How to draw a cats body

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Although all four-legged animals seem to have the same body, they are actually slightly different from each other.
The length of the bones and the way they are attached to each other are different, and this is what makes them different in appearance, such as body size.

So how should you draw a cat’s body?
Let’s take a look at how to draw a cat’s body and how to pose it.

1. Know the characteristics of a cat’s body

The first thing to do is to get a feel for the body characteristics of your cat. To get a good idea of the body characteristics, it’s important to look at the skeleton first.

Forefoot: The part of the forefoot that touches the back of the hand is short.
Back foot: The part of the foot that touches the back of the foot is long.

Also note that the joints bend with the front leg backwards and the back leg towards the front.

If you’re not sure about the bend or the length of the instep, if you’re not sure whether it’s front or back, it might be easier to understand if you replace it with a human limb.

Number of fingers

The number of fingers on a cat differs between the front and back feet.
It’s not a very obvious part of the picture, but you should be aware of it when drawing the feet.

Forefoot: 5 fingers, with carpal tunnel.
Back foot: 4 fingers.

Soft spine and tail

A cat’s body is soft and supple. This flexibility is impressively expressed by a soft back and tail that can bend freely.

The bones of a cat’s spine and tail are more loosely connected than those of a human, allowing the cat’s body and tail to bend flex flexibly.

2. Actually draw it

Once you grasp the characteristics of the cat’s body, you can actually draw it.

When drawing a cat’s body, it’s easier to draw a simple positioning of the cat using the skeleton as a reference point.

You can decide whether or not to draw the flow of hair according to your taste in painting.

Common Cat Pose

Once you’ve mastered the basic body drawing technique, you can try various poses, referring to pictures and other reference material.
In the diagram, the light blue is the first positional drawing, and the blue is the area after the light blue one.

Sit down
There are several different ways for cats to sit, but here are the three basic ways they sit.

“Egyptian Sitting” – “Sitting on tail”

Since the center of gravity is on the waist, it may be easier to draw the positioning of the waist first.

This is the way we sit when we are interested, alert, or paying attention to our surroundings.

“Sitting on tail” is when the tail is wrapped around the front of the animal in an Egyptian sitting position.
It is said to be a way to sit when you are alert and do not want to get your tail dirty.

“Catloaf”

“Catloaf” sits with its front and back legs tucked away underneath its body. Because its arms and legs are tucked away, its body is shaped like a box.

This way of sitting is said to be the way to sit when you are relatively relaxed.

“When you draw Catloaf, it’s easier to draw the head and body first, and then draw the details.
After that, it’s easier to draw the details. When drawing the body parts, don’t worry about the details, just picture a box or a ball.

Stretching

For the stretching pose, you can draw a triangle as an image.

First, draw the head, shoulder area, and waist area, then draw the legs and spine to flesh them out.

Draw the front legs as if they were extending forward and the back as if you were pulling them back.

3. Summary

I hope you’ve gotten a general idea of how to draw a cat. Cats are relatively common, so if you meet a cat, you might want to observe the pose it’s in.

Also, there are many cute cat photos on the internet, so please try drawing various cats with reference to the photos and the real thing.

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If you are looking to learn how to draw a cat step by step, then this tutorial is for you. First I’ll show you how to draw a “cat skeleton” to define the pose, then you’ll learn how to draw a cat’s body, how to draw a cat’s face with all the details, and finally, how to add the final details to your cat drawing to make it look realistic.

What You Will Learn In This guide

This cat drawing guide is suitable for people of different levels and abilities. Use this table of contents to quickly get to the different sections of this guide.

Feel free to use any tools you wish for this tutorial. I recommend a hard pencil for the sketching phase, and a soft pencil or an ink liner for the final lines.

The red lines are the ones that you’re supposed to draw, and the green ones are guide lines that you only need to imagine—they will help you get the proportions right.

A Quick Preview of All Steps

I would like to start with giving you a quick overview of all the steps we will follow to draw our cat. At this stage don’t worry about all the details yet, because we will go in all the details for each step in the next sections of this guide.

How to Sketch a Cat

At this stage we’re going to create a “cat skeleton” drawing, a simple sketch that helps define the pose and proportions before going into details. Make sure to draw these lines lightly, to be able to erase them later, or to make them less visible once you add the final lines. 

Step 1 – Draw a circle

Make sure your circle is a little bit to the left of the middle of your paper. This will become the middle part of the body of the cat, so please make sure to leave enough space on the top and the bottom of your paper.

Step 2 – Draw a bigger circle next to it

The upper edges of both circles should be in line.

Step 3 – Add a circle of a similar size to the first one

You can keep this circle in line, or put it slightly higher than the circle in the middle.

Step 4 – Draw a horizontal line under the cat’s body

This line represents the ground level. To make sure you use the right proportions, please measure the hight of the inner circle and apply the same distance under that circle to find the perfect location for your horizontal line, as shown in the picture below.

Step 5 – Draw a curved line for the cat’s front legs

Here as well it’s important to get the proportions roughly right. To do this, please have a look at the picture below and see how the green imaginary line indicates how to draw the curved line.

Step 6 – Draw a straight line on the right side of this curved line.

This line ends in the middle circle at the same hight of where your curve line started on the left circle as illustrated below.

Step 7 – Draw a curved line to create the basic outline of the cat’s back legs

Step 8 – Add the outline of the second back leg

Step 9 – Start to Draw the cat’s thighs

To do this draw curved lines from the legs towards the body of the cat as illustrated in the picture below.

Step 10 – Draw a line between the 2 lines of the front legs.

To do this follow the illustration below where you can see that we want this new line to end at the crossing of the inner circle and the left circle.

Step 11 – Draw a curved line for the tail

Step 12 – Draw the left side of the cat’s neck

It’s the most tricky part, so be very careful to keep the proportions exactly right.

Step 13 – Draw the right side of the neck

Imagine that the outline of the inner circle is the shoulder if you want to visualize what we’re doing here.

Step 14 – Draw the cat’s head

Start with drawing a rectangle with strongly rounded corners between the curved lines of the neck.

How to Draw a Cat’s Body

Now we’re going to sketch the details of the body, defining its proportions and shapes. I’ll show you how to draw the legs and how to sketch the start of the cat’s face. Keep sketching lightly!

Step 1 – Draw the rounded outlines of the paws

Step 2 – Draw the joints above the paws

Step 3 – Add more details to the joints

Step 4 – Cut the face in half, both horizontally and vertically

Step 5 – Divide the lower half into thirds

Step 6 – Add a curved line to outline the face

When sketching this outline please try to make it bended in a similar way than illustrated below as this is important for the structure of the cat’s face.

Step 7 – Connect the upper third with the borders of it’s surrounding cirle

When doing this please make sure to use bended lines that touch the circle at the same place where your outline of the face from the previous step touched the circle. It’s easy to understand this step by watching the picture below.

Step 8 – Divide the horizontal line into thirds

To get the right proportions, when measuring your thirds we want to ignore the piece outside the curved lines of the outline of the face.

Step 9 – Connect these marks with the lower third to create the outline of the cat’s nose

Step 10 – Draw a line through the middle third

Step 11 – Cut each of the outer third in half

Step 12 – Imagine a line connecting these two marks and draw a line right next to it, towards the outside 

Step 13 – Sketch the cat’s eyes

We create the basic structure of the eyes by drawing ovals inside the area created in the previous step.

Step 14 – Draw the lips and the basic outline of the nose

Step 15 – Draw 2 rounded lines to outline the cat’s ears

Step 16 – Divide the forehead into halves, then cut the upper half in halves again

Step 17 – Draw a curved line across the upper mark

Step 18 – Draw curves from the inner part of the eyes towards the forehead and beyond

This is to further shape the ears.

Step 19 – Add two more curved lines to finish the outline of the ears

How to Draw a Cat’s Face

Now we’re going to add details to our cat’s face to make it more realistic. Keep your lines light – at this stage it’s still more of a cat sketch rather than a cat drawing.

Step 1 – Add a flat oval to create the nose

Step 2 – Draw the nose holes

Step 3 – Draw lines for the whiskers

Step 4 – Draw curved lines around the eyes 

Step 5 – Draw the pupils inside the eyes

Step 6 – Draw the eyebrows

Step 7 – Draw the inside of the eyebrows

Step 8 – Draw the nose bridge

Step 9 – Make the outline of the area around the nose more accurate

Step 10 – Divide each paw into four parts

Make the lower half of each toe straight rather than round as illustrated below.

Step 11 – Add a few more details to the toes and joints

12. Add a few more details across the body

We add a few more lines around the body to finish our sketch of the body and the tail. These are easy steps and can be drawn by following the steps shown on each of the 3 pictures below.

Add Finishing Touches to Your Cat Drawing

We’re almost done with our cat drawing! Now take a softer, darker pencil, or even an ink liner, and use it to cover your sketch with the final details. In this section we will not use a red color for the new lines, but we will show them in black straight away to make sure the details and the darkness are very clear.

Step 1 – Draw the details of the nose and the area around it 

Step 2 – Add more details to the eyes

Make sure to make the pupils as dark as possible, in a similar way as shown below.

Step 3 – Add more details to the area of the ears

Step 4 – Darken the borders of the face

Step 5 – Darken the paws

We use the lines of our sketch as base for this darkening, as illustrated below.

Step 6 – Darken the rest of the body

Try to make it look fluffy by adding little lines accross the body as illustrated below.

Step 7 – Add the whiskers and more fur

Step 8 – Make the outline of the body even darker

We can reach this extra darkening to accentuate the outline of the body in 3 ways: we press harder, we draw an extra time over the lines, or we take an even darker tool.

Step 9 – Remove your guidelines and add a few shades

Our cat drawing is almost finished so it’s a good time to carefully remove the guidlines and add a few shaded. You can choose how you add shades, but the most easy way to do it is to imagine a light source shining from a certain direction on our cat. Assuming the light source is above, we get the result below.

Beautiful!

You’ve just learned how to draw a cat step by step! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Don’t forget to come back for more easy drawing tutorials in the future.