Cartoon Drawing Step By Step

In this easy cartoon drawing tutorial, you'll learn how to draw cartoon characters. A good cartoonist is one who can extract the main details of an object or a human being and represent them with simple shapes. The goal is that a child can recognize the drawing and be attracted to what they're looking at.

Children are the main audience for cartoons. Masters like Walt Disney, Hanna & Barbera, Chuck Jones, Jim Henson, Walter Lantz and many others have enchanted the world with their magical and eternal characters.

Learn how to draw a cartoon person in this cartoon drawing tutorial. — Learn how to draw a cartoon person and practice different facial expressions.

My role here is to help you understand the proper way to assemble this puzzle. I'll teach you how to draw characters from the techniques presented. I guarantee you'll be shocked at how easy it is to create a cartoon expression that children (and adults) will adore!

To get some inspiration, have a look at the hundreds of character designs on Envato Elements. Or for a shortcut, try a character creation kit!

What You Will Learn in This Cartoon Drawing Tutorial

Basics of human perception
How to draw cartoon characters
How to draw a cartoon face
How to draw cartoon hair
How to draw characters with different facial expressions
How to draw characters with different ethnicities
Easy cartoon drawing exercises

Understanding Human Perception

Before jumping into cartoon face drawing, we'll talk about the basics of human perception. Human beings have a very interesting feature: we can synthesize the details that make up a structure or an object in very complex ways into very basic and simple ones. In this way, we can represent any type of thing through a few curves and geometric shapes.

Can you tell me if the two images below represent the same object?

Weird as it may seem, you can look at the two pictures and say "it's a car".

What happens is that, unlike artists, most people can't tell from memory all the details that make up a car, a dog, or even a child. So they start to associate very basic and primitive shapes to the specific characteristics of each object. How many children of 4, 5, or 6 years old came from school with a drawing of two circles and some toothpicks on a piece of paper and said: "That's mommy and daddy!"?

1. How to Draw a Cartoon Face

Let's start with cartoon face drawing. The basic cartoon shape is a circle. Circle Is All You Need (besides Love, of course). It's from the circle that you define the basic proportions of your character's head.

Once the circle is ready, it's time to trace the face axis. Draw a vertical and horizontal line intersecting at the center, like in the image below:

How to Draw Cartoon Eyes: Step 1

Let's learn how to draw cartoon eyes. To make the eyes, draw an oval shape with a slight tilt to the side at the top. Repeat on the opposite side. It is important to leave a gap between them of approximately the same size as an eye. As we are in the drafting phase, you can draw another eye in the center to serve as a measure.

Step 2

At the top of the circle, slightly thicken the trait that will be the eyelashes of our character. Place the eyebrows a bit above the eyelashes to create a sort of a surprised expression. The eyebrow form is free, and with practice you will adjust to your own style.

Draw both pupils directed to the center (this is a very effective tactic used by major cartoonists whose sole purpose is to make our characters look cuter).

Tip: To give more life and "realism" to our eyes, you can draw a small line below them to simulate a kind of wrinkle. This is another very interesting tactic that adds a special touch to our facial expressions.

Step 3

We've arrived at the most creative freedom of the whole course. Think of it this way: in cartoon style designs, the main structure of a face is the skull and the eyes of the character. It is at that stage where you define the identification with the external world, i.e. it's already clear to people that you're drawing a character.

Now that we come to the jaw, we will decide if we want a fat character or a thin one. They could be old, young, and so on. My character will be a young one. So let's design a proper jaw for him.

Step 4

When designing a nose being seen from the front, it's common not to use many details. If you draw only its tip, it is likely that already achieves a convincing effect. It is also very common to draw only one side of the nose, from the idea that this is the opposite side of the light.

Let's put the correct nose on our character.

Step 5

As our character is a child, we will make a cartoon mouth: something simple just to represent an expression of innocence.

Notice that when drawing a little child's mouth, the lips shouldn't be drawn! In cartoon style, children, regardless of gender, have quite simple mouths. A good and expressive trace already does the job.

Step 6

The ears are seen from the front side view (because our character is facing the camera), so that the internal cavities will not appear. Then we will do just a simple shape using some basic perspective (more on that later).

Step 7

The shape of our skull is already defined by the circle we did at the beginning, right? So we just need a very simple and childish haircut to give life to our boy. Let's do it now.

How to Draw Cartoon Hair! Help!

Easy, easy... there's nothing to fear. You don't need to be a stylist or fashion designer to make perfect hair. There isn't a right way to draw hair, so you'll need to try until you create the ideal haircut you want. Just remember that the hair is responsible for defining the personality of our characters. Oddly enough, the hair can express age, rebellion, conservatism... incredible, isn't it? Speaking of which... what is your hairstyle?! Oh, never mind...

An accurate and fast way of drawing cartoon hair is to seek photo references on the web! I do this all the time: grab a fashion magazine or try a Google search. After finding the ideal style, put the image as a reference next to your drawing board (or tablet) and start making a simplified cartoon version of it.

Well, it seems we've completed our character successfully! Congratulations!

Now let's play with cartoon drawing ideas and create a completely different character with the same template we used for little Tommy (yes, I created a name for him).

2. How to Draw an Older Character

Step 1

Here are some more cool cartoon characters to draw. Older characters can be easy cartoon drawings. As usual, let's start with the eyes. This time we will draw faster, adding wrinkles, eyebrows, and the eye pupils.

Notice that we haven't changed a lot; we just expanded the eyebrow a bit. Older men have thicker eyebrows, occupying more space on the forehead. Eyelashes make no difference in men; they are always drawn in the same way.