How to Draw A Cartoon Guitar filled with cool details

Learning to draw a cartoon guitar with subtle colors and shadows is required in order to become the perfect rock star. OK, maybe not to become a rock star, but at least a very good cartoon artist! ;)

Drawing this legendary musical instrument can be a great challenge since it is made with numerous lines, tough shapes to reproduce and many tricky parts with tiny details! You need to observe carefully and draw each step with caution. If you feel more comfortable, you can also create new designs and let your imagination go wild. After all, isn't it what rock and roll is all about?

using a few basic shapes to begin with

First, let's sketch a few basic shapes to help us locate the object in our work space. The body of the guitar can be represented by a large oval shape and a rectangle. A thinner and longer rectangle is used to illustrate the fretboard. As you can see below, the object is displayed vertically.

polishing the body and adding the headstock

Next, you can use curved lines to polish the body of the musical instrument. This lesson is featuring an electric guitar, so it's important to create shapes that fit with this choice. On top of the guitar, you can draw the headstock using more curved lines. Excellent! This cartoon guitar already looks great!

adding more details inside the body of the cartoon guitar

On the right side of the instrument, you can draw the pickguard using curved lines. The pattern of the pickguard can be slightly similar to the one of the body. You can also draw a single coil pickup on top of the pickguard as shown below.

let's draw the bridge and a cool tremolo bar

On the pickguard, you can sketch a few buttons for the tone and volume controls. A tremolo bar made from several straight lines can also be drawn near the buttons. The bridge consists of six small rectangles that are created next to each other.

adding the tuning pegs and the frets

Next, you can draw the frets on the fretboard using several short horizontal lines. As you can see below, these lines are getting closer to each other as we are progressing on the fretboard. On the headstock, you can draw the tuning pegs using a few small circles.

drawing long strings using straight lines

On the fretboard, you can draw all six strings using long straight lines. These lines must be connected to the bridge near the bottom and to the tuning pegs on top. Excellent! We are done drawing this fun cartoon guitar. It's now time to apply colors and special effects. :)

let's add a few simple colors to this nice music instrument

The body of the guitar is filled with a dark black color. The pickguard can be colored in white. The tremolo bar can be gray, just like the bridge and the buttons. Finally, a simple beige color is used on the fretboard of the guitar. Nice! One last step and we are done with this lesson.

one final touch to create the perfect guitar

Now that plain colors were added on the object, you can add gradients to create more depth and volume. As you can see below, the fretboard is now darker near the bottom and brighter on top. The same effect was added to the headstock. On the body of the instrument, brighter areas are also visible to create a simple reflection.