This tiger tutorial will be the first of a series that will conclude in a tutorial on how to draw the whole tiger. Animals are very expressive and the tiger is no exception. Being able to draw the eyes of the animal will bring the animal to life on paper. But the eyes are just one feature of a whole animal. Just as important as the eyes is being able to draw the hair which compliments the other features. The tiger has always been one of my favorite animals and drawing them is always great. They are not only beautiful animals but they look incredible as a pencil drawing.

The challenge for most people when drawing animals is giving a realistic look to the animal hair. Like i have mentioned before on other tutorials, the most important step before actually drawing hair is to understand it. If you understand how hair behaves on the animal that you are drawing, you will see how easy it will be to draw it using the techniques. You can read these tutorials on the techniques that i use to draw hair, drawing hair part one and drawing hair part two. These are an introduction to understanding the techniques that i use. In this tutorial we will be using these pencil drawing techniques to draw some tiger hair. I’ve been asked many times how i drew the hair on the chin on some of my tiger drawings. Well, this area is full of long and short hair and getting right can be tricky . But with the techniques that i use it can make things a bit easier. I do recommend that you first study how that area looks. Observe how hair overlaps, what direction hair flows, is the hair coarse or fine. In reality, i don’t draw hair, i give the illusion of hair. This technique is perfect for fooling the eye into thinking that it is looking at hair. It can be a tedious process but its not difficult once you get the hang of it. Understand the hair and you will know how to use the technique. Ok, lets take a look at that area.

From the image above you can see that the hair fans out from the center. But, you will also notice that the hair is not straight, it has a slight curve to it. Hair also clumps up and these clumps overlap each other. This overlapping causes shadows, so that means that the hair in shadow will be darker. If you want to give the effect of light reflecting off hair, all you have to do is leave that area white. Notice that the hair come together at the ends and it makes pointy clumps. The technique that will be used will outline the hair, but it will up to you to develop the clumps of hair. This is where understanding hair comes in. If you understand it, you will know where to add shadows to make these clumps in order to give the drawing much more realism.

Let start with the drawing. This might be a long tutorial but i want you to understand the process and understand the purpose of each step taken. Well here we go.

Well this is the drawing that we will be making today. The goal of this pencil drawing tutorial will be for you to understand how the the combination of different techniques and your understanding of hair can give a realistic look to hair. These techniques can be used on other areas and animals where you need to draw hair.

Tools Used:

• 2b Mechanical Pencil
• 2h Wood Cased Pencil
• 4b Progresso Pencil
• Kneaded Eraser
• Stick Eraser
• Towel
• Color Blender
• Bristol Vellum Paper
• Stylus
• Chamois Towel

Step 1

Take your 2b pencil and lightly draw the outline above. Don’t worry if your drawing does not look like finished image above. What you should focus on this tutorial is to understand the pencil drawing techniques. Try not to make the outline too dark, just dark enough for you to see it. This will be a rough outline that you will follow to outline the hair with the stylus.

Step 2

With your stylus you will indent some hair around the edge of the mouth. These indentations will represent the beginning growth of hair from the bottom of lip. The image on the left shows the area up close. This technique will be done with the area above the lip as well. When indenting with the stylus, make sure not to press to hard and make sure that the strokes are random. Random indentations will make give it a much more realistic look. If you have both types of stylus, the needle and the pen with no ink, i recommend that you interchange between them. The needle will give you finer lines than the empty pen. After you have indented the lines you will run your 4b progresso pencil over the edge of the mouth and you should see that the indented lines are now visible. Then you fill in the rest of the mouth using your 4b pencil. Don’t press too hard with the pencil. One trick to get nice darks is to add pencil and blend with the color blender and keep repeating the same process until you are satisfied with it. If you don’t have a color blender you can use a shading stump.

Step 3

You will now indent the hair that runs from the side of the face down over the edge of the mouth. Using your 4b progresso pencil you outline the mouth and filling it in with pencil. Indent the whiskers that were drawn in the outline. Once you have indented then you can erase the pencil lines leaving just the indentation. Here we will add the hairs on the edge of the beard. Use your stylus to indent the tips of the hair. Look at the reference image above to see the direction that the hair flows. You will notice that the hair fans out from the center out. Make sure they are not straight and crisscross them. Indent the lines up to where the hair will end. Make a couple of lines longer than the rest and these will represent whisker like hairs that stretch out. Once you indented around the whole beard, use the chamois to outline the indentations. You can add graphite to the chamois by putting down some pencil with your 4b progresso on a separate sheet of paper and rubbing with the chamois. You should now have something similar to the image above. Just rub the around the edge of the beard not the inside, this will outline the hairs at the end. It will serve as a guide to the remaining hair that will be indented later. The image on the left is a closeup of the bottoms section of finished drawing so you can see what we are working up to. As you can see this is a useful and simple way to start drawing something that most people have trouble with. If you want you can practice this technique on a separate sheet of paper before going on with the rest.

Step 4

Now that we have outlined the edge of the beard we will start to indent the hair on the remaining area. The trick here is to make the lines random. Make sure you don’t make the lines too long. If you indent the lines from the top all the way down, it will give the illusion of having long hair. If you look at the reference photo you can see that the hair overlaps and that its in layers. To get this layer effect i suggest you indent from the bottom up. Indent a layer starting from the left and moving down across to the right. The next layer would be a bit above the previous one and will overlap the lower layer. This way you can make sure that the indentations are layered. Another thing you must remember is not to indent the lines straight. On the left image you can see that the indentations are not straight, they have a slight curve to them. When indenting keep in mind also that hair clumps up and the hairs that make up this clump flow in the same direction. So there may be a couple of indentations that you could make in one direction and the next on another. The top area will have shorter hair than then bottom. To get the effect of shorter hair you will just make the indentations shorter. The results will be much better if the lines are random. Don’t worry if it doesn’t work out the first time. You can practice on a different sheet of paper. Once you have indented the whole area you will run the chamois over the area. You should be able to see the indented lines. You can use this also as a preview of how lines are turning out. The image on the left shows what you might see. If you see this it means that you made a couple of indentations that were parallel. The beauty of pencil is that you can erase. Erase this area and make some more indentations that overlap. The image on the right is the same image as before except that i erased what i had and indented a couple of lines to overlap the existing ones. This overlapping gives the effect a more realistic look.

Step 5

Taking your 4b progresso pencil you will begin to darken some areas. As you run your pencil, the indentations will be much more significant. Now this is where understanding how hair flows, overlapping and shadows comes into play. Once you have a a good understanding of this, you will know where to add these details. I can teach you the techniques but it will be up to you have an understanding of what you are drawing. In this step im looking for the clumps of hair that i will make up the whole drawing. With time you will know automatically where to add these darks. The spots that are under the mouth are similar to the spots that leopards and jaguars have. User your 4b pencil to add these spots. After making these spots you will notice that there will be some indentations that are white over these spots. You can use your color blender to blend them into the spots. If you don’t have any pictures of tigers, you can always use a close up of a cat. You’d be using the reference photo just for the hair so it really doesn’t matter that its a cat.

Step 6

Using your 2h pencil we will start to out line some clumps of hair that will give the drawing much more depth. The indentations makes it much easier to see these clumps once you know what you are looking for. As you’re running your pencil over the lines they will reveal themselves and by looking at those you will know where to shade next to reveal those clumps.

Step 7

On this step we will continue to reveal more hair clumps. You can begin to see what results you can get from layering. Just keep darkening around these clumps of hair using your 2h pencil. The color blender will be used to blend the pencil once you have the shadows. The shadows will be cast over hair below. To get this effect we will use the color blender to blend these shadows into the indentations below. This will be the illusion of layered hair.

Step 9

Taking your 2b mechanical pencil you will lightly add more layers to the drawing. By drawing a “W” shaped outline over existing hair allows you to do this. Once you have outlined them, you can outline the bottom with your 2b mechanical pencil. When you are doing this remember how the hair flows. It does not flow straight down but fans from the center out. Using your color blender you will blend down, which will give the effect of shadow being cast on hair below. The red lines above show how you could add them. Just make sure not to add too many layers, just enough to give a nice effect of depth. Adding too much will result in loosing some of the realism. Keep in mind that you can add whatever you want, test it out and you’ll know what looks right. Experimenting makes it fun and you’ll be surprised what you can learn from this. In this step we also filled in with 4b the area under the left and right side of the face. This will reveal the whiskers. Taking your kneaded eraser tap across the dark area on the mouth. This will be the dark lips on the tiger. It should have a banana shape, where the center is much wider than the ends.

Step 11

Well this has been a long journey and we’re almost there . On this step we will continue emphasize the shadows by darkening them lightly with 4b pencil and blending. You can now see how layering has brought dimension to the whole drawing. On the previous step we added “W” shaped outlines. Well on this step you can add those same outlines but just smaller and scatter them around. Now you can use your color blender to start blending those shadows. The shadows would blend down, so the best way to do this is to pull down the graphite over the area below using the color blender. To add highlights to the clumps of hair you will use the kneaded eraser. Squeeze the eraser between your index finger and thumb. This will make fine edge and you will just tap along where you want to have the highlights. Adding highlights that overlap on an angle across some areas will give the effect of overlapping hair. As you add these highlights you can add light shadows under them with your 2h pencil. Its just about experimenting from this point on and adding little details. You have the basic texture and look of hair done. Now you can add either more shadows and highlights. To add another nice effect you can use a stick erasers and cut the tip of it. This will make the tip flat. Now with the edge of it you run it from the top down following the fan pattern. This will make nice highlights which will represent long hair that overlap the hair that we’ve already made. On the edge you can use this effect to add more finer air. As you can see these little details makes a big difference on the overall drawing. I added more dark spots to give the drawing much more impact and you can do the same or leave the ones you already have. Look at different pictures of tigers to get an idea where you can add more and what changes you can make. You can also darken the shadows to have more contrast between light and shadows. Experiment with the techniques to get different results. The background was drawn by rubbing with the chamois towel, it will give a smooth look.

Conclusion

This was a long tutorial but hopefully it was helpful in understanding how to go about adding texture and realism to hair. Getting the right results will depend on how much you practice. Your first drawings will not be your best and i can tell you that the more you draw the more improvement you will see in your pencil drawings. Practice, practice, practice. This will be the first tutorial with a tiger. Next time i will write a tutorial on how to go about drawing the main features on a tigers face. After these tutorials we will work on a full drawing of a tiger using what we’ve learned from these lessons. If you have any questions or you need something for me to explain please contact me or leave a comment. If you want you can now try Drawing Realistic Tigers with Pencil-Nose tutorial.

Take a look at the pupil(the black area in the center), this area contracts in size when light hits it. The area around the pupil is the iris, this is the area that gives us our eye color. As you can see its not just a blotch of brown, its made up highlights and shadows and this is what we will concentrate on. Adding the right shadows and highlights gives they eye depth and life. All eyes are different and you will see that adding different highlights in different areas gives different effects. The white dot close to the eye is the reflection of light source, it can be big or large, it depends if the person is indoor or outdoor. Another thing you must take into consideration is the shape of the eye. The surface of the eye is not flat, it has a curve to it. So taking that into consideration when drawing highlights will give the eye much more dimension. These are the tools that i used

Tools Used:

• 2h wood cased pencil

• 2b 0.5 Mechanical Pencil

• Kneaded Eraser

• Color Blender

• Smooth Bristol Paper

This is the final drawing of what we’ll be working on. I’ll try to give a detailed explanation of the whole process that i use. Again, study the picture above to get an idea of what you’ll be drawing. It will make much more easier and with time you will understand how to take the same steps yourself. With the same process try to draw the eye above so that you can practice.

Step 1

Well we will start by drawing the outline, this can be a fast sketch, but enough detail to show the shape. I used 2b 0.5mm mechanical pencil. Make sure you don’t make the outline too dark or else you will have an outline in the end. The three round circles close to the pupil will be light source reflections.

Step 2

Start by filling in the pupil using the 6b progresso pencil. Make sure not to press too hard or else you will not be able to erase it easily if you need to. One good way to get really darks is to layer it. Start off by lightly going over with with the progresso pencil and then use the the color blender to blend it. Add another layer of pencil with progresso and do the same with blender. Keep on doing this until you are satisfied with it.

Step 3

Take your 4b progresso pencil and put down some graphite on a separate piece of paper. Get it as dark as possible, then with your color blender lightly rub that area. Now if you look at the tip of blender you will see that it has some graphite. Now rub the area around the the wobbly circle. If you don’t a have a color blender you can use a tortillon/shading stump. I would recommend that you have both of these tools, they can be helpful in achieving different effects.

Step 4

Using your mechanical pencil draw the lines that you see around the area that was shaded previously, try to make them quick and light. If they are random, it would be much better. These lines will serve as a guide of highlights and shadows that the iris has. From the reference picture of the eye above, you can see that the iris is full of highlights and shadows.

Step 5

Using your mechanical pencil lightly fill in the area around the pupil. Then with with the blender blend from the center of the pupil out. This will also pull some darks from the center of the pupil, giving that area some shadows.

Step 6

The area outside of the iris layered under the rest of the iris, adding these shadows gives the iris much more depth. Lightly draw them under and blend them with the rest of the dark area. You don’t have to put shadows all the way around, just on random areas.

Step 7

Using your blender pull from the edge of the inner area outside. This will give a nice pattern and will be a guide for the highlights and shadows on the outer area. Make sure you don’t shade the highlights or else you will lose them. You can always erase those areas after so they wont be as bright. You can now begin to see the eye come to life, layering is a big part of pencil drawing and learning what goes on top and bottom is very important. It might take a while to go through all these steps, but the time pays off in the end. After practicing, it will become much easier with each one.

Step 8

Draw around the whole iris with the 4b progresso pencil, don’t press too hard. This will outline the whole iris. Take your kneaded eraser between your index finger and your thumb then squeeze. This will give the kneaded eraser a fine edge. You will use this to pull some highlight from the area outside of the pupil. Make the highlights going around the area, don’t add too many, just enough that they stand out. If you pull too much graphite, just add more with the pencil, blend it with blender and use kneaded eraser again. You will probably need to make new edge on eraser after each time you pull graphite because it will stick to the edge. If you don’t, next time you try to make a highlight it will not pull as much graphite. These little erasers are amazing and all pencil artists should have them in their tools.

Step 9

Now blend the area that you outlined on the previous step. If its not dark enough just put down more pencil and blend it, it should look like the image above. On the previous step we pulled out some highlights with the kneaded eraser. Now randomly darken between some of those highlights using your mechanical pencil. This will bring out some of the highlights much more and will also add some shadows. Outline the edges of that area, this will make it stand out. Using your blender blend the edge of the pupil with the area outside. Don’t blend it too much, just enough so the end of the highlights blend out nicely.

Step 10

Using your progresso pencil draw out that shape that you see on the image above, it doesn’t have to look exactly, but it should be random. Don’t draw the outline too dark, just enough for you to see it. Darken the area below that outline, don’t make it too dark that it will stand out too much from the rest of the iris. Blend it just a bit in some areas so that it blends a bit into the rest of the iris.

Step 11

Using your kneaded eraser add some highlights around the outer iris. These highlights will be larger than the ones in the center. You can also make some that start from the outer edge of the pupil to the end of the iris, but don’t make too many of these.

Step 12

On the previous step we added highlights going straight down, here you will add highlights with kneaded eraser in an angle. You’ll be making “W” shaped highlights, just make enough that it will give the iris some texture. After making these highlights, you will add shadows, under some of these highlights. In the image above you can see a very clear “W”, below that you can see a darker area, this will be the shadow for this highlight. Add these shadows to some of the highlights around the iris, not all of them, make it as random as possible. Using your color blender, blend the ends of the these highlights so they don’t look like white lines. In this step we will also start working on the sclera, which is the white part of the eye. The tip of the color blender should still have some graphite, so use that to put down some graphite around the sclera like the image above. The two circles that you see on the right side will be highlights that will suggest wetness.

Step 13

Taking your mechanical pencil, darken the shadows around the edge of the iris. Add some dark lines in between some of the highlights for so the highlights can jump out more. In this step you can also experiment with highlights, add more or take away. We now have the basic design for the iris, from here on we can start to darken the whole iris by adding light layers of graphite using 2h pencil. If you’re drawing and eye that is blue, green or light in color, you would leave it like this. We also shaded the fold thats under the eyebrow and above the eyelash. Using your kneaded eraser you can erase between the glare spots to blend them together.

Step 14

Here we will darken the iris. Before we do that we will add some eyelash reflections, you don’t have to add this to all your drawings, but if the drawing is big enough you can. Over the 3 glare spots you can draw some eyelash reflections. The reflection from eyelashes would be reflected on the surface of the eye, since the glare spots are at the top and are white you can draw over them the tips of the eyelashes. Once you have done this, you lightly put down a layer with the 2h pencil over the whole iris. This will darken the highlights, darken the top section of the iris a bit more because this part will be a bit more darker because of shadows of the top of the eye and eyelashes. I added some other details like the reflections on the corner of the eyes. With the 2h pencil i also added some light blood vessels that run out from the corners of the eye. These little details make a big difference in drawing a realistic eye. Look at the reference photo at the beginning so you can see those blood vessels. Darken the sclera, the white part of the eye a bit with the blender, especially the corners. This will give the eye more depth and realism with the subtle blood vessels.

Step 15

The eyelashes are added, take a look at the angle that they are drawn, they are not drawn straight down,except for the ones in the center. These are drawn last because they are on top of the of the other features. Using your kneaded eraser you can add some highlights,which would be some hairs reflecting some light. You can play around with them to get a much realism. Just make sure you make sure to curve them, they are not straight. The ones in the center don’t have much of a curve because you’re looking straight at them.

Step 16

We will add now the lower eyelashes, these should be a bit lighter so you can use a 2h pencil to draw them or use the mechanical pencil and then use an edged kneaded eraser to tap along the hair to remove some graphite. Like the top eyelashes, the center ones curve down and you go either left or right so you start to see the curve on the hair.

Well that is about it, it might seem long but with time you will be drawing them with ease. Don’t worry if the first time it doesn’t come out right, keep practicing and you will see results. The more you draw it, the more you will understand each step and it will become much easier. Don’t be scared to experiment, study the reference eye and look at the features. Using the same tools that were used try different ways to put down those details. Be creative with the process, before you know it you’ll your eyes will be glistening and staring at you .

Conclusion

This tutorial should be only the first step, one thing i can tell you is that the more you draw the better you will get. I won’t stop reminding that you should study whatever you’re drawing. Understanding what you are drawing is so helpful and the end results will show the preparation. Hopefully this tutorial was helpful, if you have any problems or have any questions, leave a comment or contact me.

Share your results with others and get feedback from other members by posting your images here, Drawing Results

Well, negative drawing is basically drawing without actually drawing. Its drawing something by drawing around it. for example, look at this image.

The white square is drawn negatively and the black square is drawn positively. The white that you see would be the paper that you are drawing on. It was drawn by drawing around the shape of the square leaving the area white. The white area is the negative space. In negative drawing the white space is not erased, its created by drawing around it.

The correct method for negative drawing is to observe the shapes formed around or in between object(s). Once you understand the shapes you begin shading the area around these shapes revealing the negative space. Drawing the outline first and then shading outside the outline is not negative drawing. Positive drawing is the opposite of this, which is what most of us do to draw. We draw the outline and we draw in the detail, this is positive drawing.

The image above was drawn by shading around the shapes without drawing the outline first. This could easily be blades of grass overlapping each other. But this is just the outline, you can then add the detail to suggest overlapping blades . Once you have the shape you are looking for, you can add detail or in the case of whiskers, they can stay totally white.

This technique is incredibly useful when you want to create different effects. Its great when drawing whiskers and grass. Here are more examples of negative drawing, these are simple but they show basically what negative drawing is.

I use negative drawing often in my drawings, especially for drawing realistic animal hair. In the image above, the drawing with the three lines was created using the stylus tool that i have, a pen with no ink. I used the pen to indent on the paper leaving white lines, then i passed the pencil over and it left a clean white line. This is a technique that is great for hair texture and highlights. I will explain it with much more detail when i do the hair tutorial.

Exercise

Here is an exercise for you to work on, look at the image above and draw the green leaves using negative drawing. Shade the area outside of the leaves, so that you’re left with the shape of the leaves,the negative space. If you need some help you can look at the image below to see what areas need to be shaded to get the negative space. If you have any questions, please comment or contact me.

Negative Drawing