Learn How To Draw Online

Drawing cartoon cars that look good is not as easy as it may seem because we are very familiar with the shape of a car.

Though the image may look simple, there’s actually a lot more going on in the drawing than you may realize. This guide will help you with some of the problems involved with drawing cars and help you make something that looks really great. Let’s get right into drawing cartoon cars before you start getting bored!

Step 1 – Car Curves
Draw three curves like in the step one image. The large curve at the top will make the roof and back of the car. The two smaller curves in front will make the hood of the car.

Note that the large curve and the smaller curve are connected. Cartoon cars come in all different shapes, use this guide to start, and then try experimenting with different shapes of your own!

Step 2 – Headlights and Body
Define the front of the car first. To start this, place two circles on the outsides of the two smaller curves you created in step one. Why make the headlights first on cartoon cars? The answer is because they will give you a guide where to place the lines on the outside of the headlights. You may notice that these lines on the outside of the headlights look different. Don’t worry about this – once we have added the bumper they will look the same.

TIP: Remember to let your curves flow. If this seems unnatural to you, try some practice curves on a piece of scrap paper. You’ll get it eventually! When drawing cartoon cars it’s important that the quality of your curves is good or your end result won’t look nearly as nice as it could.

Connect the two lines that you just made outside of the headlights. This line should have a slight curve in it. Remember when drawing cartoon cars or anything for that matter, to draw lightly with your pencil so when it comes time to clean up your drawing you can erase any ugly unwanted lines easily.

Add one last line from the back corner of your first big curve and attach it to the front of the car. Don’t worry about the wheels just yet; we’ll tackle those at the end as they are the hardest part to get looking right.

Step 3 – Windows
You can draw the windows in any order you like, but it’s easiest to start with the windshield.

Notice how the two windows on the side are slightly different sizes. This is due to perspective and will help make your cartoon cars look more believable.
Step 4 – The Big One!
Now that we’ve laid out the basic shapes of the car body, let’s add in a bunch more details.

Start with the easiest parts first – the rear-view mirrors. The shapes are simple enough; add them on to both sides of the car just in front of the front-side windows.

Next draw two rectangular, yet curvy, shapes to form the details on the front bumper. Draw a curved rectangle behind these curves to finish off the front bumper. Let it extend past the edge of the car on the left side. This will cover up the difference between the lines on the outside of the headlights that we created in step two.

Next, draw the wheel wells. This can be a little bit tricky. Because of perspective, like the windows, the front wheel should be larger than the back. Draw lightly and keep trying until you get two curves for the wheels that look pleasing to you.
Step 5 – Final Detailing
Let’s finish off this drawing with some final details to really make it shine.

Add a curve to the back of the car with a little circle on top to make the aerial for the car.

Draw two rounded rectangles to the back of the car to create the tail light and the back bumper.

The door handles are simple oval shapes. Draw them just below the windows and remember that because of perspective the back door handle should be smaller than the front one.

Two rounded rectangles, one inside of the other will form the license plate. Just above that draw the grill of the car. To make the basic shapes for this draw two straight lines coming up from the details on the front bumper. Then draw a curve at the top of these lines that connects them together. We’ll use rounded rectangles again to create the spaces in the grill.

The last thing to add is the wheels. Draw a large oval inside of the wheel well. Then draw another smaller oval inside of it. This second oval should be a little closer to the back of the wheel than the front. Look closely at the front wheel in step five for a clear example of this. Again, perspective causes this to happen. To give the wheel some thickness First draw a small straight line that extends from the lowest part of the larger oval you just drew. Next, draw a curve that matches the curve of that oval starting from the end of the straight line that you just made. This curve should connect with the body of the car.

Add a hood ornament for the final detail. You can copy the one in the image or create your own to add your personal touch to this cartoon car.

That’s it for this step by step lesson on how to draw great looking cartoon cars. There are a lot of little details that all come together to make the car look great. If you find that you car didn’t come out looking too hot, go back to the start and try drawing it again. I’m sure that you’ll find that your second car looks much better than your first attempt. Don’t get discouraged, keep at it, and it will all come together!

Cartoon fire isn’t that hard to draw – it’s really only a few simple shapes. Finding a nice style of fire is a little bit more of a challenge. Once you have learned how to create fire like the image beside to the right, feel free to experiment and try a different approach to drawing cartoon fire. Don’t miss the helpful tips at the end of the tutorial when it comes time to make your own style of fire.

Step 1 – The tear-drop
This is a really simple shape and it often comes in handy when you want to do cartoon drawing. Follow the arrows in the diagram to draw the same way that I do. I find it easier to start at the pointy top, and then draw the indent curve. I like doing things this way because when I need to draw the curve on the other side, I can easily follow the shape of the first curve that I drew. This tear drop will be the main body of fire.

Step 2 – Additional Flames
Add in some flames to the sides of your tear-drop shape. The shape of these flames is very deliberate. Notice how they follow the shape of the initial large flame by coming to a point at the top and curving towards the left. Also notice that the sizes of these flames are slightly different with one being smaller than the other. This is also done on purpose to help give some variation to the drawing.

Step 3 – Finishing off the Main Cartoon Fire Shape
Add one more flame into the middle of the large tear-drop. Again, notice how this shape follows the first flames. This one is a little different than the others because it starts off like a tear, but it has two points instead of just one. To make it easier you could lightly draw two tear shapes that intersect to make this shape, or just follow the guide drawing and draw what you see – it’s up to you.

Step 4 – Final Touches
The drawing is looking pretty good, but with a few additional details it can look even better. As fire burns it sometimes becomes separated from the main body of flame. Follow the step 4 image and add in these little detail flames coming off the tips of the two larger flames that make up the cartoon fire.

That’s all there is – color your fire drawing if you like. You can follow the colors of the fire at the top of the page or make up your own fire colors.

Tips for Making New Fire
Fire comes in many different shapes and sizes. Try experiment with different line styles, by adding more jaggedness. You could also try adding more flames in step 2 to create a more complex fire shape. Finally, take a look at some examples of fire photographs and try to incorporate some of the things that you see into your cartoon fire drawings. There’s no such thing as a right or wrong way to approach this – use your imagination and see what you can com up with.

Drawing a cartoon sun is one of the easiest things to draw. At least, that’s what I imagine you must be thinking. When you look up into the sky at the real sun (don’t look at it too long) it’s not much more than a big ball of blinding light. So to draw a cartoon version of the sun you would expect it to also be something simple, something bright and you’re totally right. Anyone can draw a circle though, so you will learn how to draw curves and make this sun shine brightly.

Step 1 – A Big Ball of Light
Grab a compass from your geometry drawing kit, a cup, a cd, a coin, a bowl – any circular drawing object that you can find. You’ll start this cartoon sun drawing lesson off by making a circle. Use whatever object you found and trace it. It’s important that your circle be nearly perfect because we will use a compass later to help make the spikes coming out from the sun’s face.

Step 2 – Detailing the Face
This is another easy step. The mouth is a simple curve with two curves on the end of it. The eyes and eyebrows are also curves. Notice that the mouth is drawn at a slight angle. This helps make the face a little more interesting than if everything was symmetrical from the left side to the right. Feel free to experiment at this step and make a face that you feel shows the personality of your cartoon sun.

Step 3 – Guide Points
Get out your compass and set it up so that you will draw a larger circle – in the step 3 picture this is the outer layer of red dots. Instead of drawing a full circle you only want to place some small dots along the path of your compass circle. These will be guides that we will use in the next step. Try use an equal distance between the points. After you have done that, make your compass smaller and create another layer of dots that is closer to the cartoon sun face. These marks should not touch the face and be spaced so that you add a dot between each of the marks on the larger guide line. These marks will be used to define the low point of the curves in the next step. If you are confused take a look at the step 4 image and see how these marks will be used.

Step 4 – Adding Curves
Using your guide lines from step 3 it’s time to add some curves to the cartoon sun and start to let it shine. Start at one of the outer layer of dots and draw a curve from outer point, down to inner point and then back up to an outer point. If you placed the points correctly in step 3 this should be easy. Continue around the entire sun and You will have the first layer of shiny curves. The cartoon sun should really start to take shape now.

Step 5 – Another Row of Curves
This is an optional step, so if you are happy with your drawing after step 4 you can consider it done. Follow steps 3 and 4 again, but this time when you make your inner and outer guide dots make your compass slightly larger than before. Also, adjust the position of the dots so that this second layer’s curves will be drawing in the middle of the first layer of shiny details. Take care to draw lightly and make sure not to draw over top of your work from step 4. This row of curves should looks like it is behind the first row.

That’s it – quick and painless cartoon sun drawing! The take away lesson here is that when you want to draw curves it’s good to set yourself up with guide points. Draw your guides first, and then draw your curve and make it pass through the guide points. This is the best way to draw curves that look great.

Cartoon trees are one of the easiest things to learn to draw. Once you have a basic tree, you can start varying your tree types and shapes to create whole forests. But before you start experimenting, let’s start with four basic steps to creating trees.

Step 1:
This is actually really simple. You are going to draw two vertical arcs, starting about the same height and about the same length. Make them curve a little differently, though, to give your tree character. I like to curve to the right. Connect the bottom of your two arcs with a line that is not quite straight but doesn’t curve wildly, and you have yourself the trunk of your tree.

Step 2:
Adding branches is where a lot of people begin to sweat, thinking it’s really difficult to make the branches of your cartoon tree look real. It’s actually no harder than the trunk. To start the two main branches, turn your trunk into a “Y”, still leaning a little to the right. These two lines will connect with a large “V” or “U” in the middle, making two skinny branches. On the right side of your trunk toward the top, add a very thin branch that is basically just a point, and on the left side at the angle of the “Y”, draw something that resembles the blade of a knife. Now, you have some branches that will peek out through your leaves.

Step 3:
Okay, so this is going to be really easy. Remember when you were little and you used to draw houses with a sun in the corner and puffy clouds in the sky? The leaves of your tree are basically going to be a single cloud that has landed on top of your tree. However, instead of making all the puffs the same size, make some smaller and some larger so that it varies. You can put a smaller, skinnier cloud at the end of your little tree branch on the right. Now, you are going to erase overlapping lines. That will mean the branches disappear into the leaves and the leaves disappear behind the trunk.

Step 4:
Now you can add cute little details to your cartoon tree. More little bubble arcs can make additional leaves in your tree, and a couple of vertical arcs in the trunk give it texture, like bark on a real tree. For real pizzazz, draw some “lollipop” flowers at the base of the tree – three or four straight lines of different lengths topped with circles for buds.

At this point, you’ve finished the outline for your cartoon tree, and it should look really nice. You can color it in, or try your hand at a second and third, perfecting your technique so that you can move on to more unique tree structures. Other than that, you can consider yourself an expert artist for cartoon trees!

Drawing a cartoon house can be quite difficult if you don’t break down the steps and work with basic geometric shapes. However, if you start simple, you can have a lot of fun building a house that you’d like to live in. Put on your hard hat, and let’s get started.

Step 1 – Building the Frame
Okay, you took math, and you can draw a fairly straight line. We’re going to go back to geometry and make some shapes. If you’d like, you can reference the 1 point perspective tutorial available HERE and learn how to draw in 3D.

The front of your cartoon house is just a pentagon, and it doesn’t even need to be perfectly even. The other shape that you’ll need to start is a square. The parts of the image to the left shaded in blue are the basic shapes. Once you have the basic shapes, use perspective to give depth to your cartoon house.

Step 2 – Raising the Walls
Your cartoon house will take on a bit of character here. The garage door is simply a square with horizontal lines running through it (roll-up doors have sections, right?).

For the house, start with the door, right in the middle of the bottom, a simple rectangle standing on end. Place a standard window on each side of the door – squares with a “+” sign inside. Inside the area above the door , place another window.

Now, add shutters with a rectangle out to each side (add horizontal lines for slats) and a ledge, a simple thin rectangle underneath. Finish out the roof by copying the existing lines with a parallel line and connecting at the ends.

Step 3 – Landscaping
No home would be complete without a yard, and your cartoon house deserves no less. Under each lower window, draw a simple “blob” that will represent bushes. Above the door, add an overhang – a “rhombus.” Are you getting out your old geometry notes yet? It’s a slanted square. Add a rectangle on the bottom and another on the right to make it 3-dimensional. I like for my front door to have a stoop, so add two small rectangles in front of the door.

A doorknob helps to open the door, and you can build a door frame with two vertical lines right next to each other on either side of the door. Add a tree for shade in your yard – basically a tall flame topping what looks like a small coffee cup shape for the tree’s trunk. Add some round shapes leading up to the stoop to resemble stone steps. Your cartoon house is almost complete.

Step 4 – Moving In
To get to your garage, you’ll need a driveway, so add two straight lines coming from the garage door almost on top of each other on each side of the door. A picket fence keeps nosy neighbors away, so place a fence on both sides of the house. The fence posts are basically rectangles topped with triangles.

Add a chimney with two rectangles standing on end and two more lying on their sides on top. Finish by adding clouds of smoke to show that someone’s at home.

Now that you’ve finished drawing your cartoon home, you can add some personal touches, like a custom paint job, vinyl siding, or even a satellite dish to the roof

Drawing a cartoon valley is a bit more difficult than some of the other cartoon drawings we’ve discussed before, but it can still be accomplished in just four steps.Sit down at your drawing chair and with a little determindation we’ll blast through this lesson in four simple steps. Are you ready? Let’s rock and roll!

Step 1 – The Forming the Mountain Range
In order to have a valley, you must surround it with mountains. We are going to create two sloping lines that come in toward each other but don’t touch. These two lines curve down and are not perfectly even or smooth. Lines should be bumpy just as they would appear in real life.

Step 2 – A River and the Background
Now that we have the mountains of our cartoon valley, we can begin to draw the backdrop. Create craggy peaks between the two slopes for a mountainous background. Get creative and draw multiple peaks with rugged, uneven and broken lines.

Coming from the base of the mountain on the right side of your paper, start another minimally squiggly line that angles down more steeply. This line will make one side of the river that runs through the valley.

Step 3 – Clouds, Bushes, and a Stream
Let’s start with clouds. Coming off the top of each of your most forward mountains, you want to draw a straight line that will come almost to the center of the drawing, leaving just a small space between the two lines. Above these lines, you can get creative with the shape of your cloud structures, billowing them up to whatever height you like.

The squiggly line you drew at the end of step two is going to be a stream, and you can create another curved line coming out, widening creatively as you move further down into the valley. This will give the effect of depth as the river should look larger as it gets toward the front of the drawing.

Around the stream, you can create some bushes to keep the area from looking too empty. These structures will look like the clouds but will not be solid on the bottom.

Step 4 – Adding more Details
Below your current clouds, your valley should have some other cloud structures, smaller but formed similarly.

Atop your right hand mountain, you can cap it with trees by adding your cloudlike billows upside down and in smaller bubbles. Add more shrubs and bushes as you see fit, and create individual trees on your left hand mountain around your shrubs to give a little variation to the trees.

Technically, that’s all there is to a cartoon valley! I suggest coloring in your drawing to finish it off. That’s all there is to this easy step by step drawing of a cartoon valley.

Drawing cartoon food, like so many other drawings, can be simplified to just four steps that make learning simple for new artists. Your cartoon food can take on just about any form and make your mouth water in the process, but today, we’ll draw a tasty hamburger, using some of the most basic elements and shapes that we’ve reviewed in some of the previous lessons.

Step 1 – The Top Bun
Okay, so McDonald’s starts with the bottom bun, and in essence, we are going backwards, but if you want to make the process simple so that you can build from the ground up, this is the way to go. The top bun on this cartoon food is going to be an arc that is about half a circle, with another extremely shallow arc connecting the two ends below. Ready to move on?

Step 2 – Lettuce and Cheese
We’re going to skip over the onions, special sauce, and all the junk that really just overcrowds the drawing of our cartoon food, mostly because I don’t like those parts of the burger!

The lettuce comes next. Starting on the left, you are going to draw a short line out to the side of the bun, then a sideways “V”, followed by another, wider “V” that points more downward.

Create a sweeping line that reconnects at the “bun line” a little to the left of center. The center section of the lettuce will be a “W” and a “V”, with another sweeping line back to the bun, about a third of the way from the right point. Your last section of lettuce will look like a star with the top point “hidden” under the bun.

The second part of this step is the cheese and it is extremely simple. A banana shape can be drawn that overlaps the existing drawing so that erasing overlap lines causes the cheese to completely “disappear” under the lettuce in the center and only be seen on the two edges under the lettuce.

TIP: If you’re unsure which is cheese and which is lettuce look at the colored image at the top of the page.

Step 3 – Tomato, Meat, and Bottom Bun
This step to creating your cartoon food couldn’t be simpler. Draw a line with a slight downward curve just below the melted ends of the cheese. This is your tomato.

Right next to the points of the cheese, you’ll draw two short downward lines, then connect them with a slightly arced line matching the angle of the tomato. Round off the corners where the lines connect, and that’s your meat.

Do this one more time, starting just a little inward of the edges of the meat and making the layer slightly thicker, and you’ve drawn your bottom bun.

Step 4 – The Plate and a Sesame Bun
Since I know you didn’t expect to eat this off the floor we’re going to add a plate! It can be formed by drawing two ovals, one inside the other, with the overlap lines disappearing behind the burger at the “meat” level. The bottom of the plate is just a moon-shaped arc.

Also, a cartoon food burger wouldn’t be complete without a sesame seed bun. Your sesame seeds are basically tiny teardrops at various angles scattered over the top bun.

Now, your burger is complete, but it might be a good idea to color in the layers if you REALLY want it to make your mouth water!

I was recently asked how to draw cartoons with style, a topic that is really worth spending time on for anyone who is serious about their cartoon drawing and wants to push it to the next level.

Drawing cartoons in the same style is one of the things that takes the most time to learn, but once you start seeing the results of your hard work, you’ll have the reward of feeling like an accomplished cartoonist.

Finding Style Reference

I would suggest that you look in your local newspaper or bookstore for different cartoon character examples and start off by copying them. Just copy them directly – don’t worry at this point about being too creative, just copy exactly – you’re still learning how to draw cartoons right now. Get used to drawing these characters in different poses as they appear in the comic strips. Once you are familiar with that style of drawing, start to experiment and change the details to match your friends. Because you are familiar with the style already it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to change the hair, body shape (fat, thin, muscular, short etc) to fit different types of people.

I know you may feel like a ‘hack’ doing this, but don’t worry – you’re still learning right now, and copying is totally fine.

Expanding your Cartoon Style Library of ‘Tricks’

Once you are able to draw your friends in that particular style then it’s time to look once again at other examples of different styles of cartoons. You should by now have a good grasp of drawing characters in all kinds of different poses, as well as adapting the characters to match people that you want to draw in the real world like your friends.

From these new examples of cartoon styles, pick and choose different parts that interest you. Perhaps you like the style of the eyes in one strip, and the way another artist draws hands. Start experimenting with mixing and matching these different parts together to come up with your own original style.

Keep experimenting over and over, and try to push yourself by referencing other styles of comics and try to draw your characters and incorporate new elements. Don’t stop until you start to get satisfied, and don’t be afraid to ask opinions of those around you for some of your new styles that you think are promising. Always keep in mind that you’re still learning how to draw cartoons and developing your own style so don’t worry too much about any criticism you may encounter – just keep drawing!

Tip: I suggest that you do all of your drawings in one sketchbook so that you can go back and reflect on the progress that you have achieved, but also so that you can see patterns emerge. These patterns should be a good indication of two things: you are good at drawing in that style, and that the style is pleasing to you on a subconscious level and that’s why you keep drawing that way. If you’re happy with the patterns that you see then start to run with it – you may have just discovered your own ‘style.’

Refining your Personal Drawing Style

Keep practicing and drawing and refining your style. This happens both conscious and subconsciously. The more you do, the better and quicker you’ll become.

Don’t get frustrated with this how to draw cartoons process – it’s not something that happens over night, but depending on your drawing skill you might be able to achieve this in a few weeks.

Tip: I usually draw while I watch TV. I got a large drawing board (any flat piece of wood will do) and sit comfortably and then just draw, draw, draw. I find that I don’t miss much of the movie since I hear all of the parts, and I can always look up if there’s a cool explosion or tense scene that I want to see. I find this a good way to keep drawing every day, and I don’t need to miss out on any movies or TV time that I also enjoy.

Adding bubble letters to your cartoon drawings is easier than you may think, so read on and find out how you can add some flair to the lettering in your artwork.

To start off print any word that comes to mind. In the example here I use the word bubble. Try to print as cleanly as you can because in the next step will add thickness to your word and it will be easier to see the differences between the two of them if you’re in lettering is easy to read.

Print your word again exactly as you did in the first step. Once you’ve printed it, then start to draw over top of the individual letters making them thicker. Draw loosely and keep making them thicker. What you should now have is a type of bubble letter.

Notice the differences between the first word that you drew and the second one. If you’re not sure what I mean then take a look at the example image here.

Now you’re starting to understand how to draw these letters let’s look a little bit further into a specific example.

The first “B” is printed regularly. The arrows show that it has sharp edges and the lines connect together in the middle.

The second “B” is really just an outline. Notice that the sharp edges are gone and they are now rounded. The point where the lines connect in the middle has also been changed. All of this helps add to the roundness of the letters.

The third “B” is completed by adding small circles in the middle to finish it off.

To keep learning about this I would suggest that you print out all of the letters of the alphabet from A to Z and then go through the three step process just like the above example until you become familiar with this style of drawing.

Some of the letters might be a little bit tricky to draw at first like A, R, B, S, Q but once you’ve practiced them a few times you should be able to draw them without any problems.

Here are four different examples of cartoon clouds that you can use in your own drawings. I think the shapes are easy enough and it’s not worth writing a full tutorial about this topic because it’s easy to copy.

Pay close attention to the outline of the drawings. I usually start my own drawings with yhe outline. I lightly sketch an outline which is often made up of several circles laid on top of each other. Once I have the basic outline I might go in and add some more details like swirly lines as you’ll see in some of the examples below.

Example 1 – Zelda Style Decorative Cloud

I first saw clouds like this in the video game Zelda: The Wind Walker and I thought that they were really cool. Actually the entire style of the game is totally awesome and if you haven’t played this one I suggest you pick it up and pop it in your GameCube or Wii. The new Zelda: Phantom Hourglass game for the DS also has this cool cartoon style.

Example 2 – Simple Bubbly Clouds This cloud shape is easy to see how to draw it for yourself. I started with the outline and then later went back and made some of the outer lines thicker. Notice that the lines become thicker as they get near the bottom. Overall when you’re drawing like this it’s good to keep in mind that you want to keep them as simple and clean as possible.

Example 3 – Another Decorative Cloud

These clouds are drawn the same way as the ones in the first example. The only real difference here is that the curly decorative parts are a lot thinner in this picture.

Example 4 – A Generic Cloud

This cloud is very similar to the example to simple bubbly cloud above. To make this cloud start off by drawing the top shape with rounded curves or with circles. Usually I’ll take part of the cloud and extended horizontally as you can see in the left part of this picture along the bottom. The very bottom of the cloud is just a straight line.

Feel free to incorporate any of these cartoon clouds into their own drawings and don’t forget to look at other examples from other artists and try incorporating those different styles into your own cartoons.