How to Draw Mickey Mouse

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The first step is – as always – careful observing. Look at him! Just click and look at him! Mickey stands but his body is not up straight. His body creates a reversed “C” letter.

Observe the following points:

• position of ears
• how his body is bent backwards
• angle of the hands
• body parts proportions – size of head, belly, hands and legs
• buttons on the pants
• length of the hands

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Hold your pencil tilted and just without any deep thinking, simply draw the head, prolonged neck (body), belly, and limbs.

Notice how the hands are lifted slightly upward. The legs are also not exactly straight but oriented backward to form a reversed “C” character.

OK, so this initial sketch looks like nothing, almost grotesque, yet it will be a very important guide to draw Mickey Mouse.

This simple sketch sets the basic position and form of Mickey’s body.

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Draw contours of the ears, the nose, and the mouth. I think you instantly feel how easy it is now to draw when you have ready the basic body position guidelines.

Do it all only by very weak and gentle pencil lines. Do not push the pencil on the paper (!), yet.
You will do a lot of erasing work from now on so make the pencil strokes soft and weak to erase them easily later.

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Mark out and specify a bit more the face features. Tip of the nose, smiling opened mouth, the eyes and the curved contour above the eyes.

Leave the initial wide pencil lines untouched, just draw over them new lines. You still need the initial guidelines.

Put a piece of paper under your hand that holds the pencil, in order not to blur the drawing when your hand rests on the paper.

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Time to draw the hands. Observe the ready drawing above again and, see carefully the length of both hands. See the proportion - length of the hands to the size of the head of Mickey Mouse.

When drawing smaller body parts like palms, eyes, mouth, etc, you can hold your pencil as usual – writing grip. Be very careful, however; draw only weak and soft lines!

The shape of the character gradually starts to emerge. It is a wonderful feeling while you draw Mickey Mouse, to see, how it comes out gradually on the paper.

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Draw the pants, the legs, and outline contours of Mickey’s shoes.

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Now you can draw the final body contours. Erase excess lines as needed. Add two buttons on pants and detail in the eyeballs.

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Here you should erase all excess pencil lines so that only one thinner and firm pencil body outline shall remain.

Draw Mickey’s tongue and the ellipse on his nose, which will remain white. Finally, he also needs a tail!

Now you have your Mickey Mouse coloring page ready.

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Start to color the black parts first. You can do it with a very soft pencil (2B, 4B or softer) or black color pencil.

Graphite of ordinary pencil will remain shining, which is not always nice to make a graphite pencil test on a separate paper first, to see how it shines.

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I did the coloring with colored pencils but you can color it with pastels, water, or acrylic colors as you wish.

OK, I think you did a very job so far. Most importantly now you know the basic steps of how to draw Mickey Mouse.