How To Draw A Realistic Tiger

This tutorial explains how to draw a tiger's face and head step by step going from a line drawing to some basic beginner friendly shading.

Tiger face drawing step by step — Tiger face drawing stride past pace

While a tiger tin be a adequately complex animal to draw this tutorial has been made with beginners in mind and features simplified shading. If y'all desire to arrive even easier y'all can but go upward to footstep five (a line cartoon with some dark fill up for the stripes, optics, and nose).

Step 1 – Make a Construction Line Drawing of the Overall Shape of the Tiger's Caput

Tiger face drawing construction lines — Tiger confront drawing construction lines

Draw a highly simplified version of the major shapes of the the tiger'due south head without whatsoever of the small details. The goal is to establish the general shape of a tiger'southward head and face and to insure that the various proportions are of the correct size in relation to one another.

Be sure to go on the lines for this phase of the drawing very light as yous will take to erase well-nigh of them in later steps. The lines in the examples take been fabricated slightly darker so it's easier for you lot to come across them.

Step 2 – Facial Features Outline Drawing

Inside the guide lines from the previous step brainstorm making a line drawing of the outline shapes of the tiger'due south facial features.

Again exist certain to make very calorie-free lines equally you volition need to remove some of them every bit well.

Stride iii – Basic Line Drawing

Tiger face basic line drawing — Tiger face bones line drawing

Erase the overlapping guidelines from the kickoff step and draw in some of the smaller details of the tiger'southward face such as the pupils of the optics and some lines for the "whisker" expanse.

You can also shade in the darker areas of the eyes and the nose with a solid dark make full.

Stride 4 – Detailed Line Drawing

For this step you can add some hints of the tiger's fur along the outer edges of it's head and inside the ears. Describe the fur in sort of "small dodder" of varying shapes and sizes.

Next draw in the outer shapes of the stripes.

Step 5 – Basic Shading

Shade in the fur stripes stripes with some basic one directional strokes (no crosshatch needed) of varying length to brand the stripes look more than natural. You can also add together a few more strokes to the outline surface area of the head and inside the ears to give the fur a trivial more particular.

Once you are done the above draw in some whiskers from the "whisker lines" around the rima oris area. Try and make these of slightly different length and with slightly different curves.

When you finish this step you can leave the cartoon as is or become a lilliputian further and move on to the next pace.

Footstep 6 – Fully Shaded Drawing

To actually make the drawing stand out you can apply some adequately light shading to the darker fur areas of the head and show some bones lite and shadow.

In this instance the darker fur will be mostly along the nose and forehead/top of head area then you will want to shade in that surface area. The main lite source will exist above and in front of the tiger which will make the bridge o the olfactory organ surface area slightly lighter then the rest o the darker fur. You can too darken the within of the ears by adding more than strokes to that expanse as those areas will generally be more than hidden from the light. Yous can besides polish out the whole drawing in general by adding some extra strokes where needed (run into the cartoon case above).

As you shade y'all can erase some of the lines from the previous pace (around the optics and snout surface area) every bit yous can now testify the shape of those areas with the shading.

Structure

Drawing a tiger'south face is by and large pretty hard but this tutorial has been somewhat simplified to make information technology a little easier and more beginner friendly. At the same fourth dimension it still allows you to draw a fairly realistic looking tiger.

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