Drawing the Body Shape of a Cat

In this blog post, I have decided to draw the shape and facial features of a cat as a comparison for two things; my drawing post on the body of dogs, and my first blog post.

My first blog post included a drawing of a cat from Japan named, Hana. Here is a my drawing of the cat from the post as well as a comparison of the drawing to the original photo:

 

As you can see in this drawing, it's a lot more sloppier and more hesitant. The blending isn't all that great as well as the shading. In this next photo of another cat from Japan named Ura, you can see a major difference.

 The photo on the left is the base I started off with to draw Ura. 

I find that Japanese cats, especially ones with large pupils and eyes are the easiest to draw for me because photos capturing them mainly focus on their facial expressions rather than their fur markings.

Going onto the topic of the base used for Ura, you can see a major difference in the base I drew for my Siberian Husky. According to Hammond, "A cat has a very round contour" she continues, "Some of the most common shapes in an animal are the sphere, the egg, the cylinder, and the cube" (53). As you can see in the picture of the rough base, I made Ura's head an oval like shape, and the rest of her body roundish.

Hammond has talked about the differences cats and dogs have before, saying that their shapes differ in the way that cats are more eggish and dogs are more boxy (67). Only after drawing a dog then a cat did I truly realize how different their shapes truly were. This made me realize that learning to draw more than one animal would help me in the future.

Do you agree with me? That learning to draw more than one animal body shape will benefit drawing other animals in the future?

The purpose of my inclusion of my first blog post was to reflect back on how I drew only a couple months ago, versus now. I'd like to say I see a major difference, do you?

Hammond, Lee. Drawing realistic pets from photographs. North Light Books, 2005.