How to draw fur

Learn how to draw fur in a few easy steps and add real glamour to your fashion illustrations. Draw fur scarf or a beautiful coat and your designs will spread coziness and luxury. Enjoy the tutorial, dear designers.

5/10

10 min

drawing paper
pencil
eraser
markers
colored pencils
soft pastels

Step 1: Draw the outline

After drawing the fashion figure, dress it in the fur garment that you have in mind. Avoid pushing too hard with the pencil, since you are going to erase this outline later.

Remember that fur clothes are pretty voluminous and they outstand from the body more than regular clothes would.

Step 2: Base: Color spots

Take a soft pastel in a color of your choice and lay down spots all over your design.
Try to make most of the color spots pointing in one direction and place them not too far away from each other.

Step 3: Fur base

Smudge the color spots with your finger. Move your finger from the upper part of the garment towards the bottom. Don’t smudge it in a circular or any other direction.
Fur is a soft fabric, so don’t try to lock it in the boundaries of the clothes you are drawing – it is okay if your finger smudges a little bit outside of your initial outlines.
Erase the pencil outline of the garment.

For better results leave the surface unevenly colored. It’s okey if some areas are lighter than others.

Step 4: 1st Layer

Fur is a fabric that consists of many layers and separate hairs. Take a slightly darker color than the one you used for the base and spread new color spots. If you play with their sizes the fur will eventually look more realistic and eye-catching.

Step 5: Second layer

Smudge the color spots from the previous step, keeping the same direction of the hairs and draw the next fur layer. This one should be in an even darker color – light or dark grey, sometimes even black could be used.
These hairs should be much smaller and set further away from each other (if compared to the previous steps). Notice that now the direction of the hairs may vary slightly.

Draw the fur hairs in the center part and in the side parts of the clothes. Don’t concentrate only on the middle part, leaving the sides empty.

Step 6: White

Smudge the spots from the previous step and take a white soft pastel. Adding white hairs will complement the final look and make it three-dimensional.
Be careful with the white because it is tricky – if you overwork it the drawing will look bleached and flat.

Step 7: Final touches

Grab a sharp color pencil in a color several shades darker than the base color of your design.
Go over the initial boundaries using short lines in different sizes. Their direction may vary slightly and sometimes you can join two lines so that they look like a little triangle.
Allow yourself to go bravely over any accessories that are placed over your fur clothes – belts, bags, jewelry.

I hope you liked this quick ‘How to draw fur’ technique and have a lot of fun creating new collections. If you love to experiment with textures in your fashion designs, you can also check out ‘How to draw crocodile skin‘ for more interesting ideas. Love the animals and design eco fur, friends! :)

Happy drawing!