How To Draw A Butterfly

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Once you decide to draw a butterfly, wouldn’t you just love to draw the most beautiful one? Despite its “seeming” difficulty?!

Here is a useful tip for overcoming the initial setback when you draw a butterfly:

Draw (study) both (front and hind) wings separately first. Observe the shape of the front wings and decide (pick) which one you’ll practice. Right or left?

Then draw one selected wing – purposely enlarged. This exercise will help you to acquire more skill in capturing the pattern (design) on the wing and the shape of the wing itself.

Generally, if any part of a butterfly may seem too difficult, practice drawing that part separately and possibly enlarged.

click the image to enlarge

Before you begin to draw a butterfly, decide the size.

Do not draw it too big (e.g. a whole A4 size paper) because you may find yourself entrapped in details. Size of approx: 140mm x 120mm would be just OK.

Hold your pencil tilted and draw the body. Next draw front and hind wings on one side.

This sequence is not “the only sequence”, so you can always adjust the process as it feels best for you.

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To capture both sides of the wings as accurately as possible sketch a simple grid.

Draw the grid by hand. No ruler!

If your lines are not very straight, erase them and draw the grid lines again. You do not need to make them perfect as a ruler.

My lines aren’t straight either. But who cares? It’s only a drawing.

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When you have the grid draw the rest of the wings on both sides.

Notice here, that the wings are only the rough contours. The outlines.

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It is time to clarify the final shape - the final contour of wings. Observe the size, the symmetry among the front and hind wings.

Gradually erase the initial pencil sketches of wing outlines and draw clearer contours.

Enlarge the picture and see how I did it. I actually made a couple of weak pencil guidelines to keep the balance on both sides.

The tricky part when you draw a butterfly is the toothed contour on the hind wings. It is very easy to draw only one side but may be difficult to match exactly on the opposite side the same way.

A good idea is also to draw first only one side (either right or left) and then fold the paper half in the middle of the body and imprint the graphite on the other side so that you can get exactly both sides the same.

I described this process here in butterfly drawings.

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Erase the rest of the pencil lines so that only one clear outline contour of all four wings will remain. Plus the body of a butterfly.

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Begin to draw the basic sketches of wing patterns. Be easy about it.

Draw gentle and weak lines. Make special attention here on curves. Even the slightest ones, because these curves are important here.

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Continue drawing the wing design. Take your time. Remember you are drawing a quite complex design pattern so be patient. The reward will be sweet.

If you draw a butterfly that has a simple wing design, you can have it done in less than 5 minutes. This one may take a little more.

I picked this design on purpose because if you learn this one then you will be able to draw virtually any design you choose.

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OK, at this stage you should have ready a basic blueprint for your butterfly.

You can continue to fill it up with colored pencils or simply draw it only with a graphite pencil.

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I colored the first layer in dark brown. The original color of this butterfly is black and dark brown.

Notice that I am leaving very thin lines blank among the patterns. These are the veins and they should be visible.

Make sure your pencil is sharpened well so that you will be able to draw thin lines.

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Add black pencil coloring over the basic dark brown layer. Do not push the black color pencil too much.

If you are not sure about which colors to mix, make tests on a separate paper. Make as many tests as necessary. It is a usual technique and commonly used among artists.

If you decided to draw a butterfly-like this and spend your time with it, and I suppose you would like to make it as nice as possible then by all means make these color tests on separate paper.

It is only necessary for the beginning. Once you know which color pencils to mix then no more tests are necessary.

While coloring, I would advise you to color (fill in) both front wings first. While coloring you are going more visual and your work suddenly start to emerge from a previously obscure sketch.

The symmetry on the wings will be even more visible now, so it is good to draw the front wigs first and the hind wings second.

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I used 2 color tones of yellow. The basic layer is lemon yellow and the top layer is more orange-yellow.

Do not sweat too much about colors if you draw with color pencils because you can never get it quite right. Consider the colors rather as symbols.

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Color the hind wings of the butterfly similarly to the front wings. The process is the same.

Notice however that there are such cloudy whiter spots on hind wings. These aren’t present on front wings.