The long awaited tutorial has arrived! It will be a series, I don't know how long, but until I have nothing more to share, I will be sharing my tips and experience in the subject of drawing cats. I am still learning, so this this will be fun. You can request a tutorial on a specific detail if you want and I haven't covered it yet. Anyway! We're starting with basic poses and focusing on what they look like and how to draw them. If that makes sense.

The poses include:
Side-sit
Side-stand
Front-sit
Front-stand

Simple! I sketched each pose and will walk you through them as best I can.

First, a bit of unprofessional cat anatomy. Cats are mostly circles. There's a head circle, a chest circle, and a hip circle. In my style, I make the head and chest circle around the same size and the hip circle a bit bigger. But this can vary from artist to artist and from cat to cat.

Here, the chest and hip circles are the same, but the head is a bit smaller. By tweaking the size of the circles, you can make a cat look younger, older, or like a different breed.

Does that make sense? I hope so, let me know if I'm rambling.

The Side-sit pose we'll look at first.

First, notice that the head circle is about the same size as the chest circle, so this cat looks younger than the other one I showed you.

This pose is simple once you know it, and I hope this series will help you know it. I put the chest and hip circles at an angle from each other,

I connect them with straight lines for the neck and curved lines for the back. Easy. Add legs, tail, muzzle and ears and boom! Not too shabby. (I'll do tutorials for those parts I mentioned in the future).

Make sure that the back is well curved, when dogs sit, their backs are straighter, and curved or arched backs are fairly recognizable in cats.

If you need more detail in this pose, let me know.

Next is Side-stand! Very important and very common, you need to make sure that your anatomy is good because mistakes show in this pose much more than in Side-sit.

The chest and hip circles are level and the back is straight. The neck changes a bit (naturally) but it's mostly the same.

Important note: the height of the cat won't change whether they're sitting or standing. Slouching, crouching, lying, yes the height changes, but when they stand or sit straight, the height won't change. This might sound odd but when you think about it it makes total sense. When a cat sits down, it lowers it's haunches, not shoulders. The back curves and the hind legs tuck in, but if the front legs stay erect in the same way, the height doesn't change. Keep this in mind when drawing.

I like to angle the hips to connect with the hind legs. I think it makes a cat look more interesting to look at and less blocky. But you can do it however.

If you need more detail in this pose, let me know.

Next, the Front-sit. I think many artists can find front facing poses intimidating at first, but they're almost simpler.

Notice I didn't draw the hip circle, because you don't have to! (You can if you want and for beginners it can make things easier but who am I to tell you what to do?)

I draw the head circle over the chest circle with space for about half-a-circle between. But again, the neck size and shape may vary between artists and cats.

The shoulders are steep lines coming out, then back together for the front legs. The hind legs show as curved lines that also come out away from the body, then steeply back towards it. I hope that makes sense.

The chest is infront of the front legs and can be shown simply by a curved line.

The legs meet the chest at the bottom. Like in the picture. Feet are easy, I just put little squarish shapes in my sketches. And for the muzzle, I put a little circle in the bottom half of the head circle, but we'll talk about heads next time.

The last pose I have for you today is Front-stand. This is probably my least favourite of the bunch because it isn't much to look at. But it's still necessary if not common.

It's almost the same to Front-sit, except I separate the front legs a little and the hind legs aren't as visable. Don't worry too much about the hind legs looking good, because I myself have trouble with them, and when push comes to shove, don't even add them. If you can't make them work, this pose will look perfectly fine without them.

In these front poses, I like to add little lines to highlight the shoulders, especially in wild cats where they're going to look much leaner and more defined.

Like that. It just adds that little detail to the torso that makes cats look much better.

Well, that's all I have now. If this was helpful in any way possible, let me know. If you have suggestions for different tutorials or how to make them better, let me know. I'm always looking for ways to improve. I'll probably make another tutorial later today or tomorrow. Please, comment your thoughts and let me know if this even temporarily satisfies your tutorial needs.