After publishing my sketch of George yesterday and very briefly explaining how he was made, I received several emails asking if I could write a step by step guide on how to draw him, so today that is exactly what I have for you.

What Are We Drawing?

For those of you who didn’t see the George sketch yesterday, he is a cartoon character made up of just 3 different shapes. So get your paper, pencil and pen ready and let’s get started.

Step One

The very first thing we need to do is get our shapes down on paper. It is best to use a light pencil at this stage as the shapes are just a guideline and we don’t want them to show through on the finished drawing. We start with 3 circles, 3 rectangles and 1 triangle. They don’t have to be perfect, they are just a guideline.

Step Two

Now that we have the basic shape of our character, we need to add a few more details.

Small circles will define the nose and ears. Dots for where the eyes will go. I have added another small triangle under the chin for George’s goaty. A line across the neck where the collar will go. Triangles for the arms as they are behind his back. A line acros the bottom rectangle to show the belt and finally, a vertical line to seperate the legs.

Step Three

We have our full set of guidelines now so it’s time to put the pencil down and grab our pens. I am using a black 05 line drawing pen, but any black pen should work fine.

We can now draw the outlines that we want to be seen in the final image, using our shapes as a guide. We use the top of the big circle for the hairline, the bottom for the mouth and everything else is pretty much just a case of following the lines.

Step Four

That is the whole character drawn now. To bring him to life though, we need to shade him, starting with his thick curly hair.

This is probably the easiest part, as you don’t have to be neat or accurate with it. All we are doing is drawing squiggly lines wherever we want hair to be.

Step Five

That’s the hair and goaty finished. We now need to give the rest of him some shadows. The light source in this image is coming in directly from the right, so our shadows will be on the left.

The technique we are using is called cross hatching, which is basically drawing a series of lines crossing over each other to create darker areas. The closer these lines are together, the darker the shadow will be.

In this step we start by drawing all our lines in one diagonal direction, wherever you think a shadow would be if the light is coming in from the right.

Step Six

We’re almost there. The last step is to cross the lines we just made in the previous image by drawing diagonal lines in the opposite direction. To completely finish George off, we give him darker shoes, add a little more shading in places and make his clothes look more realistic by adding crease lines, oh and not forgetting the belt buckle.

Conclusion

There we have it, a step by step guide to drawing George. Because he is made up of just 3 simple shapes, it’s really easy to draw him over and over without him looking any different. This is particularly important in animation because you might need to draw your character hundreds of times.

If you compare the final image in this tutorial to my original sketch from yesterday, you will notice the only difference is that his hair is a little neater today and he has shaved his stubble.

I hope you found the tutorial helpful. If you do attempt it, feel free to email in your efforts and I will publish them on the site for the world to see. Happy sketching!