On the previous tutorial,Drawing Realistic Tiger with Pencil-Chin, we focused on drawing the long hairs on the chin of a tiger. On this tutorial we will be using a combination of those techniques and other techniques to draw the hairs on the nose of a tiger. We will also look at how to add some texture to the nose. But before we begin we will look at an image of a tiger’s nose to get an idea of what we are going for. First we will understand what we want and then we will look how we will accomplish that using the tools that we have.

Well lets look at the image above. Something that i want you to notice is that the hair is layered. What do i mean by layered. Look at the part where the whiskers grow. If you look at the hair starting from the nostril and you move your way down, you will notice that each layer of hair is below the one above. If you haven’t read my other tutorials on hair, you will find out in this one that i use a stylus to produce lines what we will use to build up the hair. Using the stylus you will be indenting from the bottom up, so that the above layer overlaps the layer below. Just keep looking at the reference photo for guidance. Another thing that you will have to look at is the flow of the hair. Depending on the contours of the face and feature, it will flow in different directions. The direction that you indent will depend on the flow of the hair. Our goal with the stylus is to capture the hair highlights so that when we run the pencil over the indentations the shadows will be revealed. Ok, now lets start drawing.

Tools Used:

• Canson Bristol Vellum Paper
• 2b Mechanical Pencil
• 2h wooden cased pencil
• Color Shaper
• Kneaded Eraser
• Shami Towel
• Needle Stylus
• Pen Stylus(Make sure its completely empty!!!)
• 4b Progresso Pencil

Step 1:

We will start off drawing a rough outline of the nose. Use 2b pencil to draw it but make it light enough for you to see it. You don’t need to press hard with a 2b pencil so this way if you need to erase it won’t leave a mark. I made the outline a bit darker so you would be able to see it.

Step 2:

Now we will mark the flow of the hair, this is for guidance when using the stylus. Using the stylus,in this case the needle tip, indent around the edge of the nose down on an angle away from the nostril, in the direction of the hair flow. These lines will indicate the beginning of hair from the nostril out. When indenting here, make sure you make it a crisscross pattern and follow the flow of the hair. If you have problems just look at the reference photo at the beginning. Once you have indented around, take your progresso pencil and run it along the edge. This will reveal the indentations, bringing out the fine hairs. These little details is what makes a drawing jump out and gives it much more realism.

Step 3:

We will now do the same but this time we will do it in the section under the nose. Indent along the edges of the mouth up to the bottom of the nose in the direction of the hair flow. The area between the right side and left side, the area under the nose, will be dark because this is the area of the nose that is black and leads down to the top of the mouth. Make sure again you crisscross or else you will be left with just straight lines which will not look like hair. Once you have finished both side run your progress pencil over the edges and this will outline the hairs that will be growing over the dark area. The image on the left shows what you will be going for. These hairs will fade into the center which will add some depth and realism to the drawing. For these outlines we used the needle stylus because there is less hair in this section and the thin indentations will indicate single hairs.

Step 4:

Take your 4b progresso pencil and fill in the nostrils. This area will be obviously dark because its a dark hole. The same with the area under the nose. Actually this area under the nose is the nose itself which extends all the way to the bottom, but its dark in color so that’s why it will be black.

Step 5:

Take your other stylus(empty pen) and start to indent on the area where the whiskers are. You will be indenting from the bottom up, for the reasons that i explained at the beginning. Look at the whiskers , the area below each row of whiskers will be considered a layer of hair. By understanding this you can indent the hairs from the bottom up. Make sure that when you are indenting that you don’t do it in a straight line and in the same direction. Add some that have slight curves in either direction and others that overlap. Look at the reference image and you will notice that hairs overlap and cross each other. By doing this you are giving the drawing a more natural look. Once you have indented you can draw in with your 4b progresso pencil the areas where the whiskers will be growing from, the dark patches. These will be used for reference on where you will add the whiskers later on. Make sure you place these at the top where each layer of hair started.
Remember the edges along the nostrils that we created on the last step, well on this step you are going to blend them into the dark areas using the color shaper. Pull from the dark area out, but don’t do it too hard or else you will end up with a dark streak . Do it slowly and lightly until it blends into the black area. If you notice that the edge of the area has lost some of its darkness you can add some more graphite using your 4b progreso pencil. Keep doing this until its dark enough and the hairs have blended in nicely. One last thing to add are those curves that you see on each side of the nostrils. The area above these will be dark hair so you can make an outline using the color shaper.
If yours is not looking like my image, don’t worry about it. My goal in my tutorials is for you to understand the techniques so that you can use them on your drawings. Each time you practice, you will learn something new and in that process will improve your drawings. Pencil drawing is an ongoing learning process and these tutorials should be a start to improvement. So just have fun and experiment, if you find out that something else looks better from what im telling you, try it, go for it!!! That’s what makes drawing so much fun, the discovery of something new. OK, lets move on

Step 6:

We will now indent the whiskers using the empty pen(MAKE SURE ITS EMPTY!!!). Make sure that when you are making these that you make them have a slight curve. For example, on the left side, they would start going to the left and would then curve down, having a slight curve. Make some shorter than others and make some that overlap. Just don’t add too many. You have to make sure that you indent them in one quick motion. If you try to make them slow they will look all shaky. After you have made them you can thicken them by carefully running the empty pen over the indentations, this will increase the width of them. Something else that may be helpful is that there are different pens with different point sizes. There are some that have very fine points and some have larger points which can give you different sized indentations. What i like to do when i do whiskers is that once i have made the indentations with the pen, i take my needle stylus and continue the whisker to give the illusion that the tip is thinner than the rest of the whisker.

Ok, we now have the whiskers. Now we will start bringing out the hair by using your 2h pencil. Start by slowly and lightly outlining the bottom of each whisker, this will be the slight shadow that the whisker is making. Look at the reference photo above and you will notice that the hairs cast shadows,this is what we are going for here. The indentations makes it easier to see where you could add shadows, just don’t add them under each hair or else you will lose the illusion of a curved surface. This will come with practice, the more you draw hair, the easier it will be for you to figure out where to add these shadows so it has a natural look. Again, study reference photos and you will learn a lot from them. Here is another suggestion. If you’re drawing a lion, a tiger or any large cat, you don’t necessarily need reference photos of that specific animal. You can use also use reference photos of a regular house cat. You will be surprised at how much you can learn from these photos. Ok, back to the drawing. The area at the bottom of this section will be darker than the area in the middle because of the shadows being cast. This area is mostly white so you can’t darken it too much, just enough to suggest that there are shadow. For light shadows the best pencil grade is 2h.

Now take your 4b progresso pencil and lightly connect the dark patches where the whiskers grow. Once you have these you can lightly blend them together using your color shaper. You can blend it even more by running your 2h pencil below this area, to suggest that the the tip of the white hair gets lighter. I drew the image on the left side to show you the effect that we are going for. That all can be done with the 2h,the indentations and some shading. To add more depth and realism, take your kneaded eraser and squeeze it between your thumb and forefinger. This will create an edge on the eraser. Lightly tap the an area when you would like to make a hightlight and this will remove some of the graphite. Using this edge you can create slightly longer hairs that will go over the layers below. In that image i didn’t add any whiskers, because it was just for you to get an idea of what can be done by layering the indentations. This same technique can be used to add some highlights on this drawing we’re working on using the kneaded eraser.

One last thing to do in this part is to darken the area above those two curves on each side of the nostrils. This area will be the orange color that a tiger has on its fur. So it has to be darker than the white hair.

Step 7:

We will now begin working on the nose. This part is all about adding texture to give the nose realism. Before we go on, notice on the reference image how the hair on top of the nose overlaps the nose. We will now add this hair by indenting across the top of the nose. Again, make sure you indent in a random pattern, crisscrossing and overlapping. For now we will now just do this and will come back later to fill in the rest of that part. Now, take your color shaper and run it lightly all over the whole nose which will give it a light gray shade. The center of the nose will have a groove that runs from the middle of the nose and runs down to the bottom of the nose. The image on the left shows the what the nose looks like. The bottom part will be dark because that part is black in color and the shadows that are being cast. We have now added the base which is a slight gray color which we will build on. Over this you will add the dark markings. You can add them randomly or you can place them like i have done. Make these marks using your 4b progresso pencil. I use this pencil because you don’t have to press too hard to get a deep dark shade. You can make these markings any shape you want, just don’t make it look like its patterned, make it random. The bottom of the nose will now be blended with the color shaper. Take your shaper and pull the dark graphite from the bottom up. This will pull some graphite into the light section, from here just blend that into the surrounding area. Remember there is a groove running down the middle, so this groove will be dark and will fade out from the center out, therefore you should blend that too.

Step 8:

Take your 4b progresso pencil and start to darken the bottom of the nose. Slowly build on it by adding some pencil and blending with your color shaper. Make sure not to darken all the way to the top as the top will be hit by some light and its pink in color. Blend the dark patches into the surrounding area by pulling in circles around the patch. This will nicely blend the ones that are close together and will also blend into the rest of the nose. Remember, if after you use the color blender you pull too much graphite and the dark areas lose some of their darkness, you can always darken them with your 4b pencil.

Step 9:

This is next part for the nose is optional. I like to add textures to my drawings so i decided to add some dots using the empty pen. This will give the nose a rougher look and will suggest that its not smooth. You can leave it the way you have it now and just darken the edges so show contours and shadows. If you decide to use the texture, all you have to do is slowly press the pen on the paper in a tapping motion. Make sure that you make it random, but don’t cover the whole nose with dots. I mostly added this to the top section of the nose and added a few as you got closer to the bottom of the nose. Once you finished doing that you, you run your progresso pencil over the nose lightly, this will reveal the lighter dots. At first it might look weird, but once you start to blend them with your color shaper, you will notice that it adds a special touch to the overall look of the nose. If the dots are too noticeable, you can always use your kneaded eraser to pull some dark graphite.
We will now move to the section above the nose. Take you your needle stylus and start indenting on the area above the nose. I suggest you start indenting from the bottom up as the hair in this area is layered. Make sure that you make it as random as possible. But, remember that the indentations have to be close because this will be finer hair. Don’t make the indentations too long either because this area is covered in short hair. Crisscross them,curve them and overlap them. The way i like to do this is go from left to right and slowly move up until you get to the top. This might take a while to complete so be patient.
What is the purpose of indenting? Well, as i have mentioned before, you should study what you will be drawing before you actually start. After a while of studying and understanding how hair behaves and looks up close, you will start to see patterns in your indentations. By recognizing these patterns you will understand where to fill in the blanks to bring out the realist hair. The indentations are the hairs and the area not indented would be the dark shadows that the hairs cast. Don’t worry if you don’t get it the first time around. This will take you a while to understand and see, but when you do you will know that you got it by the results that you get.
Back to the drawing. Once you have completed the indentations, one neat trick to reveal the lines is to use a shami towel. Just add some graphite to the towel by taking your 4b pencil and user it on a different sheet of paper. Rub that area with the shami towel and this will add some graphite to it. Once you have some graphite on the towel, take it and rub the area that you have indented. It should now look something like the image above. Note that the top area will be darker than the area below, because the area that is close to the nose will have some white hair.

Step 10:

Start by darkening the area with your 4b progresso pencil. The outer edges will be darker because this part will curve down. Think of the nose as a cylinder where the middle of the nose is closest to you and you get closer to the sides its curves. Well since its curving, this area will be darker. By doing this you give the illusion of curves and depth. If after running the progresso pencil you notice that the lines are too noticeable. You can darken them by blending them with the color shaper. This will darken the lines, but in the process will remove some of the dark areas that you added with the progresso pencil. You will have to keep adding more pencil and shading to get the right results. Now take your 2b mechanical pencil and start to look for certain patterns. You are looking for shadows that the hair will be creating. And how will you know? Well the shadows will be the areas that have not been indented. Fill in these areas with your mechanical pencil, basically you’ll be outlining some hairs. Don’t do it all over, just pick some areas to suggest shadows and clumps of hair. This will take time to understand and to do, but you will get the hang of it as you draw more hair and study photographs of hair. To get the illusion of hair clumps, you take your kneaded eraser and you tap on some indentations. Look at the image on the left; that image shows indentations without adding these clumps of hair. If you leave it the way it is, it will look flat, it still looks like hair but it can still be improved. Now look at the image on the right. In this one i have removed some graphite along some of the indentations which gives the illusion of several hairs clumping together. I then outlined this clump and shaded from the top down. Its the same sketch just that i added this tiny details which made a big difference. As you can see, these simple details will give your drawings much more realism. Play around with it and see what you can come up with.

Step 11:

Its basically done, from here on you can add fine details to make it look better, like the lip under the nose which was covered in the previous tiger tutorial. You can darken the hair above the by adding 4b pencil and blending it with your color shaper. Outline the top of the nose which will bring out the hair that overlap that area. I also added the some hair on each side of the nose, which is the same technique that i used for the rest of the nose. Don’t be discouraged if yours doesn’t look like it mine. What i want you to understand is the technique and for you to practice it. Here is a good way to practice. Choose a section from the reference image above and try to draw it using the techniques that i have talked about. Keep practicing, that is the only way that you will improve. I can tell you that my first drawings were not even close to the ones that i draw now, and there is no magic trick to get them to look good. Its all about wanting to improve and having the passion for drawing. Well i hope you enjoyed this tutorial and if you have any questions please contact me. If you found it helpful please share this tutorial.

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.