If you are just starting out with your drawing hobby, you’ll soon realize how important it is to know how to draw a girl. Whether you will draw cartoons, realistic sketches, or comic strips, at some point you’ll need to know how to draw girls or female forms.
There are a few key elements that set girls apart from boys in real life and in drawings.
Benefits of Knowing How to Draw a Girl
If you are starting out your drawing career or have been drawing for a while, you should know that you will at some point encounter the need to draw a girl.
The sooner you know how to draw a girl, the better you will be at drawing them, and you might even learn more about drawing boys as you notice the difference between them.
Easy Steps: How to Draw a Girl for Beginners
Step 1
Always start off with basic shapes first, like circles, rectangles, or ovals. Keep in mind that you should be careful with straight lines and angles since almost no lines on the female form are straight.
Step 2
Lightly add the basic outline, using no straight lines, but rather curves. Add creases and other major details like elbows, knees, and wrists.
Step 3
Add more and more details such as the eyes, nose, ears, and fingers, spend time getting the placement and proportions correct and remember to keep the details curvy and feminine.
Step 4
Refine your drawing by adding more and more lines to enhance the female form, add hair in light strokes and add shading to make your drawing realistic.
How to Make Your Girl Drawing Cute
Overexaggerate the Eyes
When you’re drawing anything where the eyes are larger than they should be, it gives off the impression that it is cute, and this goes for drawings of girls too.
Add Sparkle to the Eyes
If you add a sparkle or dots of light reflecting in the girl’s eyes, then it will also make the drawing cuter, since it gives a whimsical feeling to the drawing.
Keep it Simple
If you add too many realistic details to your drawing, you might risk your drawing not looking cute anymore, or you would have to really spend time on it. Thus, if you keep your drawing simple and just add big eyes and small mouths and ears, your drawing is pretty much guaranteed to be cute.
Common Mistakes When Drawing Girls
Knowing what to avoid doing, when you’re trying to learn how to draw a girl, immediately makes you better at drawing them. Much like the process of elimination, eliminating these common mistakes will ensure you are one step closer to being great at drawing girls.
- Harsh lines and squared-off features – Girls have softer curves and gentle features, so if you draw harsh or squared-off features such as a strong jaw, they will end up looking masculine.
- Don’t try to add a detailed larynx – This is called the adam’s apple on boys or men, and it’s usually much more defined on boys, so if you try to add this detail, it might end up looking too masculine.
- Curve the eyebrows – Men more often have straight eyebrows, and women have curved eyebrows, ensure you have a properly curved set of eyebrows in your sketch.
How to Draw a Girl: EASY Drawing Projects
If you’re feeling stuck on how to draw a girl, there are a few easy projects to spark some creativity or inspire you to research how other artists approached the type of girl you’d like to learn how to draw.
1. How to Draw a Girl with Glasses
If you want to draw a girl with a pair of glasses then Easy Drawing Guides’ guide will be ideal for you to follow, it is a cartoon-style drawing, so it should be beginner-friendly.
2. How to Draw a Girl Anime Style
Anime is a whole different type of cartoon style, it includes much more exaggerated features such as limbs, eyes, and even hair, so understanding how to draw a girl in this style might be a bit more advanced, but How to Draw makes it easier.
3. How to Draw a Young Girl
Drawing much younger girls is a bit different than drawing a girl that is in her teens or even young adult girls, so it’s important to follow a good guide like Drawing How to Draw. The facial features are slightly less developed so keep an eye out for that.
4. How to Draw a Girl’s Face From the Side
Female faces have much gentler curves than males, and when it comes to the side profiles of girls, it’s no different, Rapid Fire Art shows you how to draw side profiles of girls and pay attention to detail
5. How to Draw a Girl with an Afro
It’s important to understand how to draw girls of different nationalities and races. Although every single person is unique when it comes to nationality, there might be some distinct features that you need to pay extra attention to.
If you want to learn how to draw an afro, try following the guide on Drawing How to Draw.
6. How to Draw a Girl in One Line
If you follow the step-by-step video on How Life Style which walks you through how to draw a girl in one single line, then you will have a great piece of art in no time. Then you can try to draw other girls using the same technique.
7. How to Draw a Girl with a Hat
Farjana Drawing Academy has a good guide to follow if you want to draw a girl with a sun hat, since the hair will flow slightly differently when you wear a hat, it’s a good idea to see how Farjana does it.
8. How to Draw a Girl using the word Girl
Toy Toons has a fun challenge for you, before looking at their guide, try to disguise the word girl in a cartoon drawing of a girl. Once you mastered their method, try finding more ways.
9. How to Draw a Girl Running
The guide by Cute Easy Drawings is very easy to follow for beginners and has a cartoon style, so you won’t need to know how to use shading or more advanced techniques at all.
10. How to Draw a Girl as a Princess
Whether you need to draw a princess to complete your drawing of a royal ball, or simply want to draw your friend as a princess, follow iHeart Crafty Things’ guide to make it easier to do.
11. How to Draw a Girl on a Runway
Fashion model drawings all have a specific style and it can be daunting to figure it out on your own, but Fashion Teaching has a good video tutorial on how to draw a fashion model posing on a runway.
12. How to Draw a Girl Hugging Someone
Drawing Neelu has a cute step-by-step video tutorial on how to draw two girls hugging. A drawing like this might come in handy if you are wanting to gift your drawing to a friend.
13. How to Draw a Girl Sitting
There is a slight perspective change that you need to learn when trying to draw a girl sitting, but Easy Drawing Guides makes it easy, although it is cartoon style, you can apply the same techniques to other styles.
14. How to Draw a Girl Chibi Style
Chibi is another style of cartoon drawing, where the heads and eyes are both enlarged to give it an overall cute effect. Drawing For All has a beginner-friendly tutorial to follow.
15. How to Draw a Girl with Braids
Braids are a cool hairstyle that a lot of girls love to wear, so if you want to draw a girl with braids, follow Instructable’s guide to drawing them on a girl in no time.
How to Draw a Realistic Girl Step-By-Step
Realistic drawings require a lot of patience and practice. Always remember to shade as if there is only one light source to make it even more realistic and avoid a lot of shading at once, slow and steady is the key to a good realistic drawing of a girl.
Step 1
Start off by getting a reference picture of a girl, and if possible draw over this image with basic shapes. Use circles, ovals, and squares, but beware of harsh straight lines. Remember, no lines on the human body are perfectly straight.
Copy the same shapes over to your paper. Try to connect all the shapes’ outlines to create your silhouette of a girl.
Step 2
Draw slightly darker lines to outline individual parts of the body, such as the hands, face, and feet. Don’t ‘close’ these shapes off from the rest of the body, since there are no such harsh lines on anybody. This is so you can add creases, shading, and other details later.
Step 3
Add smaller details, such as the eyes, nose, ears, and fingernails. Start off lightly and slowly add extra details such as lashes, nostrils, and knuckle lines, not drawing them in too dark.
Step 4
Add shading and highlights – layer your shading rather than outright adding black, since it will make your drawing look less realistic.
Then add a light layer of shading over your entire drawing, lightly erasing where highlights are such as the white of the eyes, fingernails, bridge of the nose, etc. Slowly add more shadows in darker areas such as the neck, arms, and legs.
Step 5
Refine your artwork, by constantly referring back to your reference image. You should be able to spot when you have made a mistake, but try to understand how you’re making these mistakes.
Avoid erasing a lot to not make your drawing muddy. If you start off lighter than you think you should with shading and line thicknesses, you should be able to achieve a good realistic drawing.
Step 6
Erase guidelines that are still visible or shade them out. Add details such as a sparkle in the eye, lines on lips, and creases on hands and feet that you often miss. And then practice some more, since practice will make perfect.
How to Draw a Girl’s Face
Grab a pencil, paper, and an eraser to start off your drawing of a girl’s face.
Step 1
Draw an oval, that is slightly egg-shaped, but upside-down since girls’ faces are much rounder than boys’ faces in general. Lightly draw a line horizontally in the middle of the face, and then half each half you just draw, with another straight line, horizontally.
You should have three lines going across the face at equal distances. These will serve as your guide to getting the facial proportions correct.
Step 2
Draw the eyes so the middle horizontal line goes halfway through the pupils. Space the eyes so that one eye will fit perfectly between the two eyes, this way they won’t be too close or too far.
Add the details such as the eyelashes by making curved lines going slightly to the edges of the face for each eye. The iris should not fit perfectly in your eye shape, it should be cut off a bit by the lower and upper eyelids. Add the pupil too.
Step 3
Add eyebrows, for this, add more or less the same length of the line as the eye itself about ½ of the height of your eye itself, above the eye.
Follow the same curve to make them look natural. Add hairs to thicken up the eyebrow at slightly slanted angles, add as much as you’d like.
Step 4
Draw a curve for the nose on the lower horizontal line of the face, it should look like a small smile line, and avoid drawing the bridge of the nose. The width of the curve should not be wider than the gap between the eyes’ inner corners.
Add two small and light teardrops that are turned on the side at either side of the curve for the nostrils, they shouldn’t be too round, but rather stretched out.
Step 5
Draw a gently curved line for the mouth in the lowest section of the face, in the middle of this section, between the nose and the chin. The curve should be almost straight, then depending on how thick you want the lips, add a top lip and a bottom lip.
Step 6
Add ears on either side of the face, positioned so the tops of the ears are slightly higher than the eyes, and the entire length of the ear is no longer than the eyes you drew.
This will only be a gentle stretched-out “3” shape on the sides of the head, no need to see the earholes. Add hair if you wish.
Tips for How to Draw a Girl
Keeping in mind what to do when drawing a girl, will help you to get better at drawing girls every time you pick up a pencil.
- Always use longer and softer curves for the body in general
- Shoulders for girls are usually smaller and much rounder than boys’ shoulders.
- Always soften the lines on girls’ faces and eyes, as well as their eyebrows.
- Girls’ necks are usually slimmer and longer than boys’ necks.
How to Draw a Girl FAQ
What Is Drawing Humans Called?
Drawing humans in any style of drawing is called figure drawing. They can be altered to look like fictional characters like vampires or angels, but the base of the drawing will still contain a figure of a human.
Why Is Figure Drawing Important?
There are a lot of humans on earth, and when you’re drawing, you’re bound to have a figure needed in your drawing at some point. Whether it is cartoon style, realistic, or even abstract, knowing how to draw figures will be required at some stage of your drawing career or hobby.
Is It Hard to Draw a Girl?
Without any practice, yes drawing a girl is difficult, but if you practice drawing girls regularly and learn tips and tricks on how to draw them, it’s not difficult at all.
Why Would You Need a Drawing of a Girl?
You might need a drawing of a girl for a variety of reasons, from it being a gift to you completing a drawing about a realistic scenario where there would be a girl, you will need to know how to draw them when you need them.
Conclusion
Unless you plan on never drawing any human or human-like figure, you will have to know how to draw a girl, and it’s not difficult at all if you practice. You simply need to know what not to do, a few tricks on what to always do when drawing a girl, and have fun while you’re doing it.