How to draw · Growing · about 20 minutes

Giraffe

You need: Paper, Pencil. Optional: Eraser, Yellow and brown crayons, colored pencils or markers.

Thick lines: draw these now. Thin gray: already drawn. Dashed: light guides you erase later.

Finished

  1. 1. Draw a tilted oval for the body, a little lower than the middle of your paper. Its right end is higher. Press lightly.

  2. 2. Draw a small tilted oval for the head, high up on the right, near the top of your paper.

  3. 3. Draw a light line for the neck from the right end of the body up to the head.

  4. 4. Draw four long, light leg lines down to the ground. Slant the two middle ones a little. Check that they are about as long as the neck line.

  5. 5. Draw the head around the small oval: a round top, a long face and a soft nose pointing down.

  6. 6. Add a leaf-shaped ear at the back of the head, two little horns with round tips, an eye and a dot for the nose.

  7. 7. Draw the long neck: one line on each side of the neck line, down from the head to the body.

  8. 8. Draw the back. It slopes down from the neck along the top of the body oval, then curves round at the end.

  9. 9. Draw the near front leg around the leg line nearest the head: long and thin, with a small hoof at the bottom.

  10. 10. Draw the near back leg around the line nearest the tail. It starts wide at the top and gets thin, with a hoof.

  11. 11. Join the two legs with the tummy line.

  12. 12. Draw the two far legs on the slanted middle lines. Their tops hide behind the near legs, so start each line where it peeks out.

  13. 13. Draw a thin tail hanging from the back end, with a dark tuft at the tip.

  14. erase

    14. Erase all the guides: the two ovals, the neck line and the four leg lines.

  15. 15. Finish with patches on the body and neck, a short spiky mane along the back of the neck and a line across the top of each hoof.

Practice here

Tip: Measure with your pencil: hold it along the neck line, then along a leg line. They should be about the same.