How to Draw Cartoon Sports images featuring fun athletes

In this section of the website, learn how to draw cartoon sports characters and objects with ease using a simple step-by-step method! Whether you are enjoying football, hockey or soccer, you are likely to find a tutorial that will fit your taste! It can be a combative goaltender or even a ferocious boxer!

Sports are important social activities in today's society. There is nothing more exciting than a healthy competition between two cities or two countries! And if you are lucky enough to play in a professional sport like football or basketball, you can earn quite some money over a short period of time!

Let's stat by creating simple objects that are easy to sketch ... and recognize!

a fun sport illustration to play with!

This cartoon basketball is made from a large circle filled with four different lines. Three of them are almost horizontal while the last one is vertical. The object is filled with a bright orange color and a texture made from several small circles is added inside the object.

In the last step, a dark shadow is drawn below the ball and a small reflection (the white patch) is added on top. Now the big question is: should we go for two or three points?

You can start with the video lesson below (more sport videos can be found on my Youtube channel) or proceed with the step-by-step tutorial located below the video.

Let's continue with a home run!

This basic object doesn't need a presentation. Made from a large circular shape and two long curved lines, this baseball is relatively easy to illustrate. As you can see in step number two, adding small circles on all four corners is quite important (well, there are no corners inside a circle, but you get the idea! ;)

Stitches are made from small red lines with little dots on both ends. If you want to add some depth, you can also color the bottom of the object with a bright grey color.

a tougher tutorial for a tougher sport!

Of all cartoon sports depicted so far, football is without a doubt the most physical one. Using several small circles and large rectangles, you can now learn how to sketch an impressive football player created with large shoulders and tiny legs.

Many small lines are added inside the shirt, the arms and the shorts to create the final illustration. In this case, the character is filled with green and yellow colors, but you can use any colors you want! :)

a delicate character with a challenging posture

This drawing lesson is very challenging for several reasons. First, the posture is unusual. Also, the anatomy of this little girl requires more precision to complete (tiny legs and arms, small waist, long fingers ...)

In this case, drawing an accurate model using basic shapes before proceeding with the final version is really important. Take your time to draw all body parts and feel free to try more original postures like this one.

speaking of precision ...

Yes ... you need to be extremely precise to hit a small white ball into a hole that is located hundreds of yards away. The same precision is needed to illustrate this golfer accurately using a pencil or a digital application. Not all cartoon sports are featuring huge men with big muscles! Just like in real life, make sure this little fellow is using the proper posture to hit this ball!

now we need more muscles!

This strong cartoon boxer is also offering a few challenges that might be hard to handle if you are not completely familiar with the human anatomy. Our goal is not to be as realistic as possible (after all, no boxer is born with a tiny waist like the character below), but overall we need to have a certain degree of realism.

Many circular shapes and triangles are needed to draw this fun boxer accurately. Don't forget to use several small curved lines inside the character to complete your illustration.

why adding texture can be important

For this example, let's draw a simple tennis ball filled with two important digital effects. First, color gradients are added to give more depth to the object in the fourth step. Then, texture was applied inside the ball in the fifth step to complete the effect.

More cartoon sports are available!

Below you can see the list of all cartoon sports available in this series. Once you are familiar with a character, try to draw more postures, more outfits and more objects. Illustrations featuring sports like football, soccer, hockey or baseball are fun to create because of the wide variety of situations available. Enjoy! :)