How to Draw a Realistic Kangaroo
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Begin with an irregularly shaped oval to form the base of the main body, making sure to get the nice curve of the back. Draw a sort of soda-can shape to form the head at the top left corner of this oval. At the opposite end, draw a long line that sna
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The kangaroo’s belly is kind of bean shaped and concave. The pouch is at the bottom of the kangaroo’s belly/abdomen and is a round mass between the legs. The kangaroo’s legs are massive and unique – the hips are high up on the abdomen and the
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Erase some of the guidelines around the head to make room for the snout and the ears. The ears are spade-shapes on the two corners on the top of the head. In my drawing, I have arranged the two ears at different angles to break up the symmetry of the
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The eyes should be in line with the indicated elements (see inset) of their corresponding ear (e.g. right eye should align with the base of the right ear) and they should be approximately halfway between the nose and the ears in the vertical plane. T
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With the basic outline complete, we can start to draw the base layer of shading. The kangaroo will be covered entirely with a fur texture. To make this texture a lot easier to draw, I like to do a base layer of shading to get the tones of the fur don
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Smooth out the shading with a cotton pad/tissue until it is smooth. You can sort of see how highlights and shadows of the tones in the shading are placed around the structures drawn in the outlines. In this step I have also started to apply step 5 to
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Smooth out the shading on the rest of the body as you did for the upper body in step 6. Now we start the details of the face. Because the face is quite small, we don’t really need to do a large base layer of shading (and doing so would make it more
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Here is a more in-depth guide to the steps of drawing the face and head. _(1)_First, add the streaks of darker fur that cover the kangaroo’s face – it looks pretty weird without any other facial features drawn yet, but that makes it easier to see
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This is the technique for drawing the fur that covers the majority of the kangaroo, so it is important to get it right. Step (1) and (2) involve creating a smooth layer of shading, something you should have already done in the previous steps. Step (3
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Now we start to draw the fur covering the rest of the body. The fur under the chin and around the neck of the kangaroo is quite dark, so use a 2-4B pencil to draw it. Use the same fur drawing technique as above to do so. Also start to draw the ears.
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Remember that strange ‘m’ shape in the shading of the chest from earlier? Well, now we are going to use it to create highlights in the chest fur. Continue to draw the fur texture using the technique from step [9], but don’t draw any hair growin
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Draw the hair on the belly. This requires a slightly different technique than the other fur because it is more ordered and neat. The technique is described in the next step below. Note how the fur is darker around the leg, towards the lower half of t
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There are six steps involved in drawing the belly fur. Step (1) involves creating the base layer of shading which you should have already completed. Step (2) isn't really a step – it shows the pencil movements you should be making to draw the hair.
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Using a similar technique to the one described above, draw a texture of long lines that wrap around the kangaroo’s back and down the kangaroo’s leg. These can be quite roughly drawn like I have done as you are going to smooth them out in the next
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Two things have happened in from the previous step. First, smooth out the line texture across the back and leg with cotton pads/tissues. You can see that you want to make it pretty smooth. Then add shading to the back to make it darker. You want some
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Now we return to the more generic fur drawing technique you used to draw the fur on the chest and top of the head. Use this technique to draw the hair on the upper leg and bottom of the back. There is a patch of very dark fur in the middle of the bac
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Continue to draw fur down the kangaroo’s left leg. There’s a patch of light texture between the upper leg and the middle of the leg (in line with the kangaroo’s wrists) which you should try to reproduce in your drawing. All these variations in
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Quite a lot has to be done in the step. First, continue to draw the fur down both the left and right legs. Now you can see quite an important anatomical feature of the kangaroo – they have enormous tendons down the backs of their legs (this is what
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Finish the fur on the abdomen. The hair right at the bottom should be quite dark and messy (make the hairs quite curly/wavy). Now we can add the dark fur on the feet and the tip of the tail. The first thing you should notice is the size of the kangar
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We are now on the home stretch. The arms and hands have a very rough texture. You can quite easily achieve this by shading the area and then not smoothing the shading out. Don’t forget to add the fur texture around the elbows and the first half of
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We just have to add the finishing touches to the hands and the nose. Let’s first finish the nose. Just shade the white patches as shown, but leave a small streak above the kangaroo’s right nostril blank to serve as a highlight. Now finish the han
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August 22, 2013
Description: Welcome to this tutorial on drawing a realistic kangaroo. Kangaroos are marsupials native to Australia. There are two main types of kangaroo - the larger red kangaroo and the smaller grey kangaroo. This tutorial explains how to draw the latter. I have classified it as 'Advanced' difficulty, but once you master the fur drawing technique, it is pretty straightforward. You will need HB-4B pencils, an eraser, cotton pads/tissues/q-tips and a sharpener. You may also want to grab a ruler to help with drawing the outline.
