How to Draw a Realistic Seal, Cape Fur Seal
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For this drawing I used an H pencil for sketching/light shading, a B pencil for general shading/details, and a 6B pencil for rough shading/background shading. As usual, use the pencils that feel right to you; there’s no need to stick to these exact
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Start out with a light and basic sketch of the seal. Stick to basic shapes and forms and remember that this is just a starting point. Don’t aim for perfection just yet.
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Start adding basic features to the seal. Start with the head and work your way down. Lightly build up the nose, eyes, ear, whiskers, and mouth with your sketching pencil. Erase any extra lines.
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Work your way down the left side of the drawing. Sketch in the flipper and a bit of the rock that the seal is chilling on.
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Finish up your sketch by building up the right side. Sketch in the other flipper as well as a bit of the rear flipper showing behind the rock. Make sure that your sketch is light and clean before moving on.
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Use a 6B pencil to hatch in some background shading. If you go over the seal’s outline just clean it up with an eraser. After you have a decent amount of shading use a blending stump, cloth, or a bit of paper towel to smooth out your shading.
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Use a 6B pencil to roughly shading over the seal and the rock. Notice the direction of my lines. Try to roughly follow the seal’s form when adding your lines.
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Blend over the seal and the rock just as you did with the background.
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Now it’s time to start adding the final layers of shading. Start by roughly shading in the features with a 6B pencil. No need for details yet, just apply a base for your dark shading.
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Go over your dark features with a B pencil. Remember to work around the whiskers when shading in the mouth. While you are at it you can also build up your background with a 6B pencil and a blending material.
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Start adding fur using an H pencil. The fur is nothing but short, little lines so try not to over think it or let it bog you down. The most important thing to remember is that line direction matters. Zoom in on this step to get an idea of which direc
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Add fur to the rest of the head. Make sure to outline the whiskers as well. Try not to get too caught up in tiny details right now. You can always come back to this area later. Use a B pencil to very light shade a portion of the neck. This will add a
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Start shading in adding in the neck fur with an H pencil. Notice how the area that you shaded over in the previous step is slightly darker than the area that you didn’t shade over. Shading fur over a large area like this can get tedious but if you
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Shade in the rest of the neck fur. Erase the highlights at the body’s edge with a kneaded eraser. You can also build up your background a bit more during this step.
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Use a 6B pencil to roughly shade in the bottom left portion of the drawing. Roughly shade over the flipper the rock and the background.
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Smooth out your shading with a blending stump. Use a kneaded eraser to lightly add highlights to the seal’s body.
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Use a B pencil to start smoothing out your dark shading. Use a blending stump when needed.
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Finish shading in the flipper and rock with a B pencil and blending stump. Don’t forget the shadows being cast on the rock. Use a kneaded eraser to lighten up your shading if you need to. Shade in the fur using an H pencil as usual. You can use a B
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Use a 6B pencil to roughly shade over the right side. Roughly shade in the flippers, rock, and background.
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Blend in your shading with a blending stump then build up you darker values with a B pencil.
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Once you have developed the flippers and the rock use an H pencil to add in you last patch of fur. Go back over you drawing and add finishing touches. Develop your background, clean up you whiskers, define the seal’s outline, and fix up anything el
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June 26, 2012
Description: I believe this is my very first marine mammal tutorial and it’s a fun one. I had so much fun drawing this cape fur seal that I’ll definitely add more species of seals to my list of future tutorials. So, if you have any seal requests leave them down below!
