Learn How to Draw a Rabbit Digitally!

Every time that I start to how to draw a rabbit in elementary school, I dread the amount of work needed! That was because, at that time, I focused more on the fur than I did on the form!

These cute little fuzzy creatures can be a source of frustration sometimes when drawing realistically. However, once you know a few tips and tricks, it becomes incredibly enjoyable!

I think the biggest mistake any beginner can make is that they see a lump of fur instead of the rabbit’s form. When that happens, the artist will get into a habit of just focusing on the little tiny fur strands instead of the overall shape.

To avoid that, we will be painting in the fur at the very end when we know that the form is correct.

1. General form

No matter the subject, you need to know its form as best as possible. Even for learning how to draw a rabbit, where the form seems to be a series of fur balls clumped together, there are a lot of intricate parts to study!

This is most evident in the skeleton. From the diagram, you will notice what I am referring about. All the major bone structures are therein a very compact fashion.

When in doubt about proportions, use the head as a form of measurement for the rest of the body. Speaking of the head, the neck that it connects to is not short by any means. Instead, it curls inwards to give it a compressed look.

For the limbs, you can already tell that it forms a nice zigzag pattern compressed together. Combined with fat and fur, this is how it gives the rabbit an illusion of shortened limbs.

Even the tail has a full set of vertebrates all curled up nicely.

Once you burned the image of the rabbit’s form into your brain, the next thing is to build a mannequin frame of its form.

2. Initial gesture drawing

With your digital art brush, start up a new layer, and being generating a gesture sketch for the rabbit drawing. I recommend starting with the head first and work down!

For the rest of the body, draw two circular lines for the chest and the lower part of the rabbit. Then, link it together with a nice oval arch to signify the back.

For the limbs, it may get a little bit tricky. You may think that you are doing just a few circles for the arms and legs. However, do not get caught up in its simplicity like I mentioned earlier.

It may look like a regular circular form, but you are essentially creating an outline of the entire compacted arm underneath. As long as you think in terms of the limbs’ form, you can do this circular shape correctly rather than drawing a random gesture circle.

Do not forget to add in basic shapes for the eyes and nose. These are good facial place holders for adding details later.

3. Smudging the frame

In this step of learning how to draw a rabbit, you will need to smudge the lines of your gesture drawing into recognizable amounts of fur! In order to smudge it correctly, you will need a small chalk or splatter texture for your smudge tool.

Once you select this, begin working on smudging in very small zigzag lines. The smaller the brush strokes and brush size are, the better the outcome.

You will need to start with the outline of your rabbit. Any time the smudge lines becomes too long, smudge from the other end (outside to inside), with disconnected stroke lines, to reduce the fur coming out of the frame.

Plus, make sure you are smudging with the curvature of the entire body. While some of the limbs may seem in the way, you need to smudge in a way that suggests the form while still retaining the overall shape of the body and limbs.

You may need to switch back to your brush tool to fill in any areas that do not have enough lines for you to smudge.

4. Adding details

This final phase will require you to switch multiple times between your smudge brush and your digital drawing brush to finish off learning how to draw a rabbit digitally!

Here, we are going to do patches of fur that follows the curvature of the body. With all the smudging that has taken place, your rabbit drawing should be fairly filled in with the darkened colors from the initial gesture sketch.

This will allow you to start painting the fur. Select a small brush with a light color and begin painting strokes of fur that follows the contour of the body. Again, make sure these are extremely short strokes.

From there, you are going to smudge it into place very lightly. Just right after that, begin stroking in a second band of fur following the contour of the body and smudge that into place. You will repeat this step for the entire body and limbs.

Once you feel that the body is complete, switch to the eraser or smudge tool and begin slimming down the outline of your rabbit. Remember to smudge very lightly and carefully as you do not want to lose details from smudging too hard.

After that, you can start painting in the facial details such as whiskers, eyeballs, and nostrils.

The final step is to then preserve the transparency of your rabbit layer and switch to a nice big round brush. You will then gently glaze over the top of the rabbit where the light will hit. This should help it blend in with the background better.

I hope you enjoy this lesson and I hope it has helped you better understand the process of learning how to draw a rabbit!

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