Tiger Tutorial

Tigers are one of my favourite animals to draw. So when I was asked by a Patreon member to draw one for a tutorial I couldn’t wait to get started. I already had the photograph in mind and it was a beautiful one! It was a cropped image which meant this iconic animal filled all of the paper. I love working with photographs like this. If the photo is of the right angle it can make for a striking portrait.

Here is a photo of the finished portrait. Lots of detail and heaps of depth with the fur. For this tutorial I split this up into two sections totalling over 6.5 hours long. Part one focuses on the face and part two is the muzzle, chin and body. I was asked to create a video on how to draw out of focus fur. So as this Tiger’s body is just that this second part meant I could also really focus on this element. 

I have all of my Patreon tutorials listed on my Patreon Library here on my website. I am soon adding an acrylic tier which I am really looking forward to. 
CLICK HERE TO VISIT MY PATREON CHANNEL

TOP TIPS FOR DRAWING TIGERS

I speak about these throughout this tutorial but here are a few pointers 🙂
1. Get those stripes in the right place and direction. This is crucial in ensuring that your Tiger looks like your reference photo. If these are not curved or travelling in the right direction you will not be following the skeletal or muscular structure of the animal. This also is important when working on the fur direction. These stripes curve in a specific way for a reason – that may be because it’s over a eye socket, a cheek bone etc so we really want to make sure as best as we can that these stripes are accurate.
2. Contrast. This is something I speak about in every single tutorial. It’s vital. If our contrast is poor, our darks not as dark or highlights not as bright our artwork will become flat. Obviously not what we want. With Tigers and the contrast between the white and black stripes making sure these values are where they need to be will make the Tiger that much more realistic.
3. Soft fur. As you can see from the finished drawing the fur is soft. The trick to capturing it in this way is lots of light layers working with subtle colours and tones to build up the depth gradually. This is one element I cover in depth in both part 1 and 2.
4. Fur detailing. This seems obvious but for Tigers the black stripes overlap the white stripes. Study those fur details to see which part of the fur is overlapping the next.

If you’d like to see the faster time lapse version of this with voice over it will be uploaded to YouTube tomorrow! And as mentioned if you are interested in the much slower 6.5 hour tutorial head over to my Patreon. Part 2 will be uploaded today at 6pm :).