Learn How to Draw a Rat!

Would you like to learn how to draw a rat on your own? This lesson will teach you how to make a realistic and cool rat drawing that you can be proud of!

A commonly misunderstood animal in the Western world due to the Black Plague, rats are actually clean, tame, and very playful!

In fact, these animals are revered in some Asian cultures. For example, the zodiac features the rat/mouse to symbolize intelligence, ambition, and creativity!

Whatever the reason are, let's give respect to this animal by learning how to draw a rat digitally on your computer!

1. Gesture drawing and base

This first step in learning how to draw a rat will require you to simply sketch out the rat as roughly as possible. Focus on the overall form and proportions!

On a new layer, you can make circles for joints, triangles for the head, and squares to join everything together. In fact, start creating some simple gesture lines for the direction of the fur!

Once you are done that, create a new layer underneath the gesture sketch, fill it up with a neutral color (using 100% pressure so the coloring has no transparency through it), and merge the layers together!

Then, lock the layer shape down by preserving its transparency to block in some form (using a chalk brush) such as the limbs and other areas to give the rat drawing some depth!

2. Smudging the rat drawing

I like this step in learning how to draw a rat because you can use your gesture lines to turn it into noticeable fur!

Still using the chalk brush type, go ahead and begin gently smudging the entire rat drawing carefully in the direction of the gesture lines!

Near the limbs, you may want to use the eraser and erase into the rat object to refine the limbs and separate it from the rest of the furry body.

You can also begin to draw in some details of the face like the ears (the same technique for drawing the human ear can be applied here) and the nose.

3. Refining the fur

At this step of learning how to draw a rat, we are going to refine the little bits of fur on the animal. To do that, preserve the transparency of the rat object. That will allow you to paint lines of fur without exceeding the boundaries of the rat drawing!

Then, choose a small brush and do quick bursts of brush strokes on the entire drawing! Do the strokes in the same manner and direction as how you smudged the fur initially.

Don't forget to do even shorter bursts near the limbs as you want to give the limbs some extra depth!

At the same time, unlock the layer so you can start painting in the whiskers once you are done with the fur! Keep on repeating the above steps until it looks correct to you!

4. Adding light and shadows

By now, the rat drawing is coming along very nicely! In this final step, we are going blend it with the background and make it realistic with proper light and shadow effects!

There are many ways to do this depending on your digital art software.

For one, you can duplicate the rat drawing on a different layer, paint the light and shadows (preserving the transparency so you can't paint outside of the boundaries, of course), then adjusting the opacity, and then re merging it to the original rat drawing.

If you are using Photoshop, you can simple paint all the light and shadows on a separate layer and then turn the layer into a clipping mask!

Regardless of the method you are using, the whole point here is to show where the light will hit and where the shadows are more predominant on the rat drawing.

If needed, you can also adjust the contrast and brightness to bring out certain features! Obviously, repaint or block in anything that seems out of place until it is perfect.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson on how to draw a rat digitally. Please make sure to submit your artworks to the gallery so I can see how you are progressing!

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