How to Draw Whiskers on Drafting Film | Coloured Pencil Techniques

Whiskers… So many people dread adding the whiskers to their drawing because they're scared of ruining it, but I don’t want you to fear them, or for your drawings to stay on your drawing board for days and days as you try to build yourself up to adding them and finishing your piece! So, let me talk you through how I add whiskers to my drawings so that you can add them with confidence.

This is my cat Mirium, she’s a Maine Coon and I’ve drawn her using coloured pencil on drafting film. To create the whiskers I used a Slice Tool, which is a manual pen cutter, with a chisel-shaped blade and you can find all of these materials linked in my free Materials Guide.

It’s important to make sure your blade is nice and sharp and you use it to basically just scrape away the pigment to create the whiskers. I find that the best results come from a very sharp blade and ensuring that you have enough layers down on your drawing so that you can see the white coming through. If you don't have enough layers, you might not see the clarity of the whisker and it might not stand out as much.

The slice tool has a habit of running away from you if you're not careful, even on a smooth surface like drafting film, so it's really important to be very specific about where you're putting your marks. Be very aware and specific about how you're putting the marks in and you may have to go over the lines a couple of times to create the thickness of the whisker. It’s also always a good idea to get rid of the pencil dust straight away because the pencil dust can get caught up in the rest of the drawing, which you don't want to happen! I just use a soft brush to flick the pencil dust away; something like a clean, soft makeup brush works great.

I find this is the best way of adding whiskers on drafting film. You could use an eraser, but the slice tool just cuts through all of the pigment and you get those lovely white whiskers.

I find the slice tool works brilliantly on drafting film, and why wouldn't you use a tool like this to create whiskers? It just works perfectly, so hopefully this has given you a little bit of an idea as to how to create those fabulous whiskers on drafting film with the slice tool and if you'd like to see a demonstration of how I do this, you can watch the video at the top of this page.