How to Draw a Cat
In this drawing lesson you can learn how to draw a cat. A cat is a cute pet that is a great drawing object.
So let’s get started to learn how to draw a cat. This lesson is made in an extremely simple style, like all other lessons on my site, and consists of 9 short steps.


Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Step-by-step cat drawing tutorial
- Improve your cat drawing skills
- Additional content
- Conclusion
Cats were first domesticated in Egypt, where they soon spread to Asia, Europe, and the rest of the world. After which the story took another turn, and cats have now taken over our home, sofas, our social media feeds and, of course, our hearts.
And of course, cats have long taken over all areas of art. You can see them both in the paintings of famous artists, and on movie screens and billions of photographs taken by professional and amateur photographers.
The ginger cat you draw will look very cute and kind. I am sure that you will not have any difficulties in completing this lesson, even if you have no drawing experience at all.
But nevertheless, I’ll give you a couple of tips before you start the drawing process.
- Remember that you need to monitor the proportions and relationships of the cat’s body parts.
- Start with light lines, then use darker ones towards the last steps.
- From time to time, take a break from the details to look at the entire drawing as a whole to see any mistakes.
These little tips will help you avoid making critical mistakes as you learn how to draw a cat. And if you are ready, then scroll through the page to proceed to the art lesson.
Step-by-Step Cat Drawing Tutorial
Materials
- Pencil
- Paper
- Eraser
- Coloring supplies
Time needed: 25 minutes
How to Draw a Cat
- Draw the outline of the cat’s head and body.
Depict the head as a circle. To draw the torso of the pet, use a curved line. Try to repeat the ratio of head and torso as in my example.
- Add the eyes and ears.
The cat’s eyes are shaped like an almond. The ears look like triangles with curved lines. The left and right sides of the face should be symmetrical.
- Draw the nose, mouth, and inside of the cat’s eyes.
Depict the iris inside the eyes. Also depict other details with curved lines. Here you should also carefully observe all the rules of symmetry and proportionality.
- Draw the whiskers and the inside of the cat’s ears.
Add these details as shown in my example. Use light flowing lines. The lines of the whiskers should be drawn from roots to tips to achieve maximum believability.
- Draw the cat’s front paws.
Depict it at the bottom of the body, using curved lines. The lines of the whiskers should be drawn from roots to tips to achieve maximum believability.
- Add the cat’s hind legs.
Draw them at the bottom of the body, a little further than the front paws. The cat’s back legs should be slightly thicker than the front legs, as you can see in my example.
- Depict the cat’s tail.
The tail should be wavy curved. Don’t forget to smoothly round the tip of the tail. You can change the shape of the tail by drawing it, for example, in the shape of a question mark.
- Erase the auxiliary lines.
Use an eraser to clean off any unnecessary lines. Additionally, to achieve more expression, you can outline your cat drawing with darker lines.
- Color the cat drawing.
Use beige, green, and pink colors. But of course, these are not the only colors for coloring your artwork. You can choose any color you see fit.
Improve Your Cat Drawing Skills
So this was a cat drawing tutorial and I hope it was really easy. But of course, this is not all the actions that you can do to become a real professional in the field of drawing these cute pets.
To delve deeper into the topic and feel confident in the process of creating images of these beautiful animals, I will give some useful tips.
- To make your cat drawings as convincing as possible, you need to learn how to make them more voluminous. To do this, I advise you to familiarize yourself with the rules of light and shadow.
- Cats are mostly hairy, which means you need to learn how to depict fur. Try repeating the steps above, but making the this cute pet a little more furry.
- It is very important to be able to depict not individual objects, but to create compositions from them. Try to draw a cat in some environment or on the lap of its owner.
Additional Content
Don’t forget that you can download and print a PDF that contains a short tutorial and some helpful tools. Download the PDF for free and take art lessons whenever you want.
Cat Drawing Tutorial: Basic Level
The figure shows the basic shape of a cat. The cat is depicted in a sitting position. First, you need to draw the torso, then draw a round head, and finally draw the paws, tail, ears, and muzzle. Be sure to keep the lines smooth when completing this task.

Sitting Cat
If you follow all the steps of this simple tutorial, you will end up with a very minimalistic but beautiful drawing of a cat, devoid of unnecessary details.
Further, if the child wants to make his drawing of a cat more detailed and lively, he can add additional elements such as fur texture, shadows, and so on. But for now, as I said, we will focus on the most important details and try to depict this cute animal using this instruction.

Cat Drawing Lesson: Sitting Cat 2
When drawing things like cats or other animals, you need to understand that it is not necessary to draw all the small details. One of the main skills for any artist is that he must be able to depict the most important things and leave out unnecessary details.
Such minimalism in the drawing will help the child to focus on the most important thing, that is, on large shapes, such as the head, paws, tail, etc.

Working on Form and Style
The cat has a rounded shape, the head is larger than the body, and the legs and tail are short. Consider these proportions in your drawing.
This lesson will require your ability to make smooth rounded lines. Be careful and attentive at every stage of drawing, and use the little tips that I have prepared for your convenience.
For coloring, you can use the same color as in the example, or you can choose any other color you like. If you wish, you can draw spots or stripes, so you get a great bright pattern.

Cartoon Cat Drawing Instruction
This instruction is really very simple since it contains a minimum of elements. Pay attention to the proportions of the picture. Here the cat is presented in a cartoon style, so it looks funny and cute.
As you can see, the cat has a large head and small torso, and the legs are very short. Try to depict all parts of the body correctly, and be careful at every step of drawing to get a good result.

Cat Drawing Tutorial: Let’s Add a Little Realism
Now let’s add a little realism to the cat drawing. This instruction will not give the most realistic result, but unlike previous instructions, here is a cat with more realistic features and standing in a more natural pose.

Conclusion on How to Draw a Cat
As was already said at the beginning, these cute animals have long taken over not only our homes, but also all areas of the fine arts.
Great artists knew how to depict cats as realistically and convincingly as possible. You can see an example of how great artists trained to depict cats in the drawings of the study for the Madonna of the cat by Leonardo Da Vinci.
That is, as you can see, legendary artists also learned to draw just like you, and if you practice regularly, you will certainly become a very good artist.