for a reflection on a shiny green thing (or the color you chose for the ball).

4. 
   Background and kitten blocked in.

   Fill in the little kitten with yellow ochre. You can still see light areas where the white markings and whisker underpainting are, don't worry about that. Just go over it. Go over the Christmas tree ball's hanger, we will draw that over the fur colors. Fill in the background loosely with dark red (or your carpet color of choice, I went seasonal like he's on a tree skirt). Using the next lightest green from the dark green, do another round of shading on the Christmas ball. Shade back and forth over the line between the crescent of darkest color and next darkest with the lighter stick to make that blurry and shaded.

5. 
   Background strengthened, stripes on kitten, ball filled in with light green and mid green.

   Go over the background with the next brightest red, a strong crimson in my set. Use short circular motions in rows to make a carpet texture, but go hard and cover more of the area. Your kitten will show up more. Then add stripes and markings on the kitten in red-brown. Use light yellow green over the rest of the white areas of the Christmas ball, then shade back into it with the medium green. Work back and forth till the shading is very smooth and gradual. Don't worry about the white specks in the kitten and carpet too much, we'll do more in the next step.

6. 
   Highlights on fur done, third layer of red on carpet, detail fixing, pupils in eyes.

   Using a bright orange-red, go over the red carpet one more time deliberately going over every white speck you see. You may miss a few but they'll be much subtler. Using light yellow ochre or pale yellow, add lighter stripes next to the ginger kitten's dark stripes. For gray, use white over the gray for this. Add pupils to the kitten's eyes with the sharp edge of an unused end of the black stick, or scrape a sharp edge onto it with a knife before doing them. Use silver to add the hanger over the kitten after you fill in the fur with the highlight colors -- always do fur strokes in the direction of the fur. Touch up any details that need fixing. Add pink to the underside of the hindpaw.

7. 
   Shadows and details including shadow of de tail.

   Details and De Shadows -- on the carpet, using yellow-orange draw some squiggly little circles loosely over the reds on the lower left. Using dark pink do the same on the upper left carpet. Using red-violet add extra little squiggles on the lower right. Using a slightly darker violet add a few lightly to the upper right. Now use the violet to scrub in the shadows of the kitten and the ball, including de shadow of de tail. Go over the shadow with medium blue in squiggles to make it more prominent. Use black to draw ridges on the ball topper and add a couple of shadows on the line of the hanger to make it look more metallic.

8. 
   White details scraped in -- finished! Enjoy your Christmas Kitten!

   Using your scraper, scrape out a small highlight on each eye right next to the black pupil. Scratch out the whiskers over where the white was. Crosshatch with fine lines a highlight on the ball right over where that patch was. Carefully scrape some white out above and below the eye where you put the white at first and of course if you did white feet, you shadowed them with blue and did a pink underside on the hind one. But you can scratch a few white hairs into a black kitten's fur if you plan ahead and put some white under where they go. If you can't get it to cover the white completely, wait a day till it's more stiff and go over it with color again before scraping. This design would make a good holiday decoration Christmas card or ornament -- just glue it back to back with another artwork on cardboard and put glitter or lace on the edges.

Tips & Warnings

• Use artist grade oil pastels if you can afford them. Some brands aren't too expensive -- Cray Pas Specialist (square sticks), Cretacolor Aqua Stic (watersoluble and versatile) or the ones I used: Erengi Art Aspirer. I got the set of 50 on sale at Jerry's Artarama for $34.99 and they repeat the sale often.
• If you don't have a large set, consider shading colors or use bright orange for the ginger kitten with white over it for the light orange and red-brown for the darker stripes or just brown.
• Try doing this project in different colors. For a black kitten, use light blue under the black for all highlights to make the kitten rounded, then scrape back through the black to make light hairs show. For white hairs in a black cat's coat put white under the black and scrape them individually. Shade with light blue or lavender on white paws or tuxedo parts or on a white kitten.
• Try different colors of balls or carpet too! You can get a grayish or brown carpet by mixing a lot of contrasting colors.
• Test mixtures and textures on a scratch sheet before working on your good drawing. Some colors don't go over other colors as well. Orange over the reds didn't show at all till I used the yellow-orange for highlights, but if it was under it I could have scraped out highlights.

Resources

• Jerry's Artarama carries Erengi Art Aspirer oil pastels
• Explore-Oil-Pastels-with-Robert-Sloan.com (Information Site)

[tracysmith159]

on 8/14/2009 I so need to practice this. We love kittens and cats. It sounds like fun. Thanks for sharing.

[soanyway]

on 4/4/2009 I love this one too! Great detail on "how to"! now I want to go to the paint store, and I just this a.m. gave away canvases and paint supplies! I knew when I did that I would be sorry! You make it seem so easy to do! Thanks

[insidestory]

on 1/31/2009 How cool is this to do! It looks like fun, I may try it if I get the courage. Thanks.