Pussy cat

Something a bit out of the ordinary this time - someone asked me to draw her cat! Having not drawn animals since I was about 5 I knew this would pose a challenge. Here's the pussy in question:

So, first things first, I drew the eyes. These are not so different from human eyes so no problem so far! Then I drew the shape of the face. The fur I made up as I went along, but eventually settled for lots of V shapes, pointing in the direction of the hair. If you do enough of these it looks like fur - trust me. Do a layer of light Vs and then dark Vs in different pencils (H and B for example) to get the 'mottled' effect, and add more dark Vs in the darker stripe areas.

The whiskers were done last. I rolled a putty rubber into a cone shape and 'drew' the white whiskers by erasing existing lines with the pointed end using sweeping hand motions and letting the paper shine through. I then continued eachwhisker beyond the cat outline using a B pencil. I'm very happy with the result and so was this moggy's owner:

For commissions visit http://www.pencil-pictures.co.uk.