How to draw a cartoon Butterfly with this how-to video and step-by-step drawing instructions. Easy animals to draw for beginners and kids.
Please see the drawing tutorial in the video below
You can refer to the simple step-by-step drawing guide below
Step 1:
body
Start by drawing a long oval.
This will be the body of your butterfly.
You want to aim for a fairly elongated oval.
If you draw an oval that looks similar to a circle, you will end up with a very chubby butterfly.
Step 2:
head & beard
For the head, you want to draw a circle above your oval.
Try to make the radius of your circle equal or smaller than the small radius of the oval.
Meaning you don’t want your head to be wider than your body.
Then add two whiskers on top.
In fact, these beards are almost straight. But I always like to paint them with an extra curl at the end.
Doesn’t that make them much cuter?
Step 3:
wing border
The wings are the most distinctive feature of butterflies. And honestly, you can draw them however you want!
For this example, I drew 4 separate wings. Normally the upper wings are larger than the lower ones.
The butterfly I drew is quite easy because it resembles a rectangle.
The hard part is drawing both the left and right sides similarly. This may take a few tries. So let’s start with thin lines!
Step 4:
decorate your first wing
Okay, now comes the fun part: drawing the pattern on the wings.
In nature, butterfly patterns are usually made up of straight lines, circles, and dark edges.
So for my butterfly I make sure to use lots of circles.
But for your butterfly, you can use whatever you want.
Step 5:
Reflect your design
Now that you’ve completed your first wing, you’ve come to the hardest part.
You will have to do the same pattern on the opposite wing.
Depending on the complexity of your first wing, this can be pretty easy or extremely difficult.
You may want to use a ruler to come up with some guidelines to help show where things should go.
Step 6:
lower wing decoration
Now you can repeat the process for the lower wings.
The upper and lower wings do not have to be the same. But normally they look pretty similar.
That’s why I chose to use some more circles.
Now that you have finished drawing your butterfly, you can color it however you want.
