Draw a four-panel story in Aquarell: keep one character’s actions coherent

The challenge of a four-panel story is not four attractive illustrations but making the events between them understandable. Practice sequential action with a kitten discovering a bag, approaching it, entering, and leaving only its tail visible. Minimize characters and scenery. Tell the story through position and pose before deciding whether text is needed.

Write the story as four verbs first

Before drawing, reduce the four panels to “discover, approach, enter, hide.” Each should carry one main change rather than walking, jumping, and looking back at once. Make the ending clearly different from the beginning: the cat is outside in panel one and mostly hidden in panel four, with only a tail or ear as a clue.

Create a square 1600×1600 pixel canvas, leaving about 100 pixels around the edges and 60-pixel horizontal and vertical gutters. Each panel is about 670×670 pixels. Draw four frames by hand on the sketch layer without relying on a dedicated comic-panel tool. Slight hand-drawn variation is fine, but keep panel areas similar to compare character size.

Create an easily repeatable character

Use four main shapes for the cat—head, body, ears, and tail—in dark blue-gray. Test the proportions in a corner first, such as a head about half the body width and ears no taller than half the head. Reuse these relationships in every panel. Pixel-perfect consistency is unnecessary, but the cat should not change from round and plump to suddenly long and thin.

Make the paper bag a light-brown rectangle with a darker opening, generally fixed on the right of each panel. Keep the background light with only a ground line. Separate the character, bag, and frames into layers, checking the active layer so changing the cat does not erase a panel border. For the character contour, see Cat silhouette exercise.

Establish positions and attention in the first panel

Place the cat on the left and the bag on the right with a clear gap. Turn the head toward the bag, using ear and muzzle direction to show what it is looking at. One or two short attention marks above the head are optional. Make the bag opening visible rather than leaving a plain brown block, so the later entry action has a clear basis.

Give this panel a slightly fuller background, just enough to establish the ground and objects. Avoid many toys, furniture items, and patterns; readers first need to recognize the two main subjects. View the first panel alone at a small size and confirm that the cat-bag relationship is clear. If dialogue is needed to explain what the cat sees, strengthen the head direction or opening before adding text.

Change only distance and weight distribution in panel two

Move the cat closer to the bag, extend its front paws, lower its center of gravity slightly, and optionally raise the tail. Keep the bag on the same side and at roughly the same size. Maintain left-to-right movement rather than suddenly switching sides and suggesting a reversed scene. The head can approach the opening while the entire body remains outside.

The change from panel one to two should be immediately visible. Merely enlarging the eyes advances the action too little; putting the cat entirely inside the bag skips the process needed in panel three. Distance, body lean, and front-paw position are enough variables. Exaggerated background effects are unnecessary here.

Use overlap to show entry in the third panel

Hide the cat's head and front half behind the bag, leaving only its hindquarters and tail visible. The opening must clearly overlap the body. Draw the cat on a layer below the bag and refine the opening, or cover it with the bag color on the same layer; a layered original is easier to adjust. Do not draw the complete cat outline through the bag.

Raise the haunches, give the hind paws a slight push, and curve the tail outward to show the cat entering. The bag may bulge slightly but need not suddenly double in size. Add only two or three motion marks near the hind paws, following the movement. Overlap matters more than motion lines; entry should remain understandable without them.

Leave a clear result in the fourth panel

Return the bag to a quieter shape, with only a short tail section or an ear visible. The exposed part should identify the same cat while clearly differing from panel three. Add a little whitespace and reduce motion lines to shift the rhythm from busy to quiet. A slightly raised tail tip can add humor without lengthy dialogue.

Keep the bag in roughly the same position across the four panels. It can move slightly toward the center at the end, but avoid changing viewpoint and scale simultaneously. Readers interpret every change as information; unnecessary changes make the action harder to follow. Get the simplest version reading smoothly before trying more complex shots.

Reading the sequence matters more than polishing one panel

Hide the sketch and read the entire comic at a smaller size in top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right order. Check that every panel adds information, character scale remains stable, and movement is continuous. Inspect panel edges separately for a tail or bag corner unintentionally crossing into the next panel. Export the complete PNG and keep the original for later action edits rather than saving only four separate screenshots.

Omit text unless it is needed. For a title or short dialogue, see Illustrated-card text tutorial, controlling type size and whitespace so text does not cover key action. Small text is especially ineffective on a phone; check readability after reducing the image first.

Common problems and the next story

What if the four panels look like four different cats? Standardize head-to-body ratio, ear shape, tail thickness, and main color first. These four features are more stable than eye details. Keep a small character sample on the sketch layer for comparison while still allowing pose changes in the final drawing.

What if readers cannot understand the third panel's action? Check that the bag opening clearly overlaps the cat, the hindquarters remain outside, and the second panel shows the approach. More speed lines alone will not explain the action. For the next story, try “a bird finds water, approaches the bowl, lowers its head to drink, and looks up,” retaining one action per panel.

Sources and applicable version

Based on Aquarell App Store description for canvas, brush, layer, and export capabilities. The public version checked on October 23, 2026 was 1.0.5. Panels, characters, and actions are drawn manually rather than automatically generated as a comic, and the interface may change by version.