Elephant Drawing (Sketching + Vector)

This elephant drawing is part of a huge tutorial (well, not so big) that will help you learn how to create a nice 2d character with a lot of depth! Elephants are fun to draw. Not all features are easy to achieve, but you can easily come up with something interesting once you can illustrate the large ears, the long trunk and the tiny tail. Try it! You will see how fun and easy it can be!

You can start with the video below. Then, simply proceed to the step-by-step drawing lesson to learn more ...

Step 1

Great, let's start by sketching the cartoon character. Once again, I like to draw this animal using a side view. Some animals are easy to draw using a front view, but it's not the case for the elephant.

Step 2

Once you are done, import your illustration into your vector application. From there, add the outlines using thick and irregular lines. Just use a black color for now.

Step 3

Create new shapes for all elements of the character. Use plain colors on these new shapes and make sure that they don't have any outlines. Finally, these new shapes must be placed behind the outlines created previously. 

Using this technique will give us the opportunity to add strong shadows later on. These shadows will be added between the outlines and the colored shapes. 

Step 4

Use the gradient tool of your application to create simple shadows on shapes created in the previous step. Your elephant drawing is nice, but it can be even better!

Step 5

Create new shadows on the trunk, the ears, the body and the tail of the elephant. Shadows must be placed in relevant areas to make the illustration more realistic.

Step 6

Select your transparency tool to partially hide the top of all these new shadows. The drawing looks good, but it can be even better if we add a little bit of reflection.

Step 7

Duplicate shapes like the head, the body and the ears. Scale down these new elements a little bit and color them in white. 

Step 8

Once this is done, repeat the same technique and use the transparency tool to hide the bottom part of these shapes. The cartoon character looks even better! Light is working well on the illustration and this elephant seems more alive than ever!

Step 9

Finally, to make your elephant drawing even more interesting, you can change the color of the outlines a little bit. Outlines inside the ears can be colored with a darker tone of pink while the rest of the lines can be colored with a darker tone of grey. 

Great! Your illustration is now over and you can try more characters using the links on your left! :)

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