Before you do anything else, remember my first rule of drawing, you can draw! Really you can. You may not draw all that well, that's ok.

Ok, now that we know that, let's look at what we need to do first. I always start drawings with a light skeleton sketch. This particular picture was drawn from another painting, which can be easier than drawing from a photo. What I did was look at the picture and see what shapes I could find. This one has more complicated shapes than the owl did. It's still very important to make sure the different shapes are in proportion to each other. But before you put a pencil to paper, remeber this: you will make mistakes, and even if, by some miracle, you manage to draw this step perfectly, you'll still have to erase some of these lines, so Draw lightly!

The next thing to do is to make your basic shapes look like the actual shape of the leopard. I've connected everything, making a strong line around the edge of the picture. Ive also re-done the shape of the face and (of course) erased all the lines I don't need anymore. Proportion here is also very important, and so is drawing lightly.

Now comes the hardest part, adding in the colors. On this picture it's particularly difficult because of the leopard's spotted pattern. Aslo, though you don't have to worry about erasing much at this point, still don't color too darkly. When you get to the next step, you'll want to have dark shadows,and if you've colored as darly as you can, you won't be able to color any darker to make shadows. Be very careful around the cat's face and eyes especially.

The last part, the shadows and highlights. Here you look at light and dark, and color those areas that should be dark, as dark as your pencil will let you get. (Seeing how the artist who did the painting I worked from helped a lot here) You'll also want a few light spots and highlights, especially in the eyes. Go over every inch of the picture, one way or another. Don't leave any bits colored only lightly. The way you get that slick, polished, 3-D look is by having every inch of the thing you draw covored with pencil. Find a medium color to go over the places that aren't light or dark if you need to. (Unfortuantely the scanner scanned this pic a bit odd, I'm not sure why. I'ts never done anything like this before.)