how to draw a meerkat

Learn how to draw a meerkat that looks adorable using this simple step-by-step drawing lesson. Indeed, I will show you a few basic tips to create a lovely cartoon animal filled with simple shadows and reflections. So take a deep breath, grab your pencil (or open your vector application) and scroll down a little to proceed with the first step of this fun drawing tutorial ...

adding a few basic shapes to begin with

First, let's draw a few basic shapes to illustrate the character properly. This is a good idea to work on the posture and proportions as well as placing your character into your drawing area. For this cartoon meerkat, you can start by adding a large circular head. Below the head, a small rectangle is added to form the neck.

Draw another large oval shape to represent the body. The legs are made from rectangles and the arm from one rectangle and a circle. More rectangles are needed to illustrate the tail of the creature properly.

drawing the animal using simple lines

Cool! It's now time to draw the cartoon meerkat using multiple curved lines. As you can see below, many parts are filled with short hair. These parts include the top of the head, the cheeks, the elbows and the knees. Don't forget to draw a long tail. 

It's also important to study carefully the anatomy of the meerkat. This one is slightly awkward. Indeed, the back is straight and the front is slightly round. The legs and the arms are also a little bit bent towards the right.

working inside the head

You can now add both eyes and pupils using perfect circles. Large patches are added around both eyes of the character. The nose is made from another tiny circle. The mouth is made from a small curved line. Around the mouth, you can draw another large patch.

drawing a few simple details

Inside both ears, draw a few thin lines to create small patches. More lines are added along the cheeks, on the chest, near the wrists and the ankles. More short lines are drawn inside the paws. 

time to add plain colors

This lesson on how to draw a meerkat is not quite over. Now that the animal is drawn, it's time to add some colors and create basic digital effects. First, make sure that the character is filled with a saturated brown color.

Next, the long patch that covers the face and the chest can be filled with a beige color. The ears, the patch around the mouth, the paws and the tip of the tail are darker. Finally, the nose, the patches around the eyes and the patches found inside the ears are even darker (almost black).

adding gradient colors

To create more depth and volume, you can also add a second color inside each shape of the cartoon meerkat. For instance, notice below how all four paws are darker in some areas. You can use the same technique on all shapes created earlier.

creating basic shadows to create even more volume

Drawing more shadows manually is also a good idea to add more realism to the character. You can start by drawing a shadow below the nose, below the arm, on the legs and on the tail. These shadows must be dark and partially transparent.

drawing simple highlights

Dark shapes are nice to form shadows and make the drawing more enjoyable, but it's not the only thing we can do to improve this one. Adding highlights and reflections through bright shapes is also a good idea. Simply draw white shapes on the patches around the eyes, the nose, the ears, the arm and the tail. Once again, make sure these shapes are all partially transparent.

good job learning how to draw a meerkat

Congratulations! Now that we have learned how to draw a meerkat, you can start another project and draw this character all over again using a different posture or adding more details.

Below you can see all steps required to create our lovely cartoon character. If you want to try a different version of this cute character, then you can enjoy this lesson on how to draw a cartoon meerkat from a side view. Enjoy and don't forget to practice as often as possible. :)

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