How To Draw A Butterfly: Easy Step By Step Tutorial - Shihori Obata

Butterflies are so beautiful to watch, but I always found them a bit intimidating to draw, especially due to their delicate, complex designs. That is why I decided to create a step by step, easy tutorial on how to draw butterflies.

Once you start the drawing process and break down each line step by step, drawing a butterfly isn’t so hard. It takes practice, but when you finish, it’s one of the most gratifying things to draw.

How to Draw a Butterfly: Step by Step

Step 1: Draw the head of the butterfly by drawing a circle and darkening it.

Step 2: Draw the butterfly’s thorax (Insects are divided into three main body parts: head, thorax, and abdomen).

Step 3: Draw the butterfly’s abdomen: It should be longer than the thorax.

Step 4: Draw the antennae of the butterfly. The ends of the antennae tend to be more round or bulbous.

Step 5: Draw the fore wings. The front wing of a butterfly tends to converge at the same area on the thorax, so keep this in mind. Also every butterfly’s wing shape is different, so feel free to get creative.

Step 6: Draw the hind wings.

Step 7: Draw an arch as the first pattern in the forewing. Go about 3/4 of the way up the butterfly’s wing.

Step 8: We’re going to draw the next vein pattern, which goes along the bottom of the forewing and comes back up to connect with the first arch we made. The arch should end close to the bottom of the wing.

Step 9: Draw the next arch connecting to the first arch we created. End the arch close to the outer edge of the wing.

Step 10: This smaller arch in the butterfly’s wing will be the last main vein pattern we’ll draw the forewing.

Step 11: Draw some circles near the upper end of the wing.

Step 12: Draw an arch that goes down along the hindwing.

Step 13: Draw 4 veins from the arch we drew earlier in step 12 to the outer edge of the hindwing.

Step 14: Color in the outer part of the forewing of your butterfly drawing with black.

Step 15: Draw an outer edge on the hindwing of the butterfly drawing and color that in with black.

This is how it should look like after coloring it in.

Step 16: Use an eraser to create dots on the outer edge of the butterfly wing (Kneaded eraser works best). You can also use a white marker or pen to create these dots.

Step 17: Darken the edge between the forewing and hindwing of the butterfly.

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Thank you for stopping by my blog post! I hope this inspires you to try drawing a butterfly yourself. Most drawings look difficult when we see only the completed version, but once the steps are laid out, it’s not so difficult. And most importantly, just have fun drawing!

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