Drawing animals can be fun, and it's not as hard as you may think. By following the step-by-step instructions in this article, you can learn to draw many different kinds of creatures. By copying these pictures, you will learn basic drawing skills. You will be able to use those skills to draw other animals and even other things.

How to Draw a Cat
Learn how to draw a cat
and other animals in this article.

Before you start drawing, there are some basic tools you will need. Make sure you have a pencil, a pencil sharpener, an eraser, a felt-tip pen, and grid paper where you'll make your drawings.

The animal sketches start with larger basic shapes like ovals, rectangles, and triangles. Draw the full shape, even if all of it will not be seen in the final drawing. You can erase the part you don't need later.

Each consecutive step adds more detail until you have the finished animal drawing. The steps are colored to show exactly what to draw when. The lines for each new step are shown in red, while the lines from previous steps are shown in gray.

The grid paper is a tool to make copying the drawings easier. While you copy the step-by-step drawings, look closely at how the lines and shapes fit on the grid, and copy them onto your grid sheet. Watch where the lines come close to the grids and where they cross over them. Match them on your grids to copy the steps.

After all the steps are drawn, use a felt-tip pen to go over the pencil lines. Only ink over the lines you need in the final drawing. After giving the felt-tip ink some time to dry so it won't smear, use an eraser to erase the pencil lines.

And there's your completed drawing!

Coloring Your Drawing

Now you are ready to color the animal drawing. Start coloring with things that are familiar to you. If you enjoy coloring with crayons, use them.

When you get more comfortable with coloring, you can try other methods like colored pencils, watercolor paints, markers, or even colored chalk. Try different techniques on the drawings to see what looks best.

When you are ready to start coloring, pick colors that best fit the animal in the drawing. Start by lightly adding the main color to the picture. Remember to keep the colors light in the beginning -- it is much easier to make a color darker than it is to make it lighter.

After the main color is finished, gently add darker colors to areas on the animal that would be in shadows or less light. Adding colors this way is called shading and helps the drawing to look more round.

After shading the animal, add lighter colors where more light would be. This is called highlighting, and it helps the figures in a drawing look more lifelike.

Look at the color pictures, and try to copy the light and dark shading of the colors. Once you fill in all the colors, your animal illustration is complete!

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