In this blast from the past tutorial, I’ll show you how to use a wet on dry watercolor technique to make a gorgeous cat illustration with a henna motif!
This Watercolor Henna Cat Illustration Tutorial is actually a bit of a throwback! I took the photos for it five years ago as part of a guest post for Inkstruck Studio. However, I recently noticed that the guest post pictures no longer show up on the Inkstruck site! It really is a neat tutorial, perfect for any artistic cat lover, so I decided to rewrite the post here on TPK. You may notice that today’s photos are a bit different from those that you normally see on the blog because I took them so long ago!
First, sketch a pencil outline of a cat onto 140 lb. watercolor paper. If freehand drawing isn’t your forte, you can print off a picture of a cat, then use a light box or a bright window to trace an outline. Once you’ve drawn the pencil outline, use a dark yellow watercolor to paint inside the outline. You’ll want to paint over everything except the eyes!
Don’t worry if your watercolor tones aren’t uniform. Variations in color will add to the artistic appeal of the piece!
Here’s a closeup of my cat illustration at this point. Notice that I’ve painted over everything except the eyes!
Once your yellow watercolor has dried, use a black tone to add shading to the cat’s chin, back, tail, and legs. After you’ve painted the shadows, moisten the brush with water to blend the black tone into the yellow tone.
If you’re not sure how to blend watercolors, see Painting with Watercolors for Beginners and Painting with Watercolors for Beginners Part II.
For a visual treat, you can supplement your shadows with a hint of dark blue!
Use a blue tone and a size 3 or 4 brush to build on to your black shadows.
Then, use a tiny paintbrush to fill in the cat’s nose with a nice green tone. Use that some brush to apply coral accents to the edges of the cat’s ears.
Use a tiny brush — like a size 000 — to do this part!
First, use a small brush to fill in the cat’s eyes with a true yellow tone. Leave a couple of spots without color to denote light reflection! Wait for the eyes to dry. Then, load your favorite calligraphy nib with blue watercolor as shown in the Video Crash Course on Watercolor Calligraphy article. Use the nib to trace an outline around the eyes, then start drawing a henna motif off of that outline.
You can draw the same henna patterns that I use in this tutorial, or you can Google henna patterns for inspiration!
Finish up the cat’s face with blues and greens around the eyes and nose. Once you’ve done that, you can use a bit of coral on a size 3-ish paintbrush to add some shading to the nose, chest, and legs. Then, load your nib with brown paint and use that paint to accent the ears. Next, use the brown to draw a flower outline on the cat’s back.
Use a size 000 paintbrush to fill in the flower you just drew with shades of rich yellow and coral. You can ensure the vibrancy of these colors by using a small water to paint ratio!
Then, load your calligraphy nib with green. Use that green tone to outline your flower with parallel lines as well as vertical lines.
Use shades of coral, blue, and green to add more details to the face of this cat illustration. You can use white watercolor and a paintbrush to apply highlights if needed!
Again, you can come up with your own henna designs for your cat’s face or echo the ones that you see here!
Once you’ve finished up the face detail, use the watercolor calligraphy technique to add an intricate pattern to the cat’s legs.
When the paint has dried, you can switch between your dip pen and a paintbrush to accent the pattern with colors!
Some aspects of your henna design may be too small to fill in with a paintbrush. If that’s the case, use your dip pen instead!
Now, use a dip pen and your paintbrush to add a nice, big flower and a curly leaf to the back of the cat’s neck. You can enhance the front of the neck with a necklace!
Draw outlines for these designs first, then fill them in with color.
Next, add a henna pattern to the tail. I used the same flower on the middle of the tail that I did on the cat’s back, then I finished off the tip of the tail with a brown flower.
Feel free to focus on different areas at a time! For this step, I drew on the tail, then I added a few accents around the flower on the back of the neck.
The last step in this henna cat illustration is to add a nice, big pattern to the back legs! I like to use a rich brown watercolor for this step.
Fill in the pattern on the cat’s back legs with some color, and you’re almost finished!
You’ll finish up your cat by using your dip pen to draw little blue dots on the cat’s cheeks. Then, use your coral watercolor to create curved, thin lines to represent whiskers.
Once you’ve drawn the whiskers, you can go back through the illustration to add contour or details as you wish! You can then frame the illustration and/or digitize it for future projects.
I hope that you enjoyed today’s tutorial! Even if you don’t consider yourself an artist, give it a try! This watercolor technique renders some beautiful results, and you can use it to enhance practically any subject.
Thanks very much for reading TPK, and enjoy the rest of your day!
I love your blog, your tutorials, and your design aesthetic, Lindsey. Thank you for giving me something beautiful to look forward to in my inbox each week.
I usually don’t read or follow a lot of blogs for lack of time, but let me tell you that yours is the only one I truly enjoy reading, you are so amazingly talented and I also love your honesty and openness about business subjects, thanks so much for sharing your inspiration and talent with us!
I love this! I can’t wait to try this myself. Your tutorials are always so helpful.
I enjoyed trying this tutorial and posting it on Instagram. Thanks Lindsey!
I love this cat! It is my favorite project you have done. I can’t wait to try it!
This is so great honestly. Conserving culture as well. I have grown up getting henna patterns on my hand during festivals and traditional occasions. I have drawn them on paper but never thought to do something like this. It’s very interesting and I will surely give it a try. Do you think I can work with watercolors and paint brushes to get such strokes and draw patterns sharply?
when I first discovered your website I binge watched past blog posts and say this cat then. I truly love the henna designs and think I’m. finally ready to attempt. Thanks for all you do.
Henna is a big part of our colourful culture and you have represented it beautifully with this design! And it was so easy to follow along!
I love your designs I hope you can keep being an inspiration to the world.
What a wonderful turtorial. I completed your turtorial with the cactus in the flower pot and hope this one turns out as well. Thanks.
I really hope to be good enough at beginner watercolors to attempt your tutorials some day!
The thing I want to achieve more in life is to be a crazy cat lady. I’ve almost done it with all the strays that show up to be fed. Your drawing of a cat is going to guide me to make a gorgeous piece of art that I wouldn’t have been able to do on my own. The second most thing I want to achieve most is to be a calligrapher. Because of you I just might get there! Thank you Lindsey for sharing your talent and inspiring me so very much!
This is a wonderful post! Thank you!
Absolutely gorgeous and easy to follow!
This is beautiful, would love to give this a go. So maybe I should just do it.
This is so beautiful! My favorite so far of all.
Leslie, thanks for bringing back this brilliant kitty to us. Kudos to Zakkiya for collaborating with you. I know it was a long time ago, but do you remember the name of the coral watercolor you used? I have several good quality WC sets/pallets in both pans and tubes and, today, attempted to recreate that color but can’t seem to come up with anything that vibrant. Thank you!
Hi Linda! The coral came from a Winsor & Newton Cotman set (not super high-quality!) … in dry pan form, it looks like an orange, actually. You might try using a reddish/orange tone!
Thanks so much, Jan! I do hope you give the tutorial a try — with your Zentangle experience, I know you’ll be able to make something really cool!
You are truly an artist, thanks for sharing how you do it. Mine never turn out quite right. but I sure enjoy looking at your creations.