Cartoon Animal Drawings: Tips And Techniques

cartoon animal

Cartoon animals are easy to draw with some basic shapes. They are usually represented with large eyes and pupils when challenging characters are represented with a mix of two or three basic shapes.

Simple tips for cartoon animal drawings are listed below:

  • Large circular eyes located in the middle of the head: Eyes are drawn from the basic circle shape. To increase the level of cuteness, pupils are made large. Draw two small oval shapes inside the pupil to add more personality to a cartoon character.
  • The head is made from a circle that is not quite perfect: Draw circles as slightly rectangular or a rectangle that is not quite circular.
  • A large body filled with plain colors: Try to fill cartoon animal characters with plain and saturated colors.
  • Adding depth to character: Use a darker color for elements located behind the character. Also, draw some simple shadows if needed.

Follow these simple tips and draw beautiful cartoon animal characters.

Crayon Drawings: Simple Tips That You Need To Know

crayon drawings

Crayon drawings help us travel back to our childhood memories. Most of our drawing journey started with crayon drawings. Nevertheless, crayons are not just for kids, they can be used as a wonderful art medium.

Some simple techniques can be used to create beautiful arts and are listed below:

  • Use a paper that will grip the color evenly: Try Stonehenge or illustration board.
  • Have a good hand-held sharpener handy: Try to keep a point on the crayon.
  • Professionally apply the crayon: Use it as a fine art medium and use the control, not just as kids.
  • Build your colors gradually, and layer them: Start drawing with light colors. Give dark colors on top of the drawings.
  • Some colors are more transparent than others: Test your colors in a separate piece of paper to make sure they work properly. 
  • Too many layers of crayon can make the colors resist each other: Use a few colors to get better results. 
  • Scratch out small lines and details with a craft knife: It can give detailing to your drawing.

Practice these simple tips and draw beautiful crayon art works.

How To Create Your Own Mandala Drawing

Draw Mandala

Mandala is a complex abstract drawing made of geometric or abstract designs. Drawing and coloring Mandala is considered as an activity to connect with your soul. 

They are usually a part of spiritual practices all around the world. Mandala designing is also highly meditative. 

You can use a digital tool or an ordinary pencil and paper to draw a mandala.

To start drawing a full mandala, find the center point of your canvas, and lightly draw a cross through it to be used as a guide. 

Draw more lines (preferably eight in total) through the center to make drawing the mandala easier. Make markings at a distance of 1 cm from the center on all these guides. These markings will let you draw your designs proportionately on all sides.

Now unleash your creativity and draw whatever designs you please. Replicate the design on all sides using the guides as a reference line. Add color to your design to beautify your drawing and to relax even more. 

Start drawing mandalas to reduce stress and improve self-awareness. You will see that the designs you draw depend a lot on your mood and spirituality. 

5 Tips for charcoal drawing

charcoal drawing

Charcoal drawing is a technique which makes use of charred sticks to get a beautiful output. There are some tips with which you can improve your charcoal drawing and we are going to list them down below.

  • Find the essence: It is important to create the main idea or essence of drawing. The main idea is what the image is about, and what you want to say with it.
  • Learn the value of value: Value refers to the difference in light to dark shade on a range of one to ten.
  • Squint: Squint is the idea of simplifying your drawings. Squinting also helps to see simple shapes easily and add more essence to drawing.
  • Explore thick and thin lines: If every line is drawn with the same width it gives a monotonous look. The rule is to draw lines on top of things as thinner and underneath objects as thicker.
  • Use an eraser: Charcoal drawings are easy to control. Use an eraser to easily remove or erase what is not needed in your drawings.

Follow these simple tips and techniques for beautiful drawings.

Metallic Reflections: Some Tips You Need To Know

metallic reflections

When light strikes a metallic object, it can reflect onto a nearby object and gives varying degrees of light and shadow. Incorporating these in your drawing can be a great way to add realism.

Some tricks to draw metallic reflections in the drawing are:

  • Place your objects in light: First, select some metallic objects and place them as light falling on one side. Then observe the light and shadowed areas and draw the basic shapes.
  • Get shading: Start shading with the object that receives direct light and then shade the object in shadow. Follow conventional rules of light and shadow in shading objects.
  • Add some shadows: Add ground shadows to your object. The object appears to float at this stage, so needs grounding.
  • Blend and soften: Using an eraser is an easy method to highlight areas where light is reflected. Finally, blend some areas using fingers for the effect. Learn these basics and make drawings beautiful.

Use these tips to get a memorable output.

Drawing Tips: What You Need To Know About Perspective Drawings

Perspective drawing

Perspective drawings make objects look smaller as they move into the distance. It gives depth and dimensions to images.

Some tips for drawing perspective are the following:

  • Place the horizon line: It would be better to place the horizon line either very low or very high in drawing. When the horizon line is above character it gives users an impression of them being in a higher position. When the horizon line is below character it gives users an impression of them being in a lower position.
  • Utilize a one-point perspective: Try to avoid putting vanishing points right in the middle of the space of the drawing. It creates too much symmetry to draw and is a bit unnatural.
  • Create a two-point perspective: Place either one or both vanishing points outside the edge of the drawing. It gives a natural look to drawing. Also, try to up your skill using analog tools.

Incorporating these methods of perspective drawings will help you to improve your drawings.

How to draw landscapes: Tips You Should Know

The major challenge while drawing landscapes is that you have to illustrate several different textures and compositions in your drawing. 

Today, let’s see the different steps to draw a perfect landscape composition.

To begin with, observe your references closely. Draw and practice different textures you see in it. As a second step, plan your drawing. Choose an angle that will give depth to it.

Use basic shapes like ellipses and polygons to make a rough sketch first. Arrange the lighting and shadows in your rough sketch to have a clear idea about the same in your final work.

Recreate your rough sketch on a canvas. Start with rough linework using lighter pencils when you do this. 

Then add details with textures. If you’re using pencils, cut the lead at an angle to get the perfect tool for texturing. If you’re using paints, using a variety of brushes at different angles can do the trick.

If you’re using pencils, pens, or watercolors, build the drawing from lighter shades to darker shades. However, if you’re using a bit more opaque medium, feel free to accentuate the highlights at last.

Drawing Pen Art: Tips That You Should Know

pen sketches

While drawing with a pen, even a small wrong stroke can create undesirable blobs and marks that could ruin the whole drawing.

The common mistakes committed while working with pen and ink are detailed below.

Lack of control over the medium when compared to other mediums: Instead of anticipating an error in each step, learn to convert that error into a unique feature. When drawing realistically, the wrong values can make the picture look unpleasant. To solve it, practice consistently. Draw from observation and train your eyes to absorb each detail.

Prevent mistakes at all costs: It’s hard to correct mistakes and even harder to maintain workflow when errors happen. Prevent possible mistakes using a pencil underlining. 

Smearing is never a happy accident: Make sure your ink is dry before moving your drawing around. Using waterproof ink is also ideal for preserving the work.

In case any of the said mistakes happen, it can be corrected in the following ways:

  • Try to make the mistakes a part of your drawing.
  • Use inks, gouache, or acrylics to cover your mistakes.
  • Use gel pens for correcting smaller mistakes.
  • Remove the mistakes with a blade.
  • Avoid this mistakes to master pen art.

Keep these tips in mind before you start with your work.

How To Draw Anime: Tips And Techniques

Draw anime

Anime drawings are complex but enjoyable. The key factors which define anime drawings are facial features and facial structure.

Some basic techniques that you should know when you start to draw anime are detailed below.  

First, learn the basics of drawing. Learn drawing simple things like straight lines and basic shapes like circles and squares.

Next is to learn perspective drawing. In perspective drawing, images get smaller as they go in distance. You can practice perspective drawing by drawing three-dimensional objects like cubes and cylinders from different angles.

After this, learn some basic anatomy. Knowing the proportions and placement of different body parts helps you improve drawings.

Learn how to shade as well. To do shading, we need to know how light reflects in different shapes and surfaces. The basic rule is an object facing a light source is drawn more lighter.

Finally, learn how to use color. Learning some basics of color like warm and cool complementary colors will help you make your drawings beautiful.

Shading and 5 Elements of Shading

Elements of shading

Shading is used in drawing for depicting different levels of darkness. Applying more densely with a darker shade for darker areas and less densely with a lighter shade for lighter areas is the basic idea.

However, there are some details that you should know. For instance, Shading has five elements. The five elements of shading are:

Cast shadow: It is the darkest part of your drawing because in this part light is completely blocked. Draw this area as black as possible.

Shadow edge: This shading is also known as turning shadow. This area corresponds to a dark grey tone.

Halftone: This is the true color of your object. This area of a drawing is not affected by light. 

Reflected light: This shading element is lighter compared to other shadows. But this will still be seen on the darker side of the object. The reflected light is always seen on the edges, rims, or lip of an object.

Full light: This is the area that receives the most light and the tones fade gently into the white of the paper.