How to Draw a Butterfly

In this drawing guide, we will tell you how to draw a butterfly. This is not a simplistic or cartoon-style tutorial – we will try to draw realistic and beautiful art.

So, this will be a drawing lesson of medium difficulty. We will focus on the first steps. This is where we will work with basic shapes and proportions. For example, it is very important to maintain the proportions between the wings and body of a butterfly.

Then there will be interesting steps in which we will draw patterns on the wings of the butterfly. The symmetry and correctness of unusual patterns will be very important here. We’ll show this in much more detail.

Step 1

First, draw the approximate outlines of the butterfly’s body and head. The butterfly’s proportions are slightly different from many other insects. Visually, the body consists of two parts – a small oval immediately below the head and a very long, elongated oval at the end.

Step 2

The wings of a butterfly are much larger and wider than the body. To draw the wings correctly, make a small marking of straight lines, as in our example. Use the length of the butterfly’s body as a guide and relate this to each of the lines.

Step 3

Draw the upper part of the wings of our butterfly. The lines from the previous step will help you a lot here. The horizontal line is the bottom edge of this part of the butterfly’s wings. Diagonal lines divide the contour of the wing into two very uneven parts. While drawing, compare the size of the wings with the size of the butterfly’s body.

 

Step 4

So, we continued the drawing lesson on how to draw a butterfly. Using guidelines from the previous step, carefully draw the wings of our butterfly. By the way, don’t forget that the outlines of the wings should be the same, but of course, mirrored.

Step 5

Erase all the unnecessary and excess lines and accurately draw out the contours of the butterfly’s body. Note that the butterfly’s eyes should be rounded and voluminous.

 

Step 6

Start drawing a pattern on the wings of our butterfly. We recommend drawing simple, rounded patterns that hug the body of the butterfly. You can draw very simple patterns, but be sure to concentrate on the symmetry of the shapes, this is very important.

Step 7

Here we will need to draw patterns on the wings. It is not necessary to make the patterns in the example below, you can draw any patterns you want. The main rule – the patterns on the wings should be mirrored.

Step 8

Here we continue to draw spots on the wings. We decided to add small round and oval patterns near the edges of the wings. But again, the pattern on the wings can be absolutely any shape (for example on the wings of butterflies you can often see an imitation of eyes).

Step 9

Now paint the wings with hatching and a solid black fill. Add shadows also with hatching, and our glorious butterfly drawing is ready. We usually make our drawings with a pencil and leave them in black and white, but you can color your butterfly in different colors of the rainbow.

This was the second lesson on how to draw a butterfly on our website. We improved the drawing, added some color and shadows, and generally made the lesson a little more difficult. If the old lesson was for beginner artists, then this one is more suitable for those who already draw well. Of course, there is a huge variety of butterflies on the planet Earth, with different types of wings and bodies. But the advantage of our lesson is that with the help of it, you can draw absolutely any type of butterfly.