Drawing Tutorial: How to draw cartoons - Simple tricks!

(Note: This tutorial has been permanently moved from Pxleyes to grepless in order to give it better visibility and responsiveness.)

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to draw cartoons. I will try to keep it as simple as possible so you can learn how to draw as quickly as possible.

Drawing cartoons is amusing. You will enjoy learning how to make cute figures and characters. And maybe, you will also discover a new talent in yourself!

These techniques can be applied on paper, but also in any digital photo editing program such as Photoshop. Let's make some easy drawings!

The type of cartoon character drawing we will be making

Step 1 - Drawing lines

Eager to draw cartoons?

FIRST, you should practice these lines... take a large page (newspapers are best for this practice), start drawing horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. Draw some curves.

Go on practicing the lines. After this you won't find yourself with shaking hands while drawing the cartoons, and you will draw with confidence and firmness of the hand. Build your foundation solidly.

Step 2 - How to draw simple shapes

We will start with drawing the head. Most important thing to remember while drawing a cartoon head is the shape of the head. Here I am mentioning few important shapes.

1. Round head
2. Square head
3. Egg shaped
4. Pear shaped
5. Rectangle shaped
6. Glass shaped

So you can create complex cartoons from simple shapes.

Step 3 - Drawing a cartoon head

Some people think that cartoons are a way of getting out of drawing things right, but good cartoons are well drawn.

1. Draw the shape of the head. I am drawing circle. Add guidelines. This way you will get the anatomy right.
2. Draw the eyes.
3. Draw nose.
4. Draw ears and mouth.
5. Now add hair style.
6. Not that one? May be this one?

Step 4 - Drawing the face

A face can be looking up or down or anywhere. Guidelines are very helpful to get the head facing in right direction. So first draw the head then put guidelines.

Then add eyes, nose, mouth... etc. Guidelines are for assistance only, so draw them very lightly. You can aways erase them once you are done.

Step 5 - Drawing facial expressions

Facial expressions are an important channel of nonverbal communication. Emotions are expressed mainly through the eyebrows and mouth.

For example: Anger is denoted by drawing the eyebrows in a V-shape low over the eyes. Ecstasy is shown by half closed eyes and a huge smile. To draw a scared cartoon expression make the eyes wide. for a surprised face draw big eyes and o-shaped mouth.

You can see some expressions drawn below.

Step 6 - Head shape

There are 3 shapes of head: egg-shaped, pear-shaped and rectangle. First draw the guidelines. Then you can draw eyes, lips, nose, etc...

Now make the outline of the head clearer and give it some hairstyle.

Step 7 - Drawing movement

Draw the movement of action for your cartoon. For this draw the guidelines.

Draw circles to get the shape of the body. Then draw the facial expressions and the body. After all this, draw the clothes and other accessories.

Step 8 - Drawing the mouth

The mouth is an important characteristic of a cartoon character. It changes the expressions. You can always draw a mouth using a line or a circle.

Just try different styles. Once you found the one that you like the most, practice and practice again until you get it done. Here are some examples.

Step 9 - Thoughts

A person's thoughts can be ascertained by looking in his or her eyes. The eyes are simply the most expressive part of funny cartoon faces, and almost every emotion can be shown through the proper illustration of eyes.

Here I have tried to capture a few expressions:

Step 10 - Drawing hands

First draw a circle, second step is add the thumb and then add fingers... Erase extra lines.

Step 11 - More hand examples

These hands are drawn with the same process described above... It's easy... just keep practicing.

Step 12

Now try to combine everything and you're done!