How To Draw A Butterfly Realistic

Today, I'm going to teach you how to draw a butterfly. This is a simple tutorial that I have put off longer than I should have, but today we're going to tackle it.

The interesting part of this tutorial is that drawing a butterfly can actually be a little harder than it looks. Most of the time we look at butterflies and picture them as just a couple large flying ovals, but there is quite a bit more to it than that. Let's get started!

What you'll need:

HB (#2) Pencil, 4B pencil

Eraser

Drawing paper

Drawing surface

To start our butterfly drawing, you will need to draw a skinny oval that will become your butterfly's body. This oval also needs to be divided into 3 parts: The smallest at the top, the middle section a little longer, and the bottom section is the longest. These sections will become the head, abdomen, and thorax of your butterfly.

Next, we are going to expand on the three sections that we outlined in step 1. Using the guidelines, expand your butterfly's body into three separate parts as shown in the image on the right.

Now that you have the head and body of your butterfly drawn, you can start to add wings. For this butterfly, you will need to draw a large shape that somewhat resembles a guitar pick. This section of the wing is about as wide as the butterfly's body is long.

Below the first section of wing you drew, you will now need to draw a similar piece to complete the wing. The bottom section of the wing is just slightly smaller, and is more rounded than the top section. Make your drawing match the image on the right.

The next step in drawing your butterfly is essentially to repeat the last step. Using the same pattern from the last step, draw the same wings on the other side of your butterfly's body. For this particular butterfly, the wings on the left are tilted upward just slightly. To achieve this look, draw the left wings about half the width of the right wings.

The last two steps in drawing a butterfly are also the most fun! This is where you can let your imagination run wild, and it's also where a butterfly really comes to life.

In this step, you get to create the pattern of the butterfly's wings. As you can see in the example on the right, I chose a simple pattern that looks fairly realistic. By adding a few horizontal lines in the wings and some curved stripes, you can achieve a fairly realistic butterfly wing. On the other hand, you can also draw patterns that do not occur naturally to give your butterfly a sort of fantasy look. The choice is yours!

Here you can see my completed butterfly drawing. All that is needed for the last step is to simply add the wing patterns to the other three sections of the butterfly's wings, and shade his body and antennas.

If you've followed all these steps, pat yourself on the back. You should have a great-looking butterfly that you can be proud of! And as always, send me your finished work to [email protected] for a chance for your artwork to be featured on the front page of Draw Central!

Thanks everyone!

How To Draw A Butterfly – Video!

If you want to see this tutorial in action, check out this video that I posted over on my YouTube Channel, where I show you how to draw a butterfly! Enjoy!