How to Draw A Cartoon Land that looks simple

Drawing a basic cartoon land filled with a beautiful tree and a rock can easily be done using this step-by-step lesson. Don't be fooled by the simplicity of this tutorial. Adding only a few simple effects can turn a basic image into something visually more appealing.

Once you are familiar with this landscape, you can always try complex illustrations on the bottom of this page. Ready? Let's try to illustrate the lovely image found above using only simple shapes, lines and colors.

drawing a few shapes to begin with

First, you can sketch a large rectangle to illustrate the grass found inside the background. Once you are done with this element, add a thin triangular shape on top. This one will be used to represent a hill later in this tutorial.

adding elements like the sun, a tree and a cloud

We can now create more basic shapes inside the illustration to help us locate all visible objects. We still need to use basic shapes for this step. Add a small rectangle on the ground (the one on the right) to form the rock.

Then, draw a circle in the sky to illustrate the sun. When you are finished, sketch a large and thin rectangle to represent a cloud. Finally, draw a tree using a circle and a rectangle.

using all basic shapes to create a nice image

It's now time to use all these basic shapes to work on the silhouette of all objects found in the frame. First, work on the cloud using long curved lines. The top of the subject can be thicker. For the sun, no modification is needed. This perfect circle will be fine. The tree can also be polished using curved lines. Make sure that the trunk is narrow and the rest of the tree is wider. Finally, use more lines to represent the rock.

working with basic colors inside the cartoon land

Adding colors to an illustration is always a good idea. This can help make this one more appealing and visually enjoyable. For this version, a dark green color is used on the grass and the top part of the tree. The trunk of the tree can be brown. A bright yellow color is applied inside the sun. For the rock, you can use a dark gray color. The cloud can be white, but the outline surrounding the subject is removed.

adding shadows and gradients

You can improve this illustration even more by adding shadows and gradients as shown below. You can see simple shadows added below the rock and on the left side of the tree. As for the gradients, they are applied on all shapes except the cloud, the sky and the sun. If you look at the grass, you can see that the bottom part is much darker.

Nice work! I hope you had fun learning to draw this simple cartoon land. All steps needed to duplicate this image can be found below. Of course, feel free to draw your own version using various elements and colors.

Now that we are done sketching this simple land, you are invited to try more advanced lessons below. These tutorials are visually more complex and colorful than the lesson available on this page. Have fun creating and remember to practice on a daily basic if you want to improve your drawing abilities quickly and easily.