Tutorial on How to Draw Cartoon People

Hello again. It's so great to see you again, whoever you are! Thank you for checking out my tutorial on how to draw cartoon people. Please know that I am NOT a professional animator or anything. I am just an average teenage girl who likes to unprofessionally use her pathetically tiny bit of drawing acumen she picked up by watching YouTube videos and waaaaay too many cartoons on tv, while having loads of fun doing so. Please feel free to change your drawing up a bit (ok, a lot). After all, you probably don't want to make your drawings look like they came out of the same mold as mine. I am just here to give you a few extra pointers to help you improve your art skills a little. Also, don't get stressed out if it does not turn out exactly how you wanted it to. Some of my favorite drawings totally morphed into something utterly different from what I originally intended.

I think this one's my favorite.

What you will need:

An eraser (Don't be surprised if you have use this so much, that it grows into your hand.)
A pencil (No, not a fancy expensive drawing pencil or anything, just a plain old writing one will do.)
A black pen or fine tip marker (This is for outlining your picture)
Colored markers or pencils (I'm gonna be totally lazy and not even bother to color mine in today)

Step One: Drawing the outline


You might be worried right now that you can't even draw a straight line.
That's ok. You don't need to be some kind of prodigy to be able to draw a decent picture. If drawing isn't exactly your forte, just set aside some time to  practice and remember that talent only takes you so far, but practice takes you all the way. Practice, practice, practice...you can't expect to improve without practice! Also, do you usually spend hours or minutes on your drawings? If you normally halfheartedly scribble out an entire drawing in less than 20 minutes, maybe you aren't putting in enough effort. A great drawing can take you hours or even days to draw. You should try working on a drawing for maybe only 30 minutes every day for a week. That's three and a half hours of improvement and one good drawing a week!

Another thing: Please do not be afraid to use the eraser on the back of your pencil! That's right, there will be many times where you need to erase something, so be sure to draw your outline. very lightly. If no matter how hard you erase a line, a little bit is always left behind, you are pressing your pencil way too hard. Try doing light strokes by loosely flicking the pencil against the paper. Also, when you are done outlining the whole picture with a black marker at the very end, you want to be able to remove the pencil lines with ease.

Start by asking yourself the following questions: Do you want your person to be tall or short? Fat or thin? Young or old? What position do you want his or her arms to be in? Do you want the arms to be crossed? How about the hands on the hips? Or maybe just a simple waving hand will do. I would suggest that no matter what arm position you choose, you leave the elbows bent just the slightest bit. You should do this with one of the legs, but the one supporting the most weight should be locked. This will help make the pose a little bit more realistic. After all, only that little square dude in Minecraft walks around with his arms and legs completely straight.

Make sure that the arms and legs aren't the same width (the legs should be thicker than the arms), or else it will only make you look like a no0b. Also, when you draw the fingers, you have to be extremely careful not to make them too short. I cannot stress how important this is! I used to make this mistake all of the time. A good basis is that the fingers should be 3-4 time longer than they are thick. Practice drawing hands this way a lot; it should start to feel natural after a while. If you are still having trouble doing this, just cheat by drawing a fairly thin rectangle for the hand and draw 3 lines a little more than half way through it. Add a thumb to the side of it. Round the tip of each finger out a tiny bit, and voila! Instant hand.

Step Two: Drawing the face

You do want your person to have a face, don't you? Well that's what step two is all about. Let us start by drawing two nice big eyes. If your person is looking to the left, draw the left eye just a teeny bit smaller. Do the opposite if they are looking to the left. If they are looking straight forward, make the two eyes the same size.

Be sure to add lots of detail to the eyes, or your cartoon will

Do you see the two white dots in the pupils?

look very basic and amateurish. Unless of course you are going for that minimalistic look, in which case you don't need to add too much detail. Add some really thick eyelashes. Like seriously, pretend that your cartoon character put on way too much mascara and eyeliner. Unless it's a guy. Because that would just be weird.

You should watch some YouTube videos on how to draw eyes, and then sort of invent your own kind of style. Here is a My Little Pony eye tutorial I found on YouTube. If you don't like My Little Pony, just ignore the singing in it, or find a different video on the internet. I think that my style of eyes might be somewhat based off of the My Little Pony eyes, because I watch that show way too much. When I draw eyes, I like to add two or three sparkles of light that reflect off of the pupils of the eyes. You can either make the sparkles round or like a little four point star.  Always draw the sparkles in the pupils on the same side of the two eyes, even if their head is at a peculiar angle, assuming you do not want a cross-eyed or whatever- the- opposite- of- that- is- called person.

Step Three: Drawing the details

Notice how the girl's bangs go past the head?

Let's start with the hair. Choose your hair style: A ponytail, loose hair, a braid, two ponytails, two braids, or anything else you can think of. Also, don't forget to experiment with textures too. Does your person have straight, wavy, or curly hair? Try adding hair accessories!

The hair ought to go out past the head (especially hair with bangs), if you know what I mean. In other words, don't make your person look like they just dove into a lake for no reason at all (unless they actually just dove into a lake.) If you want to go ahead and add streaks in the hair, start at the top of the head and go from thinner to thicker, not vice-versa. Even if your character is supposed to have straight hair, you should never be afraid to add a few simple curves for thickness, especially in the ponytails and bangs. It will help give your drawing some depth, while also counteracting the I- just- jumped- into- a- lake feeling in the hair which I can almost guarantee will happen in the first 2 or 3 people you draw.

What kind of clothes are you doing? T -shirt and jeans? A sun dress and flip -flops? Long sleeves, a skirt, a scarf, and a giant cowboy hat? The possibilities are literally endless!  For the clothes, make sure they overlap as well. The bottoms of the shirts should come out past the top of the pants or skirts. Dresses and skirts should curve outward at the bottom, like a bell. Pants can cling if they are skinny jeans, or they can curve out a little too if you want. Feel free to add plenty of accessories, such as necklaces, bracelets, earrings, belts, purses, or hats.

Step Four: Outline your drawing

Don't forget to erase all of the pencil marks too!

This is the step that will transform your random, spontaneous sketch into a cartoon. Using your black pen or marker, trace over the entire outline of your drawing.  Next, trace over the face, clothes, hair, and anything else. When you ink in the pupils, just be careful not to accidentally fill in the little white sparkles.

If you do choose to color it, I would suggest using light- colored markers. This will make is look more animated, since if you use colored pencils, it will look more shaded. Of course, a shaded effect is pretty cool looking as well. Also, another cool thing to try is to not give your cartoon character's eyes any irises. Instead, try directly coloring the pupils the color you want the eyes to be, like blue or brown. This adds a bit of je ne sais quoi (lol, just trying to sound a little intelligent here) to the whole face.

Hopefully, you now have an awesome cartoon person waiting to be hung on your wall. If you still aren't satisfied with your drawing, don't stress! What really matters is that you put time and effort into it and did your best. If you spend more time drawing, you will naturally improve.

Well, I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial. Once again, thank you for checking out my blog post. Be on the lookout for any future posts!

Sincerely,
Jane DoeNut