How to draw · Challenge · about 45 minutes
Astronaut
You need: Paper, Pencil, Eraser. Optional: Colored pencils: dark blue, gray, yellow and green.
Thick lines: draw these now. Thin gray: already drawn. Dashed: light guides you erase later.
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1. Draw a light vertical center line. Mark it into four equal parts: the astronaut is about four helmets tall, from the top of the helmet to the boots.
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2. In the top part, draw the helmet: a circle with a wide, rounded opening for the visor. Add the neck ring under it, curving around like a smile.
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3. Draw a light stick skeleton: shoulders, a spine, hips, and arms and legs with circles at the joints. One arm is raised to wave.
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4. Draw the visor's glass inside its frame, and a curved shape for a shine on its upper left.
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5. The waving arm is nearest, so draw it first: a round shoulder pad, a ball at the elbow and two fat tubes around the sticks.
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6. Draw the other arm the same way, hanging down beside the body.
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7. Draw two puffy mitten gloves at the ends of the arms. Each thumb is on the side nearer the body.
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8. Draw the suit's body: a rounded box from the shoulders to the waist. Stop where the helmet and arms are in front. Add the backpack corners peeking out behind.
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9. Draw a wide ring around the waist and the rounded hips below it.
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10. Draw the legs as two thick tubes around the sticks, with a ball at each knee. Stop the tubes where the hips and knees are in front.
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11. Draw the big boots: rounded blocks with a line for the thick soles.
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12. Draw rings around the arms and legs. A ring around a tube is an ellipse, and all of them curve down the same way, because we look from a little above.
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13. Add the chest box with three knobs, a hose to the side and a patch on the shoulder.
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14. Draw the moon's far edge behind the legs, and craters in front. Craters are circles lying flat, so they look like thin ellipses.
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15. Add Earth in the sky with two continents, and a few small four-pointed stars.
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16. Erase the center line, the marks, the skeleton and the joint circles.
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17. The sun is on the left. Shade the right side of every tube, the helmet and the body with a middle value. That is what makes a tube look round.
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18. Cross-hatch the visor darkest, leaving its shine white, then the backpack and the flat shadows on the ground. The white suit stays the lightest value.
Practice here
Tip: Check the proportions with your pencil: hold it up to the helmet, then count how many helmets fit down the body.